Japan to Ban Baseball Players seeking more.

I recently read a story on ESPN.com reporting that Japan's professional baseball teams agreed to ban players who return to Japan after leaving to play for overseas pro teams, like MLB. They mentioned the executives of Japan's 12 professional teams decided on this ban for players who had graduated from high school. Get this, college or company players must wait for three years from playing overseas to be able to return to Japanese baseball. Professional Japanese players must wait nine seasons before becoming free agents.

Japanese baseball officials really hope to discourage their top prospects from skipping Japan's pro leagues to play in the majors here. So far there are only a handful of Japanese players to have played in the majors without playing in Japanese pro baseball first.

Well, if Japan only has 12 professional teams what the heck do they expect. There's more opportunity here, that's why our "friends south of us" come up to play. Imagine what would happen if we introduced a similar ban on our NBA players who wanted to skip the pond and play in Europe. The stuff would hit the fan then.