DBWI: Major league baseball survives

JoeMulk

Banned
What if the Chicago black soxs scandal had not bankrupted major league baseball to the point that it collapsed in the 1920s. Could baseball have survived in the twentieth century and what would it have been like?
 

fero

Banned
I guess MLB can survival everything...... (that is not a sport), they dont sweat or get tired, so they can play everyday and make tons of money for that.....wait in the bank, wait, swing your bat 3 times, wait again.....get paid for that... what a great business... nobody can lost money on that.

Be a sportman, play tennis.
 
I don't know. Baseball was a fun neighborhood game when I was a kid. No one could agree on the rules, though. Half of the time we spent arguing over whether a ball which didn't go through the diamond was a strike, a foul, or a fair (that is, as long as you had time to run before the catcher could go pick it up).

There was one kid in our neighborhood who used to insist that the ball had to bounce at least once before it left the diamond. Sometimes, we'd let him play that way, just to see him try to do it.

It's kind of hard to believe it was a major league sport once. I mean, I know there are organized leagues out there, but I've never seen a game myself.
 
funny reading this.. We have a fair amount of participation in Softball here in New Zealand, but hardly any baseball... I don't think it even took root over here.

The main summer sport however is cricket, along with some summer-league soccer (well, the major australia/nz soccer league moved to summer to avoid clashing with rugby and aussie rules)

What's the main summer sport in the USA these days?
 
What's the main summer sport in the USA these days?

On a "pick-up" level, it depends on where you are. In some places, mainly the Northeast and West Coast, basketball's pretty popular. Mostly though, football's the game. All you need is a round ball and four marks to make goals, and it's a very quick pick-up game.

On a professional level, America has embraced NASCAR and football. You get football during the weekdays, and NASCAR is the big Sunday sport, with everything from morning pre-race shows and tailgating to post-race analysis and Monday Morning Mechanics arguing around the water cooler about how they would have run the track better.

Football's not as popular and "American" as NASCAR, but there are some big rivalries right now, like Monterrey FC and the Boston Revolution, that generate a lot of water cooler talk. The "home and home" series they had over the two weekends bracketing the 4th of July this year were considered on par with the most legendary European matches and almost matched the Talladega 500 in TV ratings.
 
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On an amateur level, it depends on where you are. In some places, mainly the Northeast and West Coast, basketball's pretty popular. Mostly though, football's the game. All you need is a round ball and four marks to make goals, and it's a very quick pick-up game.

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(OOC: are you referring to the NBA, or just some regional minor league basketball? When in this TL did it move to being a summer season?)

Yeah good idea playing the the round ball football code in the summer - and basketball come to mention it - it must be very similar to the situation in New Zealand & Australia - too damn hard to compete against the oval-ball football code in winter.

Anyway, back to the topic.. As I said, we have a fairly good tradition of softball down here.. Sure it's a little different and completely amateur, but maybe we could have turned out a few good baseball recruits if there was a pro league in the USA..? Our Black Sox (NZ mens team) have won a few world champs.
 
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(OOC: are you referring to the NBA, or just some regional minor league basketball? When in this TL did it move to being a summer season?)

OOC - I meant outdoor, pick-up basketball by out-for-the-summer children and high school kids. With the demise of MLB, instead of heading to the sandlot to play baseball, I'm seeing basketball taking its' place, especially in the Northeast where it was created. Sorry for the confusion!
 
I guess not having a number-one summer sport in America was what allowed rugby league to really get a foothold in California and Oregon. Whether it'll ever quite break out of the west coast area is up for debate, but the World Club Championship playing in Chicago this March might have helped.

I think California are a shoe-in for US State of Origin this year.
 
OOC - I meant outdoor, pick-up basketball by out-for-the-summer children and high school kids. With the demise of MLB, instead of heading to the sandlot to play baseball, I'm seeing basketball taking its' place, especially in the Northeast where it was created. Sorry for the confusion!

OOC - so, no major Basketball league then?
 
OOC - so, no major Basketball league then?

OOC-I think there is a major professional basketball league, but they play during the winter. Why not have the summer be their offseason, with a few USFL-type off-season leagues that try and carve out a niche?)
 
On a "pick-up" level, it depends on where you are. In some places, mainly the Northeast and West Coast, basketball's pretty popular. Mostly though, football's the game. All you need is a round ball and four marks to make goals, and it's a very quick pick-up game.

Well, as I mentioned, baseball was still pretty popular in the Midwest when I was a kid. You can still get bats and gloves at the Walton-Mart. But, nowadays, from what I've seen, baseball's pretty much been replaced with kickball. Probably because it's just cheaper, since you can play it with a round football which you already have.

Although, a lot of the kids around here join Little Lacrosse leagues, there's a field at the park downtown here.

Round football's also popular, but the kids just seem to prefer to use the balls for kickball instead. I think it's the fact that there's no clock to deal with, and it has more of an individualist aspect to it (with one kicker at a time against the other team).

OOC: Outside of the cities, it's tougher to find open asphalt, and it's rather hard to play basketball in a sandlot -- the ball just doesn't bounce :).
 
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If baseball survived, it may probably spread to other countries.

Can you imagine Sadaharu Oh playing baseball instead of becoming Prime Minster of Japan? On second thought, it is probably ASB
 
The American Baseball Association was pretty popular in the Northeast for a couple years. It had about 10 teams
If I remember correctly they had the Buffalo Buffs, New York Tigers, Trenton Trains, Boston Kings, Portland Vipers, Pittsburgh Wizards, Scranton Giants, Rhode Island Rams, Ontario Canucks, and Rochester Bulls... I was a huge Tigers fan as a kid growing up in New York of course. The leauge then went bankrupt in 88' after about 10 years.
 
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