As the San Diego Padres and their portly mascot, The Swinging Friar, marched up the Great Wall yesterday afternoon under a metallic blue sky, there was a sense of history in the making.
No one seemed unnerved by Major League Baseball's historic Chinese debut on Saturday some 40 km away in west Beijing, where the Padres will face National League rivals the Los Angeles Dodgers for a two-game exhibition series, but it was clear that everyone had their own mountain to climb.
Infielder Adrian Gonzalez's wife Betsy battled her high heels while third baseman Kevin Kouzmanoff, who brings a .275 batting average to Saturday's game, struggled to cope with Mandarin 101.
"How do you say, 'How are you' again?" he asked a China Daily reporter while sporting a wicker Chinese dou li hat. When a female hawker waived picture frames in his face and began speaking Chinese he bellowed "Go Padres" and galloped down the Wall.
But Padres' Chief Executive Sandy Alderson had weightier issues on his mind: How to get China to tune back into baseball, a sport that was banned during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) and has been voted off the Olympic roster as of London 2012.
"This is fertile ground for development of the sport," he said. "All it takes is one (baseball) academy here, develop two or three players, and it will take off."
"It's a sport for everyone, for all shapes and sizes," chimed in Padres manager Bud Black. "Hopefully we'll bring it back."
The MLB has already helped spread baseball to Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Caribbean and Canada, but China could prove a tougher nut to crack.
Although China has four players in the minor leagues, two each with the Seattle Mariners and the New York Yankees, and a domestic league that began in 2002, the sport has yet to find an audience here.
But with the inauguration of the World Baseball Classic in 2006 - won by Japan - baseball is hell bent on going global.
"You have to start somewhere," said Trevor Hoffman, one of the game's great closers, who holds the major-league record for saves with 524. "I don't think we anticipated this kind of buzz ... One day we'll look back on this and say it was the start of many great years of baseball history in China."