Bake-off
Concerto competition
Hot Dog Eating
Stair Climbing
Apartment Cleaning (might as well be for me!)
No, no, no…
No, no, no…
Heh. When I was in high school our drama club presented some Silverstein poems to kids. Different people recited different poems while sort of acting them out? The girl who recited hug o’ war was…eminently huggable.
Ah good memories.
Apple bobbing!
Spelling bee.
I thought baseball had a sizable following in mainland China?
Other baseball-playing countries would include Australia, the Phillipines and Panama.
From even a cursory google, it’s clear that there’s no ‘sizeable following’, although there’s been a sizeable effort by sporting authorities to whip up enthusiasm, not least because the national team will be playing in the 2008 Olympics, as host nation.
Wasn’t the idea that Australia is a ‘baseball-playing country’ knocked into touch some time ago?
Dunno … they silvered in the Athens games. And I gave some credence to RickJay’s comment above, even if he didn’t really cite anything. It doesn’t have to be Australia’s national sport or anything … there just needs to be some level of organized play that fosters talent development. Fledgling organization is still organization.
Besides, I am quite certain there are some baseball nations we’ve all been forgetting (not that they’re all that populous, and not that population matters). Nicaragua is another one for sure. I believe most all of Central America, in fact, can be thrown in. Another one: Curacao sends teams to the Little League World Series, so there’s organization there.
I don’t understand the argument about being left with a useless baseball venue afterwards. The solution is not to build a dedicated baseball venue – build a general stadium that can be used for football or cricket or rugby or whatever later on. Use temporary or movable seating to provide baseball sightlines for spectators. After the Games, take down the fences, scoop up the mound, grow grass back in the infield dirt, and convert the field to another sport. No muss, no fuss.
I don’t either, as I already said, because it’s a spurious argument with successful bids including the use of temporary stadiums for baseball, beach volleyball, etc.
Oh, I forgot:
By this logic, the USA is a cricket-playing nation.
Well, sure … and a football (soccer) playing nation, as well. Almost everything is played by someone in the U.S. The U.S. sends teams for badminton, handball, and curling even though per capita participation is negligible.
If cricket were in the Olympics, why shouldn’t the U.S. field a team? I saw in the Cricket vs. Baseball thread that the U.S. team even qualified for the Cricket World Cup (?). I’m sure that’s not the highest level of competition or anything, but still.
Let’s face it – there are plenty enough nations involved that can field credible teams in both sports. If the MLB and Japanese professional stars would’ve played in recent Olympiads, baseball would almost certainly continue on as an Olympic sport.
I’m getting confused about which thread I’m in…if you want to join in the baseball/cricket thread, please do and I’ll tackle those comments, because it was created to avoid this thread getting bogged down when it should really be highlighting the merits rugby sevens…