Something not mentioned in this thread yet is the earnings aspect.
Every kid in the US knows that if you grow up to play baseball (major leagues) or football (NFL) or basketball (NBA)professionally that you can make a lot of money…millions even.
Heck, it’s also been pretty obvious that you can get a full ride to a college if you excel at those sports.
Professional soccer players? How much do they make? Full rides to play soccer? I’ve recently been hearing of soccer scholarships.
How many underprivledged inner-city minority kids see soccer as a way out of the ghetto?
A good point. Note also the difficulty of inner city children finding places to play soccer, especially compared to the large number of basketball courts. Of course, the same is true of baseball, and, yes, you can play stickball, but you can also play soccer in a street. Still, US Soccer knows that it needs to make better efforts to allow city kids to play.
Well, yes, though other informal stick and ball games had their influence on the game in post-colonial America. ‘Trapball’ and ‘one-old-cat’ have been referenced in material I looked at. References to ‘base ball’ exist as early as the late 1700’s, including one reference to soldiers at Valley Forge playing such a game. ‘Townball’ appears to have been popular in New England, but it lacked the essential element of the bases. Apparently, ‘rounders’ appears to be more closely linked to ‘base ball.’
I am not sure what you are trying to say here. Cricket was called that from very early times; indeed, there is dispute as to where the name comes from. By the late 1700’s, cricket had reached a stage very similar to today’s game. According to the official Major League Baseball version of the history of baseball, cricket in the early years of America was quite popular. Indeed, the first international cricket match was between two clubs from North America: one from Toronto and one from New York (1840). But cricket was played with a ‘bat’ that was very dissimilar from that which was adopted for ‘base ball’ (indeed, at one time, the cricket bat was quite similar to a golf club!). Unlike cricket, baseball did not use wickets and bails.
As we have seen above, it was not developed ‘much later.’ While the rules of baseball adopted by the New York Knickerbocker club weren’t adopted formally until 1845 (from these rules came what we know as baseball, including fixed bases 90’ apart, three-strikes-you’re-out, etc.), ‘base ball’ was already being played in various forms along with cricket. By the mid-1850’s, baseball fields existed all over the place in cities of the North.
Soccer, of course, wasn’t even a formalized sport with rules similar to present day soccer until the mid-1800’s. The spread of soccer from England didn’t occur until the late 1800’s, by which time both the upper class AND the lower class had become fans of the game. So baseball had almost 100 years of head start on soccer.
For the ‘official’ history of baseball, found at MLB’s official site, go to: http://www.totalbaseball.com/
and navigate to the history introduction.
As to other countries where soccer is not the most prominent sport, I would point to Canada , Dominican Republic, Cuba, Japan, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand and Venezuela spring to mind. I don’t think soccer is big in any of the Pacific island nations either.
Baseball is only preeminent in Cuba, Japan, Venezuela and Dominican Republic. I would say that ice hockey leads in Canada, rugby in Australia and New Zealand.
I’m not sure about the others, but cricket, field hockey, and badminton are popular in many of those other countries.
