I understand it’s got a pretty rabid fanbase in the far east, but how popular is America’s pastime in Europe?
Also, are there any current major leaguers with European upbringing?
Just wonderin’. Seems odd that America’s sport is gaining in popularity everywhere else in the world, but you seemingly can’t pay the Average Joe enough money to watch European football or cricket.
AFAIK, baseball is even less popular in Europe than soccer is in America.
North and Central America, Cuba, Japan…and that’s about it.
Beisbol? Por qua?
Ummmmm… Dude, it’s getting hard to get the Average Joe to watch baseball these days, much less soccer or cricket. (Cite. Now I’m not one of the many “Chicken Littles” whose sole job is to write columns in sports magazines about the “decline of the game”, but it’s without doubt that baseball and basketball are showing declining viewership and attendence numbers.
Someone once came up with a theory that the maximum number of sports most cultures could sustain is 4. In the US, we have football, baseball, basketball and hockey. Other countries have other sports - England has soccer, rugby and cricket. So while many American sports might be gaining popularity worldwide, it’s still mostly as a “curiousity”, as much as soccer is a curiousity to Americans. Kind of like “NFL Europe”, which leads me to believe that football or basketball are more popular in Europe than baseball. Does anyone know if there are ANY professional baseball leagues in Europe? Somehow I don’t think there are, especially on the same level of NFL Europe.
It has a foothold in Australia as well, and they have produced major leagers (pitcher Graham Lloyd comes to mind)
This is going to come as a shock to you (as one of perhaps only a few hundred or so born-and-bred American cricketers, it even shocked me), there is a brand-new professional cricket league in the United States that even claims to have fans! (OK, 150 for Opening Day, but still…the mind boggles.) And, inasmuch as both Fox Sports World and ESPN show matches from the European Cup or domestic soccer leagues in Europe, somebody must be watching.
As for the popularity of MLB in Europe–when I lived in the UK, I was lucky to see the scores in the daily papers. There might be the odd article or two, around playoff time. On the Continent, close to nothing.
I can’t remember ever seeing a field and I could not name any team or even a city that has a team. I can’t even remember a domestic team being mentioned in the media. I think there are people playing it. Somewhere.
Even American football established itself as a fringe sport, there is even a handful of professional teams, but Baseball is almost non-existing.
Apparently there is a solid baseball following in Italy: Here is a review of a book by a Canadian journalist who spent a summer with an Italian minor league team. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my list.
Thanks for the article, Rex. Definitely interesting.
I think trumpeting the demise of baseball based on Atlanta’s woes is premature at best. Atlanta has traditionally had one of the worst fan-bases of any major market – the majority of “fans” in that city seemingly won’t support their team if they aren’t consistently winning.
Still, a 16% drop in attendance for the Yankees is very telling. Again, interesting article.
On the topic of basketball…well, it’s hard to sell a sport without interesting characters and heroes. There hasn’t been a Michael Jordan since he left, and the people most likely to sell the sport are either too thuggish (Iverson, Kidd), too self-centered (Shaq, Kobe), or too soft-spoken (Yao Ming, Duncan, T-Mac) to lead the way. The closest player with the right qualities is Kevin Garnett, and playing in a market like Minnesota hurts his credibility as a face for the league.
I’m not sure what can be done to save basketball, but it probably won’t be one of these guys that does it.
Never seen a field, never watched a game, never met someone who played baseball, has attended a baseball game, told me anything about baseball, never heard the name of a baseball team, or the results of a game.
IOW, virtually unknown in France, if it exists at all.
Swede weighting in:
For all intents and purposes, non-existent in the Scandinavian countries. We have, here in Sweden, a game that nearly all children play that is called “Brännboll” (“Burnball”). It differs in that there are no pitchers (the batter throws the ball up himself) and no guys standing at the bases.
However, grown-ups rarely play it. Kind of like soccer in the States…
American football, however, has become more popular, but nothing like soccer or hockey of course. I think people like the uniforms.
It’s invisible as far as the Irish media is concerned, we do get some coverage of NFL and NBA (or used too, rights may have become too expensive in recent years), but nothing from NHL or MLB that I’ve seen. Come to think of it I have a full Sky Sports subscription and I’ve never seen it even there.
I do own a baseball cap though, does that count? It’s a nice Seattle Mariners one, but given it appears to be made out of wool, far too hot for the summer, when I’d need it to keep the sun out of my eyes.
Baseball does get shown on TV, on Channel 5 (a mainstream free channel) - at about 3am. So I suspect the target audience is jetlagged homesick American businessmen 
It’s relatively non-existant in the UK. I’ve never seen anyone playing it here or read anything in the sports sections of the newspapers. However because I had a vague memory of it being played in Wales I tried looking it up and came up with this cite which gives a brief history of Baseball in the UK.
There is too much competition from our other sports, football- nearly all the year round now and cricket (summer, when we get one) and rugby (two different types).
There is a little Basketball and Ice Hockey played but they are fairly minor sports compared to the ones I’ve mentioned.
US baseball used to be shown on one of our Terrestrial Channels (either Channel 4 or 5) during the night presumably as a filler.
On preview I see **GM ** has beaten me to it with his post. Never mind, I am a very slow typist.
[QUOTE=Rex Fenestrarum]
Ummmmm… Dude, it’s getting hard to get the Average Joe to watch baseball these days, much less soccer or cricket. (Cite. Now I’m not one of the many “Chicken Littles” whose sole job is to write columns in sports magazines about the “decline of the game”, but it’s without doubt that baseball and basketball are showing declining viewership and attendence numbers.
[QUOTE]
That citation is from last year, and is not indicative of what is happening now. Attendance is way up cite and so is basketball.
Baseballissimo: My Summer in the Italian Minor Leagues by Dave Bidini
He also wrote a book called Tropic of Hockey about playing ice hockey in such places as Transylvania, Mongolia and Saudi Arabia.