Matsui homered, doubled and singled in Game 6, highlighting a Series in which he hit .615 with three home runs and eight RBIs. Hideki has most curious habit at the plate. He never takes a practice swing once he steps into the batter’s box. He saves all those meaty cuts for when they count. Japanese workers crammed into downtown electronics stores to watch the final few innings on giant TVs. The game ended just before 2 p.m. local time Thursday, giving workers an excuse to take an extended lunch break.

“All the news recently has been about Ichiro Suzuki,” said office worker Hiroyuki Takeuchi, who took the morning off to watch the game. “But Matsui’s presence is huge. He overcame injuries and came through with the performance of a lifetime. As a Japanese, I’m very proud today.”

Matsui was a three-time MVP for the Yomiuri Giants in the regular season in 1996, 2000 and 2002, his last year in Japan. He also won the MVP award in the Japan Series, Japan’s version of the World Series.

Earning the nickname “Godzilla,” Matsui hit 50 home runs in 2002. The No. 55 on his uniform is a tribute to Sadaharu Oh’s single-season home run record. “As the first Japanese to win an MVP in the World Series, this is a great accomplishment for Matsui and will have a huge impact,” said former San Francisco Giants pitcher Masanori Murakami, the first Japanese player to play in the major leagues, who watched at his Tokyo home.

Matsui always has been popular in Japan, but his decision not to play in the World Baseball Classic drew criticism from some fans. Matsui always said he was passing over the WBC to prepare for the season with the Yankees.

The 35-year-old designated hitter is in the final year of a $52 million, four-year contract. An every baseball fan across Japan wants to know this: What will the Yankees do with Matsui?

“He’s a very hard worker and is serious about his career,” Murakami said. “I hope he stays with the Yankees. I know he wants to stay, and the Japanese fans want him to stay.”

Japanese sports dailies have speculated about his future, some even saying he might return to Japan to play for the Hanshin Tigers, the fierce Central League rivals of the Giants.

“I hope he stays in New York,” Takeuchi said. “He looks good in pinstripes.”

For those of you who don’t know, baseball, along with softball, had already been voted out of the 2012 Summer Games in London. However, the two slots available by the International Olympic Committee’s elimination were not filled by new sports, so baseball could have re-emerged in the 2016 Summer Games, provided no new sports were adopted and that it received enough votes to be included.

Well, that did not happen, as golf, which has not been an Olympic sport in over 100 years, and rugby, last in the Olympics back in 1924, were recommended for inclusion in the 2016 Summer Games.

“All seven sports made a strong case for inclusion, and the executive board carefully evaluated them in a transparent and fair process,” said IOC Jacques Rogge. “In the end, the decision came down to which two would add the most value. Golf and rugby will be a great addition to the Games.”

I would like to point out that Rogge played on the Belgian national rugby team. Even though he did not have a vote in the proceedings, I am sure he had a unique interest in the outcome. “Golf and rugby scored high on all the criteria,” Rogge added. “They have global appeal, a geographically diverse lineup of top iconic athletes and an ethic that stresses fair play.”

OK. Obviously golf has Tiger Woods, so that makes sense on some level, but rugby? Not to be the ugly American, but if anyone thinks rugby is more relevant or has a more diverse global field than baseball, then you are just clueless.

But, then again these are the same people who have voted synchronized swimming, archery, snowboarding and something called the biathalon into the games. If those people think events like that are relevant, maybe baseball is better off not being included.

People in the baseball world should not fret over this. The Olympics are a joke and there is no better way to promote your game than the World Baseball Classic, which will continue to get better.

The WBC may be a little slow catching on over here in England, but its popularity worldwide is unquestioned. And it is not going away. If anything, this latest IOC decision could make it bigger. This will be the only stage to determine world baseball supremacy, not the Olympics.

USA Baseball Executive Director/CEO Paul Seiler noted as much hearing the outcome of the IOC’s vote. “As disappointing as this decision by the IOC is, it is interesting to note the significant global growth our sport has experienced since we first heard of this possible outcome,” Seiler said in a statement.

“International participation at all levels of baseball continues to grow,” said Seiler, “and the success of the World Baseball Classic is undeniable proof that ours is a sport with worldwide appeal. We are looking forward to contributing to, and being a part of that growth for years to come.”

In other words, baseball will continue to grow, with or without the sinking ship that is the Olympics.

The Olympics, at least since the 1950s, has been the laboratory for chemical jock helpers. Steroids have been a factor in baseball at least since the 1980s. Do we really want pitchers and shot-putters, long-ball hitters and long-jumpers sharing their drug tips?

But there’s more going on than the potential of a juicers’ jamboree; that genie is already out of the bottle and way ahead of the enforcers. If you have any doubt, check out those 300-plus pound NFL linemen who move like dancers and hit the rhinos. The essential difference in the character of baseball and the Olympics makes them a bad fit.

Not the right format Baseball is regional, intricate, intelligent, intermittently exciting. It appeals to fans who love it variously for its statistics, drama, personalities. The Olympics, as billions see it on TV, is an anthology of highlights. Jamming baseball into the Olympics is like reducing an epic film into a music video.

Baseball became an official sport in 1992 after many appearances as an exhibition or demonstration sport. It lasted only five Olympics. Cuba won three times, the United States once. Speculation about why baseball was voted out included anti-Americanism, but the most likely reason was the disappointing quality of U.S. players – Major League Baseball refused to suspend its season or make players available. But this time, promises the International Baseball Federation, the major leagues will not televise games in conflict with Olympic baseball or schedule games on the day of medal play. It would do its best to make the best players available. Should Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriquez, Manny Ramirez, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa apply? Could they pass the Olympic drug tests?

This is no time for baseball to take its show on the road. It has to deal with a new players’ union head, more steroids allegations and systemic problems: Owners have milked their cities for profit-making stadiums in which families are often priced out; nut-job fans show up to act out their therapeutic troubles or stay home to create fantasy leagues of their own; and so-called journalists deprived of easy access to their subjects, make ball players objects of adoration or abborrence, sometimes in the same season.

It is no wonder – though no excuse – that so many players feel the need to tune up with chemicals just to stay in the game. Management looks away until they get caught.

With all that on its plate, baseball should steer clear of the Olympics, a great festival of commercialism, nationalism, and sleazy politics. When the Olympics lost its 19th century ideology of amateurism, as hypocritical and exclusive as that often was, it also lost its raison detre and singular appeal. It became just another spectacular (though often the best, in my mind) competing for viewers and sponsors with everything else on TV. It got frantic in recent years in its search for programming hits, flirting with competitive ballroom dancing, surfing and even bridge.

The appeal of the Games The soul of the Olympics, for me, in 40 years of on-and-off coverage, were the quirky, passionate low-income sports such as kayaking, curling and archery, and the basic ancient contests of wrestling, running and throwing things such as javelins and weights. I also had a weakness for the romantic, semi-military sports such as biathlon (shooting and skiing) and modern pentathlon (shooting, fencing, swimming, running and horseback riding). Where else could you see synchronized swimming or the luge?

As for the likes of baseball, golf, karate, roller sports, rugby, softball and squash – the seven sports in contention for those two slots in 2016 – there are other national and world competitions, I can’t even imagine golf in the Olympics; it already dominates summer TV. Baseball offers a long season ending in something called the World Series. We hardly need to see those games as an international competition, especially when so many of the best Japanese, Korean and Latin American players are already in the major leagues. And who wants the heat of the pennant races interrupted?

“With any sport, the best place to start is with the kids,” MLB president Robert Dupuy said at the center’s inauguration on September 23. “Then they grow up, and become fans and encourage their kids to play.”

Basketball has boomed in China, helped by Shanghai-born star Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets. State television began showing NBA games in the late 1980s, and in 2004 the Rockets and Sacramento Kings played the league’s first games in China, a pair of preseason exhibitions. Teams and sponsors have also found a lucrative market here for merchandise.

Major League Baseball would like a similar transformation. After all, baseball has an even longer history in China: the game was first introduced in Shanghai in the 1860s. The sport quietly endured throughout falling dynasties, revolutions and other political upheavals. China has a seven-team professional baseball league and the national association says about 1,000 schools have teams, including 140 at the tertiary level. China has fielded teams at both the Olympics and the World Baseball Classic.

Still, few Chinese play or know much about the sport and games are rarely shown on television. Beijing already has demolished its own Wukesong Olympic baseball stadium, and the local professional league struggles to draw spectators. Worse still, baseball has been cut from the Olympic program, giving the country’s medal-focused sports officials little incentive to back it.

In China, Major League Baseball has been running summer training camps for kids and supporting university baseball programs, among other charitable and cooperative efforts.

For its development center, it chose Dongbeitang High School, a newly built facility complete with a baseball diamond, thanks to the school’s baseball-fan principal. There, the boys selected for the program attend regular classes, baseball training and English lessons. “What did we learn last night?” asks Jeff Brueggemann, a Decatur, Illinois native who once played AAA ball and has moved to Wuxi to teach at the MLB center.

“Don’t be late!” yell the boys, falling over each other in laughter. “What else?” the coach coaxes. “We love baseball!” they shout. Brueggemann and fellow teachers Sam Lee and Rick Dell, former coach at The College of New Jersey, run the 12- to 13-year-old boys through a quick but strenuous practice. Apart from the coaches’ shouts of instructions and encouragement, the only sound is the familiar slap of a ball hitting a mitt.

“The kids are like kids anywhere, says Dell. Maybe not exactly. Demonstrating the kind of discipline rarely seen in an American group of teens, the boys’ classmates, in identical blue and white track suits, sat watching, stock-still and silent, for at least two hours. Most of the boys initially recruited for the full scholarship program, funded by MLB, come from nearby Wuxi, a city not far to the west of Shanghai. But some, like Luan – a.k.a. Baby Ruth – are from elsewhere. Luan’s family lives in Lanzhou, a city in remote northwestern China. Attending the school offers a way out of poverty for some of the students. For all, it’s a hard-to-come-by opportunity to get a strong education, daily coaching and play dozens of games a year.

It’s an investment that MLB hopes will pay off in the long run with an expansion of the game from international strongholds in nearby Japan, South Korea and Taiwan and in Latin America. And with Chinese talent eventually finding its way to the United States – already nearly one-third of all registered Major League players are foreign born, though none are from mainland China.

“We’re very excited to think that some of the youths here might grow up to play professional baseball after hitting their first home runs here,” Dupuy said.