Why do Americans call the MLB final, the world series?

Question

Baseball is not even a world sport, non-americans usually hate it. It is sort of a World Cup for Baseball, however there are Japanese teams which are far better than MLB teams.

And personally, baseball s**ks. A more interesting alternative is cricket, don't you think?

Answer 1

because america is the greatest country in the WORLD!

Answer 2

Well my friend first off there isn't a Japanese team that is better than an American team. If they were that good they would be playing in the USA like all the other Japanese stars. Secondly weather the world as you put it likes baseball or not it makes more TV revenue than your soccer and cricket. Since we live in a capitalist society, I'm not sure which monarchy you reside in, revenue drives our sports. So the fact that the two best baseball teams in the world play each other in October is why we call it the world series. Similar to why soccer calls the tournament they have the world cup. Before making ignorant statements you should research your argument.

Answer 3

Because it happens to be called the World Series, not MLB Final. And if you think cricket is better than baseball, you better stop smoking.
Why don't you go talk about how great cricket is on the cricket boards?

Answer 4

Japanese baseball is roughly equivalent to a good AA minor league team or a below average AAA minor league team in America. The worlds best play in the MLB, except for Cuba, and due to this the teams constitute the best collections of baseball players on earth. Therefore, the best team in the MLB is the best team in the world.

Answer 5

If non americans hate it, then please explain the World Baseball Classic. We had a crapload of countries participate in it including Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and even Canada. Just because no European teams were in it doesn't mean it's not international. It just means that Europeans like to play other pansy sports like, oh I don't know, cricket.

Answer 6

Why do non-baseball fans, worldwide, get their knickers in a twist over this?

Cricket doesn't have a clock because there's no meaningful way to time geological eras, and a typical match lasts several. The sweaters are smashing, though.

Answer 7

"A more interesting alternative is cricket"???
Hahaha. And that's why we can call it the World Series. Because you have a sport called cricket, which you describe as "interesting." We have the best sports teams, we've even managed to kick *** at soccer which we have been playing for much less time than Europeans. So we can call our championship games whatever we want.

Answer 8

Baseball is a far better sport than cricket. No F'in way any Japanese team is even close to as good as a Major League team. Baseball is the hardest sport out there. I guarantee that you could not hit a baseball.

Answer 9

there are no japanese teams better than major leauge teams moron, but there are japanese and cuban teams better than the amateur squads we send to international competitions, such as the pan am games (which we just finished dominating as always). we call it the world series because we want to, ok? and we don't give a damn if a bunch of european or Asian geeks like you don't like it. why do you care? why do europeans call soccer football? and cricket? what the hell is that? it must suck, whatever it is, because if it was worth playing or watching, america would be dominating it like we do most other sports. we'll see you in Beijing in 2008, where we'll be at the top of the medal board as always. where will your loser country be?

Answer 10

Are you kidding ok first off NO Japanese teams are even half as good as any MLB teams, and cricket......OMG you're an idiot baseball is ten times better then cricket especially since no one in America has ever heard of it and what kind of sport is named after a bug.

Answer 11

The title of this championship may be confusing to some readers from countries where baseball is not a major sport (or even where it is), because the "World" Series is confined to the champions of two baseball leagues that currently operate only in the United States and Canada.

The explanation is that when the term "World's Championship Series" was first used in the 1880s, baseball at a highly-skilled level was almost exclusively confined to North America, especially the United States. Thus it was understood that the winner of the major league championship was the best baseball team in the world. The title of this event was soon shortened to "World's Series" and later to "World Series".

The United States continued to be the zenith of professional baseball some decades into the 20th Century. The first Japanese professional baseball efforts began in 1920. The current Japanese leagues date from the late 1940s. Various Latin American leagues also formed around that time.

By the 1990s, baseball was played at a highly skilled level in many countries, resulting in a strong international flavor to the Series, as many of the best players from the Pacific Rim, Latin America, the Caribbean, and elsewhere now play on Major League rosters. The notable exception is Cuban nationals, due to the political situation between the USA and Cuba (despite that barrier, over the years a number of Cuba's finest ballplayers have defected to the United States to play in the American professional leagues). Players from the Japanese Leagues also have a more difficult time coming to the Major Leagues because they must first play 10 years in Japan before becoming free agents. Reaching the high-income Major Leagues tends to be the goal of many of the best players around the world.

Early in 2006, Major League Baseball conducted the inaugural World Baseball Classic, to establish a "true" world's championship in the way the term is normally used for other international sports. Teams of professional players from 16 nations participated, and Japan won the first World Baseball Classic championship. Olympic baseball was instituted as a medal sport in 1992, but in 2005 the International Olympic Committee voted to eliminate baseball, and it will be off the Olympic program in 2012.

The World Series itself retains a US-oriented atmosphere. The title of the event is often presented on television as merely a "brand name" in the same sense as the "Super Bowl", and thus the term "World Series Championship" is sometimes used. However, the origin of the term lives on, as with these words of Frank Thomas in the Chicago White Sox victory celebration in 2005: "We're world's champions, baby!" At the close of the 2006 Series, Commissioner Bud Selig pronounced the St. Louis Cardinals "champions of the world". Likewise, the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine for November 6, 2006, features Series MVP David Eckstein and is subtitled "World Champions".

A recent myth has arisen that the "World" in "World Series" came about because the New York World newspaper sponsored it. There is no evidence at all supporting that hypothesis.[4]The annual publication called the World Almanac was originally published by the New York World. Its ambiguous title and U.S.-centric content may have inspired the World Series myth, either facetiously or naively.

Humorist Ring Lardner, when writing columns about ongoing World Series in the 1910s (including the infamous 1919 Series) mocked the pomp surrounding the games he covered (as well as his own persona) by calling the event the "World's Serious".