When he was 14, Xu Guiyuan had to make a grown-up decision — whether to leave his family in southeastern China and move more than 900 miles away to an academy run by Major League Baseball to learn a sport his country is all but indifferent to.
China shows about as much interest in baseball as the United States does in a niche sport like cricket, but for Xu, who was coveted because he was bigger and more athletic than his peers, the offer contained the faintest hope of a career in America's summer sports pasttime.