Anybody watching the Boston Red Sox play the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants last Sunday at the Tokyo Dome baseball stadium could not have escaped noticing the curious effect globalisation has had on this venerable game.

It is not just that the US team’s star pitchers, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima, are two of Japanese baseball’s favourite sons and that the Giants’ starting pitcher that night, Seth Greisinger, is American.