⚾Teams

Baseball franchises age differently from clubs in other sports. There is no promotion or relegation; a franchise can be sold or moved, but it does not vanish. A list of great clubs is therefore closer to a ledger accumulated over a century and a half — the Yankees' 27 World Series titles, the Yomiuri Giants' 22 Japan Series crowns, a Korean club that went 12-for-12 in the Korean Series after changing its name from Haitai to KIA. Those numbers are sedimentary layers, not the achievement of a single generation.

The twelve clubs below are eight MLB teams, two from Japan's NPB and two from Korea's KBO. Four metrics apply to every club: titles in that league's top championship (World Series, Japan Series or Korean Series), appearances in that final, home-stadium capacity, and 2024 home attendance. The three championships do not weigh the same, but the question of how often a club reaches the peak of its own league travels across borders.