Cleats here include spikes, studs and “bars” (which here in America are what we really mean when we think of cleats, since they are worn by baseball players, and used to be worn by American football players). Picture here of typical baseball shoe.
But when he said he had to go buy “cleats,” he meant he was off to buy shoes that have studs, and since he is playing soccer, he will need to get soccer cleats, which lack a “toe cleat”, that is, a stud at the end of the shoe. American football cleats have such a stud, usually.
If there is a basketball goal nearby, all you need is the ball. Maybe it’s because I’m in Indiana, but I don’t know a single adult who plays pick-up games of soccer. Basketball, yes. Then again, I just counted 15 basketball goals on my street alone. Almost every other driveway has one.
Basketball is also increasingly popular in China, and eastern Europe. It’s a fast-paced game that is easy to understand visually for fans.
Where I grew up, soccer was incredibly popular from about age 7 to 14 for boys and a couple extra years at the end for girls. Outside of that it’s like it didn’t even exist. Once you got to be 12 or 13 you started getting made fun of for playing soccer. I’m not saying that’s right, just that it’s how it was.
But baseball, football, and basketball (especially basketball in my neck of the woods) were popular from birth to death.
No argument from me, but I’d say participation in young soccer in my neck of the woods (which is a hotbed of national soccer support for all ages, including adults) was about on par with partictipation in young baseball or other summer sports activities.
And while we’re arguing about cleats and spikes and bars…
In America, “cleats” are the shoes with plastic nubs on the bottom while “spikes” are the ones with the metal points on the bottom. I played a lot of Little League growing up and you wore cleats (spikes were not allowed), but once you got to high school baseball, you were expected to buy spikes because cleats were for little kids.
Come to think of it, baseball seemed to be pretty well forgotten after little league, too. I’m honestly not sure if my high school had a baseball team. In fact I’m almost sure we didn’t.
Where I grew up “cleats” were the really dangerous metal ones that were mostly confined to baseball fields. Occasionally they’d refer to the screw-in plastic spikes that football players wore, but not always. “Spikes” were the molded rubber nubs that were integrated into the sole of the shoe.
When you confine the definition to “people playing organized sports” I think soccer wins in a landslide. A lot of people play basketball in their driveway or pickup games at the Y, but I exclude that from the argument. While most people stop playing soccer once they get into high school and adulthood the proportion of their childhood spent playing soccer outpaces those 4 years. If you play soccer (usually in the spring, summer and fall leagues) from age 6 to 12 you are spending tons of cumulative hours on the soccer field in an organized setting. Soccer teams are bigger than baseball teams and are generally played by both genders. In my town there were no less than 12 teams at every age level organized into 3 different seasons. I spent probably 15 hours every week between March and November from the age of 6 to 12 playing soccer. I played little league from age 7 to 12 as well, but the leagues were smaller the season shorter and the cumulative time playing was much less. My sport of choice was football but I only got a brief 4 years of that to enjoy due to the rarity of organized play. My town only had 2 Pop Warner teams at each age level that traveled to other towns, there were probably 1/10th the number of participants than soccer, and this is a pretty football crazed part of the country.
In the South the proportions probably change some, but in the bulk of the suburbanized East, Midwest and West helicopter parents had their kids playing soccer above all else. They aren’t called Soccer moms for nothing.
While “spikes” can also refer to what older baseball players wear (reference the term being “spiked”), “cleats” as a term in America is usually generically used to cover all shoes with any sort of traction protrusions. Thus, I know plenty of baseballers who wear “cleats.” And, I think if you took a poll country-wide, you would find more who call the adult baseball shoe “cleats” than “sipkes”, a term usually reserved for what golfers used to wear, and what sprinters still do wear.
Says who? Worldwide, rugby is probably down in the dregs with curling and bobsledding. Cricket is up there, no doubt, but worldwide I’d guess it would pale next to baseball or basketball.
Baseball and basketball are definitely doing well world wide, especially basketball. The fact it is an indoor sport gives it an advantage over some other sporting choices…
“Well, we don’t hear about it in America, so it must be a niche sport.”
Rugby is the first or second team sport throughout most of the southern hemisphere, and is growing in popularity in Europe, too, though not as quickly as basketball.
