2004 AL Results
As David Letterman might say, "no wagering."

I'll try to do the NL in the next day or two.

AL East

1. Boston Red Sox 97 - 65
2. New York Yankees 95 - 67 Wild Card team
3. Toronto Blue Jays 83 - 79
4. Baltimore Orioles 79 - 83
5. Tampa Bay Devil Rays 63 - 99

AL Central

1. Minnesota Twins 87 - 75
2. Chicago White Sox 83 - 79
3. Kansas City Royals 79 - 83
4. Cleveland Indians 72 - 90
5. Detroit Tigers 63 - 99

AL West

1. Oakland Athletics 92 - 70
2. Seattle Mariners 84 - 78
3. Anaheim Angels 83 - 79
4. Texas Rangers 74 - 88

AL Champions: Oakland A's
AL MVP: Alex Rodriguez (Yankees)
AL Cy Young: Tim Hudson (A's)
Al Rookie of the Year: Bobby Crosby (A's)

I'm not sure why my columns don't align. Sorry.
- posted by Rodger @ Monday, April 05, 2004

 
Kerry-McCain ticket watch
A couple of bloggers have noticed a remark by Republican Senator John McCain Friday:

``I believe my party has gone astray,'' McCain said, criticizing GOP stands on environmental and minority issues.

``I think the Democratic Party is a fine party, and I have no problems with it, in their views and their philosophy,'' he said.

Of course, he then said, "But I also feel the Republican Party can be brought back to the principles I articulated before.''

In short, McCain continues to fire away at the Bush Administration -- but he also continues to deny that he's willing to be John Kerry's Vice President:

The maverick senator made the remarks at a legislative seminar hosted by U.S. Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Lowell) as he again ruled out running on a ticket with Democrat John F. Kerry.

The Arizona Republican took on President Bush for failing to prepare Americans for a long involvement in Iraq, saying, ``You can't fly in on an aircraft carrier and declare victory and have the deaths continue. You can't do that.''

McCain said the U.S. should seek more U.N. involvement in Iraq. ``Many people in this room question, legitimately, whether we should have gone in or not,'' he said.

Still...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was quoted Friday saying that McCain might be a good choice for Kerry's Veep:

"It's very important to have another person on the field who is part of the presidential ticket," Pelosi told a round-table meeting of reporters Friday. "I don't want to see John Kerry debating with Dick Cheney in the press, I don't want to see him debating down. I want him to be debating the president of the United States."

"I think that it would be important to have a nominee by May 1," Pelosi said. Kerry's campaign has been vague about a timetable for the decision.

Pelosi also said that the selection of Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain would be "a gesture to bring the country together," but she said she had no reason to think that would happen.

It's quite unlikely to happen, but it would be damn interesting.

As I've blogged before, McCain has been fairly nice to Kerry at times and sometimes quite nasty towards Bush.
- posted by Rodger @ Saturday, April 03, 2004

 
Another Former Republican Jumps Ship
Just over thirty years ago, John Dean was President Nixon's counsel. Of course, during the Watergate investigation and congressional hearings, Dean famously became the main whistleblower. Nixon fired Dean in April, 1973 and he testified two months later. After another two months, Nixon resigned -- Dean had demonstrated conclusively that the Watergate conspiracy went all the way to the Oval Office.

Today, Dean taped an interview with journalist Bill Moyers for the PBS TV program "NOW." Dean was promoting his new book, Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush. In the book and interview, Dean claims that the current White House is the most secretive ever -- and should be brought down because of the way it fomented war against Iraq.

Here's the key exchange:

BILL MOYERS: Be specific with me. What is worse than Watergate?

JOHN DEAN: If there's anything that really is the bottom line, it's taking the nation to war in a time when they might not have had to go to war and people dying. That is worse than Watergate. No one died for Nixon's so-called Watergate abuses.

BILL MOYERS: Let me go right to page 155 of your book. You write, quote, "The evidence is overwhelming that George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney have engaged in deceit and deception over going to war in Iraq. This is an impeachable offense."

JOHN DEAN: Absolutely is. The founders in the debates in the states. I cite one. I cite one that I found, I tracked down after reading the Nixon impeachment proceedings when Congressman Castenmeyer had gone back to look to see what the founders said about misrepresentations and lying to the the Congress. Clearly, it is an impeachable offense. And I think the case is overwhelming that these people presented false information to the Congress and to the American people.

I've blogged about a lot of the flawed use of intelligence, of course -- and have previously discussed the secrecy angle too.

Like the other recent whistleblowers, Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke, Dean recognizes that he's likely to come under attack from the White House. He claims not to be bashing Bush because of partisan politics. Here are his concerns regarding lack of "good government."

JOHN DEAN: Well, I'm not interested in Bush bashing. I'm really only interested in the truth getting out, people understand a very complex and sensitive issue. And that is secrecy.

In fact, I rely, if you notice in the book on every chapter I start with somebody who is of Mr. Bush's party, talking and complaining about his excessive secrecy. This isn't a partisan issue for me.

This isn't an issue of Republicans versus Democrats. This is an issue of good government versus bad government. This is an informed electorate and an uninformed electorate.

JOHN DEAN: Absolutely. Well, you know, Bill, I don't come at this as a partisan. I mean I really left those days long behind me. I'm a registered Independent. I vote for both Republicans, I vote for Democrats. I vote for the issues.

And you know, I didn't wanna get in the mix of a partisan thing. But I do think these are issues that must be on the table.

BILL MOYERS: You say in here that even more so than Nixon, they come after their enemies list, the people on their enemies list. I mean we see what's happening to Clarke. What's gonna happen to you again?

JOHN DEAN: You know, they can't hurt me at this point. I'm damaged material already.

We'll see if Dean still believes this in a week or two.



- posted by Rodger @ Friday, April 02, 2004

 
Kerry on Energy
Are people starting to notice higher gasoline prices? Jon Stewart did a bit on it tonight on "The Daily Show."

For the foreseeable future, the US remains reliant upon OPEC to set prices -- and the cartel doesn't always follow market principles. Plus, the dependence is arguably bad for the economy and dangerous for national security.

The Bush energy plan has received lots of attention -- partly because of the GAO's effort to gain access to Cheney's meeting notes and partly because of the progress in Congress last year (though the bill ultimately failed).

Today, I went back and read a speech John Kerry delivered in June 2003 on energy independence. What does Kerry think the US can do to control its own energy future? As I blogged some months ago, framed correctly, this could be a winning issue for Democrats in 2004. There's a populist message embedded in this rhetoric:

My strategy calls for new investments in research, new incentives for companies and consumers, new partnership across the old dividing lines, and higher standards of energy efficiency for both business and government to meet. We can create Americans jobs and confront the dangers to our environment at the same time as we make this nation safer, stronger, and more secure.

The challenge will not be easy but neither was the Manhattan Project. It will require real resources and strong leadership and an unwavering will to make tough choices and take on entrenched interests.

Today we have an energy policy of big oil, by big oil and for big oil. It may work for their profits, but it will never work for America. And yet George Bush persists in pursuing a course that can only be described as energy dependence - an approach, that despite all his boasts about a stronger America, will actually risk our hopes, make us weaker, and make both our economy and our country more vulnerable to blackmail by hostile powers.

The dollars we spend at the pump can too easily be diverted to finance the very terrorists that would seek to destroy us. And our endless reliance on the Middle East for oil means that others half a world away hold life insurance policies on America's economy. September 11th doesn't just demand that we confront the danger of terrorism; it demands that we drain the swamps that can sustain and even increase it.

See how easily this could be framed as a winning issue for Democrats? I'm frankly still disappointed that Gore didn't push this issue -- and it is probably why Nader received so many votes in states like Oregon.

The Bush plan funnels more money to oil and other fossil fuel interests, Kerry would push alternative energy and conservation. This is environmentally friendly, technologically savvy, and economically wise:

First, as President, I will channel the funds the government is already owed to invest in rapid growth in technologies that save energy and create alternative fuels. Through a new energy security and conservation trust fund, Americans will have a guaranteed commitment to reducing our dependence on oil. America only has three percent of the world's oil reserves. There is no metaphysical or miraculous way for us to drill our way out of a 60% foreign oil dependency. We have to invent our way out of it; American ingenuity has to drive the process - and new American jobs will be the dividend.

Unfortunately, the funding today is sporadic, uncertain, and always insufficient. We may not have the greatest oil reserves on Earth; but we do have the great resources to find and foster new fuels and to conserve and optimize traditional ones. So the trust fund I propose will take existing royalties that corporations now pay for the right to drill on public lands and dedicate that money to R&D; into cleaner and more abundant energy sources. We will do justice to conservation and we will, for the first time, have a guaranteed national commitment to reduce our dependence on foreign oil - to fund renewable energy, accelerate the development of fuel cell vehicles, and support biomass projects like those here in Iowa which can convert our agricultural plenty into energy security.

Second, the road to more energy independence depends on making our cars and trucks more energy efficient. One out of every seven barrels of oil in the world is consumed on America's highways. Instead, I propose both economic incentives to build the cars, the trucks, the SUVs, and the buses of the future - and higher standards for gas mileage for every new vehicle produced or sold in this country. The threats that America faces today don't just come from gun barrels, they come from oil barrels - and we need to disarm that danger.

The research shows that the best way to reduce oil dependence in the near term is to increase fuel efficiency in the near term. A recent study found that raising fuel standards accounts for 80 percent of the savings in oil we can achieve by 2012. We can build the right kind of cars, SUVs, minivans and trucks. We can do it affordably and efficiently. We can give Americans a wide range of choice without leaving America with no choice but endless energy dependence.

Third, the energy security strategy I propose will focus on renewable sources where the reserves are, in effect, endlessly greater than all the oil fields on Earth. We can generate more and more of our electricity from wind, the sun, and forest and farm products. I believe we can and should produce twenty percent of all our electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Twenty by 2020 - now that's a clear vision for America.

Finally, this energy security plan is not about spending more, but spending smarter. The Bush Administration and the Republicans in Congress have been lavishing billions of dollars in subsidies and corporate welfare on big energy companies while starving the researchers and consumers who could power our way to energy independence. The Bush policy is to subsidize off-shore drilling and strip-mining while refusing to fund the energy revolution that will create jobs and make our country and economy more secure. This has to change - and if I am President, we will change it.

And at the same time, we will repeal the outrageous one hundred thousand dollar tax break for the purchase of luxury gas-guzzlers like Hummers. This was intended to help farmers and others who need light trucks - and that's right - not to subsidize lavish and inefficient machines. Americans have the right to drive whatever car they want - but at a time of international threats, and in a generation of long term danger, they don't have the right to have the government finance more dependence on foreign oil.

Gotta run.
- posted by Rodger @ Thursday, April 01, 2004

 
War Profiteering?
As I blogged the other day, Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) blasted Richard Clarke on the Senate floor last week.

One of his charges was that Clarke is personally profiting from the tragedy of 9/11:

Assuming the controversy around this series of events does, in fact, drive the sales of his book, Mr. Clarke will make a lot of money, a lot of money for exactly what he has done. I personally find this to be an appalling act of profiteering, of trading on insider access to highly classified information and capitalizing upon the tragedy that befell this nation on September the 11th, 2001. Mr. Clarke must renounce, I think, any plan to personally profit from this book.

I just watched Clarke on MSNBC's "Hardball" and he said that substantial profits from the book (and any possible future movie deal) would go for people affected by Iraq and Afghanistan and for 9/11 victims. He said the same thing Sunday:

Tim, long before Senator Frist said what he said, I planned to make a substantial contribution, not only to them but also to the widows and orphans of our Special Forces who have fought and died in Afghanistan and Iraq. And when we see the results of the book sales, we'll know how much we have to make donations.

Atrios also pointed out that Bill Frist wrote a book on bioterrorism -- and his remarks look pretty hypocritical.

Counterspin has a great graphic highlighting this point. Frist apparently gave away profits from this book to charity, but still gained by getting a better job -- as Senate Majority leader.
- posted by Rodger @ Thursday, April 01, 2004

 
Quick note on Rice
I've got lots of stuff on my plate this week, so this will be quick:

As everyone knows by now, Condi Rice is going to testify to the 9/11 Commission. It should be noted that the separation of powers argument was always a ruse. She already testified for four hours in February -- in private. Thus, the claims about executive-legislative power are false.

The entire controversy has really been about public accountability. Will Rice have to answer questions in a public forum, so that you and I can consider her responses to the questions we want answered? Up until today, the Bush administration has tried to avoid just that accountability.

And today, they may yet have achieved victory.

As Paul Sperry notes, the deal the Commission made with the White House includes a lot of concessions that actually hurt transparency and public accountability.

Rice will be the final Bush administration official to testify in public. She cannot be recalled and no one else can be asked to explain anything else from now forward. Every process needs an endpoint, but this seems like a bad deal.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney are also going to testify together, in private, before all the commissioners.

They will not be under oath.

Why not?

I suspect the White House has concerns about the Clinton precedent. The Special Prosecutor ended up going after Clinton for alleged lies under oath -- not for other specific crimes committed as President. That's largely why impeachment failed. The public thought his behavior was bad, but not impeachable.

In any case, without taking such an oath, the current President and Vice President are freed to bend the truth and "forget" potentially important facts.

Think I'm being paranoid?

On March 22, 2004, the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy story detailing how "some official accounts of Sept. 11 are incorrect, incomplete or in dispute."

Despite what the President said, he did not personally put the nation on higher alert that morning.

The President claimed to have seen a video of the first plane striking the World Trade Center even before he read to the classroom full of students that day -- but this was impossible. Despite his personal anecdote about seeing a "bad pilot," no tape was available until the night of 9/11.

Uncut videotape reveals that the President was not immediately pulled from the class when informed of the second attack. He remained in the room for at least 7 additional minutes. White House officials claim to have acted within seconds.

There was no threat to Air Force One, despite the fact that Vice President Cheney has claimed there was. There were no remaining jets in the sky that would have posed lingering threats to air safety, as has been claimed by the White House.

The FAA alerted the military immediately when it knew it had hijackings underway that day, but the jets remained on the ground. Nobody can really explain why.

Read the WSJ piece, it raises additional doubts about the official story.

- posted by Rodger @ Tuesday, March 30, 2004

 
Updates on Clarke
From Mark A.R. Kleiman, I learned that Senator (and Majority Leader) Bill Frist said some things last week about Richard Clarke's congressional testimony that were not true.

As I noted, Frist came close to accusing Clarke of perjury -- but Frist may have committed a similar offense within a few minutes of making his statement in Congress (since it was on the floor of the Senate, he cannot be prosecuted for a crime):

Frist later retreated from directly accusing Clarke of perjury, telling reporters that he personally had no knowledge that there were any discrepancies between Clarke's two appearances. But he said, "Until you have him under oath both times, you don’t know."

If Frist had no idea whether Clarke told a different story, why did he say it?

Salon has a great interview with Clarke, by the way. First come the questions from Joe Conason (in bold) and then Clarke's replies. This exchange is interesting, to demonstrate how the administration has politicized 9/11:

[White House spokesman] McClellan also said that although you criticize the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in the book, you had attempted to become the No. 2 in that department and were passed over -- and that's yet another reason why you wrote this critical book.

They're trying to bait me, and they're trying to get me to answer all these personal issues. You know, the fact is that Tom Ridge opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. George Bush opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. And then one day, they turned on a dime and supported it. Why?

As I said in the book, the White House legislative affairs people counted votes. Senator [Joseph] Lieberman had proposed the bill to create the Department of Homeland Security -- and the legislative affairs people said Lieberman has the votes; it's going to pass. They said, "You've got the possible situation here, Mr. President, where you're going to have to veto the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. And if you don't support it now, if you don't make it your proposal, not only will it pass but it will be called the Lieberman bill."

The Lieberman-McCain bill.

The Lieberman-McCain bill, in fact. So that there were two outcomes possible. One in which we have this Frankenstein department, created during the middle of the war on terrorism, reorganizing during the middle of a war. That was possible. It was also possible that a second thing would happen, and that was that Lieberman would get credit for it. And therefore the president changed his position overnight, and became a big supporter of the Department of Homeland Security.

Did you see a memo to that effect? I wondered about that when I was reading the book, because you don't say how you know they gave the president that advice.

No, I don't say ... It was from oral conversations in the White House.

There's a lot more good material in that interview. Here's the bit comparing the Clinton and Bush policies on terror:

It's possible that the vice president has spent so little time studying the terrorist phenomenon that he doesn't know about the successes in the 1990s. There were many. The Clinton administration stopped Iraqi terrorism against the United States, through military intervention. It stopped Iranian terrorism against the United States, through covert action. It stopped the al-Qaida attempt to have a dominant influence in Bosnia. It stopped the terrorist attacks at the millennium. It stopped many other terrorist attacks, including on the U.S. embassy in Albania. And it began a lethal covert action program against al-Qaida; it also launched military strikes against al-Qaida. Maybe the vice president was so busy running Halliburton at the time that he didn't notice.

[P]rior to 9/11, the Bush administration didn't have an approach to terrorism. They'd never gotten around to creating an administration policy. It was in the process of doing so, but it hadn't achieved that. And it was clear that the national security advisor didn't like this kind of issue; she didn't have meetings on this issue. The president didn't have meetings on the issue of terrorism.

Now the White House is saying, oh, they had meetings every day. But let's be clear about what those meetings every day were. Every day George Tenet, the CIA director, would do the morning intelligence briefing of the president, and he would raise the al-Qaida threat with great frequency. That's not the same as having a meeting to decide what to do about it. That's not the same as the president shaking the lapels of the FBI director and the attorney general and saying, "You've got to stop the attack."

Apparently on one occasion -- of all these many, many days when George Tenet mentioned the al-Qaida threat -- the president on one occasion said, "I want a strategy. I don't want to swat flies." Well, months or certainly weeks went by after that, and he didn't get his strategy because Condi Rice didn't hold the meeting necessary to approve it and give it to him. And yet George Bush appears not to have asked for it a second time.

In fact, he told Bob Woodward in "Bush at War" that he kind of knew there was a strategy being developed out there, but he didn't know at what stage it was in the process. Well, if he was so focused on it, he would have kept asking where the strategy was. He would have known where it was in the process. He would have demanded that it be brought forward. He had a fleeting interest.

Among other bloggers, Digby has been making this point.

This is a story that I'll continue to watch.


- posted by Rodger @ Monday, March 29, 2004

 
Draft
Some time ago, I referenced the basic "military math" that slows further implementation of the Bush Doctrine. Put simply, the US doesn't have a sufficiently large armed force to carry out additional Iraq-like invasions and occupations. Most of the force is already deployed somewhere important, and the rest is either training to deploy or resting from a recent deployment

Additionally, anecdotal evidence suggests that re-enlistment rates may be down as well, which will further limit the President's apparent aspirations.

Conscription, of course, could alter this equation -- though it would take awhile to draft and then train new (likely much less motivated) soldiers.

In any event, I recently read an interesting piece on AlterNet by Conner Freff Cochran suggesting that a draft is coming. Don't expect to hear the Republicans talking about this before the election.

Cochran discusses some behind-the-scenes moves taken by the Selective Service System that could both hasten a draft and make it more effective:

Despite statements to the contrary, quiet preparations for the return of the draft have been under way for some time. The Selective Service System's Annual Performance Plan for Fiscal Year 2004 -- despite a ton of obfuscatory jargon, acronyms, and bureaucrat-speak -- can't quite manage to bury all of its bombshells.

Strategic Objective 1.2 of the 2004 plan commits the Selective Service System to being fully operational within 75 days of "an authorized return to conscription." Strategic Objective 1.3 then commits them to "be operationally ready to furnish untrained manpower within DOD timelines." By next year the government intends to turn the ignition key on a mobilization infrastructure of 56 State Headquarters, 442 Area Offices, and 1,980 Local Boards. There's even a big chunk of funding this year to run what's called an "Area Office Prototype Exercise" which will "test the activation process from SSS Lottery input to the issuance of First Armed Forces Examination Orders."

Strategic Objective 2.2 is all about bumping up the Selective Service System's High School Registrar Program. What's that? It's a plan to put volunteer Registrars in at least 85% of the nation's high schools, up from 65% in 1998. Consider these the SSS's "troops on the ground," making sure that the smallest possible number of eligible draftees manages to slip through the net.

According to Cochran, the SSS 2004 plan commits them to report to the President by March 31, 2005 that a draft could be ready for activation in 75 days.

By this math, the US could hold its first draft lottery since Vietnam on June 15, 2005. Congressional action would be required, but even NY Democrats Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rep. Charlie Rangel have publicly supported a draft -- so this is certainly within the realm of the possible.

- posted by Rodger @ Saturday, March 27, 2004

 
Republicans Suddenly Embrace Transparency
Yahoo News has a new AP wire story on-line entitled, "GOP Moves to Declassify Clarke Testimony."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) claims that Richard Clarke told a very different story about Bush administration counter-terror efforts when he testified before congressional intelligence committees in July 2002 than he's telling now.

To prove this, various Republicans are seeking to declassify his testimony. Frist implied that perjury charges could lie ahead for Clarke "if it is found that he has lied to Congress."

"Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said in a speech on the Senate floor.

The Tennessee Republican said he hopes Clarke's testimony in July 2002 before the House and Senate intelligence committees can be declassified. Then, he said, it can be compared with the account the former aide provided in his nationally televised appearance Wednesday before the bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Frist, without elaborating, said Clarke's testimony in 2002 was "effusive in his praise for the actions of the Bush administration."

I'm pretty skeptical that such declassification could help the Bush administration all that much. Most importantly, a huge point of departure for Clarke is his opposition to the war against Iraq and the argument that it distracted (and made more difficult) the wider war on terror.

Thus, I can't really see a "gotcha" moment if this testimony merely points to the admininstration's anti-terror achievements during the months after 9/11. Everyone knows they sent the military to Afghanistan, toppled the Taliban and destroyed al Qaida camps.

In August 2002, of course, George Herbert Walker Bush's National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft authored a critical op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal that is just as damning as Clarke's book in terms of the horrible consequences attacking Iraq would have for the war on terror. I quoted a lot of it before, but let me repeat this:

"An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken.

But the central point is that any campaign against Iraq, whatever the strategy, cost and risks, is certain to divert us for some indefinite period from our war on terrorism....At a minimum, it would stifle any cooperation on terrorism, and could even swell the ranks of the terrorists."

Earlier this week, someone leaked to Fox News a background brief Clarke gave in early August 2002. It generally supports the administration on the war on terror -- but Iraq is never mentioned.

Ironically, the White House has repeatedly linked the war in Iraq to the war on terror, but they are focusing all their attention on Clarke's claims about early 2001 -- that the incoming Bush administration was weak on terror from the beginning.

In the long run, that stuff may all wash out and the Iraq argument will prevail. So far, the White House doesn't seem to have a response for it.

- posted by Rodger @ Friday, March 26, 2004

 
Globalization of Baseball
Last year, the Oakland A's and Seattle Mariners were supposed to play a short series of baseball games in Japan to kick off the new season. Because of the Iraq war, however, baseball officials decided to cancel those games.

At the time, I thought it was unnecessary. Iraq had no weapons that could reach Japan and had no allies. The risk of a terrorist strike against a Japanese target seemed pretty low, especially since Iraq and al Qaida are completely separate entities. Granted, I thought jihadists might be angered by the US launching war in the middle east, but it seemed very unlikely that they would pick these events for a terror strike. There wouldn't have been much time to plan, for example.

In any case, baseball decided to be safe.

Fine.

This year, baseball is beginning its season next Tuesday, with a short series in Japan between the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Each team will prepare for these games that count in the AL East standings by first playing a couple of exhibition games against Japanese teams.

So, instead of seeing the return of Ichiro, Japanese fans get the return of Matsui.

It would be great if Matsui does well, but I've got to root for the Devil Rays in these games. Who wants to see the Yankees succeed all the time? Not me.

They are the evil empire, after all.

Someday, I'm going to do some halfway serious work on the globalization of baseball. Major League Baseball is obviously trying hard to globalize its fan base -- and labor pool. The marketing effort may already be paying off.

Last year's World Series achieved higher ratings in Japan that it did in the US. And MLB has sold the Japanese TV rights to the next 6 baseball seasons for $275 million. That is up about 15 times the prior agreement!
- posted by Rodger @ Friday, March 26, 2004