[Snapolit1]

That all makes sense. And I'm sure among many US collectors there is the belief that the Japanese leagues were far inferior in competition level to the American leagues, particularly decades ago, so people have a hard time weighing his achievements against players we've seen or read about extensively. But still, you could make the same argument about many Negro League players. Some amazing Negro League players, but the level of talent overall obviously not comparable.

Originally Posted by Seven

I think it's because of the lack of crossover the NPB had with the Majors until the 90's really. Soccer is an international game, much more so than baseball. What I mean by that is, with soccer you have players moving leagues, pretty often, and while the styles of play in each league do vary a little bit (For an example the Italian Serie A has always been a league more focused on Defensive tactics and ball possession as opposed to the English Premier League) The game transfers well. It's more or less agreed upon that the best teams in each of the respective highest divisions of soccer, are at a minimum, on par with one another.

Furthermore Pele is universally known. Soccer being as global as it is, plus the fact that legends like Pele, Cruyff, and Beckenbauer all had stints here in the United States, during the short lived North American Soccer League. I also think that Soccer, being as global as it is, naturally retains more popularity. The World Cup is absolutely massive, hell so is the Eurocup, it also becomes a way for people whose ancestors were from other parts of the world to come together and share a common interest. The section of New York I live in for example, is still filled with prominently the descendants of Italian American Immigrants (Myself included) who were going absolutely wild when Italy defeated England in the Eurocup.

Oh, on the other hand, very well known by diehard baseball historians or fans of the Nippon League, but other than that, there's very little crossover. The average baseball fan, that occasionally watches a game or that's not too deep into the history of our sport, doesn't know who Oh is, or if they do, its very surface level knowledge. They might know he's the Japanese Home Run King, that's about it, because it happened so long ago, and because Japanese Baseball wasn't really being covered over here. They'd defintely know who Ichiro is, because Ichiro transcended the NPB, he was able to come over to America and be just as good, if not better than he was in Japan.

I think I'm rambling at this point! I'll cut it off here, I hope that does a halfway decent job of explaining.