They're coming to America

We totally control the market now. Don't we? Name a sport that is played in another country and the star of that sport is playing this spring in the US of A.

From Pedro to Nomo, from Ichiro to Samy Sosa to Vladimir Guerrero to Pudge Rodriguez to Jorge Posada to Mariano Rivera, now pitching, bottom of the ninth, baseball is filled with foreign names. Hockey, forget about it. Whichever team wins the Stanley Cup will send a list of names to the engraver that will be filled with the consonants of the old Eastern Bloc.

In the NBA playoffs, every team seems to have a Serb or a Croatian or Russian on the roster. The Dallas Mavericks can work a play that starts with a pass from a Canadian to a German, then to a seven-footer from mainland China. Tennis long has attracted the huddled two-handed backhanders to Florida. No, Martina Navratilova did not grow up here. Neither did Ivan Lendl. Boxing is now filled with Latins and Russians and the occasional Africans. Golf, gymnastics, figure skating... the lure of the big bucks and the modern training facilities are irresistible. Do the Kenyans ever run anymore in Kenya?

We wonder sometimes, watching the evening news, why the rest of the world often hates us. Well, maybe this is a sports page contribution to the answer, the way we siphon off the best athletic talents for our entertainment.

Thank goodness we don't like soccer.

Leigh Montville's commentaries appear regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated.

 

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