Proving yet again that the longest distance between two points involves the Marketing department, the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres have brought skeleton squads to China this week for two exhibition games to raise awareness of baseball. While no one in China recognizes a single player on either squad, there is an unexpected touchstone: padres over eight feet tall.

(Monks are cuddly!)

The Padres took their turn climbing the Great Wall of China and found it more difficult than expected without Mike Cameron to provide an example. Not everyone struggled, though; Adrian Gonzalez’s wife, Becky, made it most of the way in 3-inch high heels.

The steeper climb, of course, is to get anyone in China to notice the dog-and-pony show between the SoCal squads with so many other competing attempts to get the attention of the inflating Chinese marketplace, including a little thing called the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Sandy Alderson put it best: “This is really going to take time, money and personnel. You can’t develop the sport over night when we have three or four people in China compared to the NBA with several hundred.” Maybe MLB sent the Red Sox to the wrong country.