MLB:”Good thing Kepler didn’t go to Bavaria”

Billy Beane, Vice President of Baseball Operations at Oakland Athletics, is known for his Moneyball principle that revolutionized the sport. At SPOX, the 55-year-old talks about the fascination of baseball. He comments on the change that the MLB underwent during his time in office – and why he is enthusiastic about Max Kepler.

SPOX: Mr. Beane, SPOX is now the new home of Major League Baseball in Germany. Explain to us why a German fan should pursue baseball. What makes sport so special?

Billy Beane: Well, if you’re German, you should take a look at Max Kepler. He is one of the game’s dazzling young stars and a great story. Kepler is a great athlete who certainly had opportunities in football. It’s about seeing the best athletes in the world: If today’s baseball players had grown up in Germany, they would play in the national teams.

Mike Trout next to Toni Kroos?

Beane: Mike Trout would play in the German national football team. The pace in baseball is different from that of football. In football, the game is constantly on the move, but you have the same strategy – maybe baseball has even more strategy, and there’s athletics. I believe that our current baseball pros could certainly also play in the Bundesliga – not that they would be better than the current Bundesliga players, but they have athletes of the same quality. And you can see this athleticism in the MLB: You can see these abilities when a baseball comes into play at 100 miles per hour. It takes a tremendous amount of skill to hit a round baseball with a round bat, hard and in a direction where nobody is standing. And don’t forget that the fear factor also plays a role.

SPOX: Why is that?

Beane: A baseball a hundred miles away could hit you in the face. This is also an element of the game. But if you want to get to know the game, the rules are probably the biggest obstacle. It’s like cricket. But once you’ve understood them, you’ll appreciate the strategy and style of the game and understand why players are so great. And hopefully the fans will then have a favourite team – preferably, of course, the Oakland Athletics!

SPOX: You have already mentioned Max Kepler. We have Dirk Nowitzki in the NBA, who has made basketball even more popular in Germany. Do you think Kepler can do the same for baseball?

Beane: I hope so, yes. He may be playing for a direct competitor of ours, but I’m honest: I keep my fingers crossed for him, because this boy is a great story and it’s great that baseball got a German top athlete, not Bayern Munich. Just as I love it when an American goes into the Bundesliga, which doesn’t happen often. But I hope that there are many young German children who start baseball because of Max Kepler. Because sometimes it starts like this.

SPOX: Baseball is a marginal sport, especially in Europe.

Beane: We already have players from Latin America, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Japan in the league, but it would be great to have access to the best athletes from Germany, Italy, France and the rest of the world. It would make the game even better – and certainly also more interesting, because the world has become smaller than before and we are in competition. The Yankees want Bayern fans to become Yankee fans. You can probably be both, but we are all competing to make more and more people fans of our teams and our sport.

SPOX: How are they really fans? As a German Bayern fan you will rarely be able to visit a Yankee game…

Beane: You can visit every game every night. You know, about tv, internet et cetera. That’s the beauty of it. I’m a big arsenal fan, although I never played football as a child. But now I’m a fan and can watch any game, on the iPad or mobile phone. And that’s the good thing about it: MLB is now broadcasting games in Germany. Somewhere a little child is watching and starts playing later. Only a few are needed for this later signal effect. You mentioned Dirk Nowitzki, a great German player. Or think of Yao Ming in China: When he joined the NBA, his jersey was immediately the bestseller in the league. This is how your sport spreads to people who have never been interested in it. When I was at the 2006 World Cup, I was able to watch our matches from Munich – even though that was at 3:30 in the morning. That’s the great thing about the transmissions. I hope that this will continue to be the case in the rest of Europe.

Page 1: Kepler, the fascination of baseball and luck in the playoffs

Page 2: The Oakland A’s and doubts about the Moneyball principle