MLB helping Team China hit for the cycle

Baseball's return to the Olympics is spurring the game's resurgence in China, along with an overseas program to prepare the national team for the 2020 Tokyo Games.

Since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the quadrennial Chinese National Games has been the only high-profile stage for baseball to embrace exposure and rally support from the country's Olympics-obsessed sports system.

Batting against a lack of funding and competition, baseball has seen its talent pool shrink with only six provincial teams competing in the finals of the National Games in Tianjin, and the sparse crowds and media apathy only underline the game's relative obscurity.