PC and WI: International Baseball League

So the FIFA World Cup is approaching, and I've been wondering -- how much is soccer's popularity worldwide due simply to the fact that they have an international organization, active since 1904, keeping the sport active globally?

What would it take for a similar organization to arise, promoting regular international competitions in baseball? Could it make baseball more popular than OTL, even as popular as, or supplanting, soccer? And what other effects would butterfly from this?
 
This would be difficult. International competitions in soccer are able to avoid conflicting with the season of most of the powerful leagues. The World Cup and Euro tournaments are held in summer when many clubs aren't playing. Baseball has a more weather-specific situation. When the baseball season isn't going on, there isn't the proper weather for the game in much of America. So to have such an event you need to find a time when the best players are available. The nations which have weather good for it the rest of the year either have winter leagues, making venues unavailable, or don't have the infrastructure (hotels, practice venues, security, etc.) to host tournaments. I think to have something along these lines, you'll need to find a way to make it accepted and traditional to have MLB shut down the season for a couple weeks ala the NHL during the Winter Olympics.
 
So the FIFA World Cup is approaching, and I've been wondering -- how much is soccer's popularity worldwide due simply to the fact that they have an international organization, active since 1904, keeping the sport active globally?

What would it take for a similar organization to arise, promoting regular international competitions in baseball? Could it make baseball more popular than OTL, even as popular as, or supplanting, soccer? And what other effects would butterfly from this?

I'd rather say it works the other way round a bit as well.

There is such an international organization due to the "global" popularity of soccer, which for a long time was largely restricted to Europe and Latin America (where a lot of impulses for the development of professional soccer and for the establishment of the World Cup came from).

FIFA was quite a frail organisation for the first decades and came close to collapsing due to WW1 and its aftermath (the British associations withdrawing from it). But soccer's popularity never waned in these times, for some weird reasons it has more appeal than baseball...or cricket.

  • The rules are very simple. And you can play it with VERY little rules.
  • You can have a match with two guys....or with 40.
  • You can play it with only something which might be a ball
  • The players are comparetively un-bound to rules, if you want to. As kids, we played often enough with everybody running everywhere and refrained from designating someone as a goalie.
There is one sport which is comparabely popular worldwide due to similar reasons: basketball.

If you want something as special as Baseball (or American Football) to become more widespread, I am afraid you have to do it as the British did with Cricket. Conquer the world and plant your sports-traditions there.
 
So, not much plausibility then I take it? Oh well :rolleyes:

I guess while we're on the subject of sports, I might as well ask -- why do you think soccer and the FIFA tournament are so much more popular than basketball and the FIBA tournament?

Does anybody get excited about these playoffs? If so, what would it take to make the latter as popular or more popular than the former? If not, what would make people care in the first place?
 
From a comment by Atreus in another thread*

That's kind of hard. Basketball especially has a late start; by the time that the game is invented, the FA cup has been contested for much of a century. Gridiron develops from similar roots to association football, so i guess that is possible, but I don't see how it can spread. Baseball seems the best bet, since it is the oldest of the three and, during the mid-late 1900s, the most international. Technically originated in Britain, had some popularity at various points, spread decently in a few places (Caribbean and a few Latin American countries, Japan, Netherlands, Australia), so it at least has some history of international diffusion to build off of, and has some sort of roots in a few places.

*I've really got to figure which of these two are more plausible and stick with it
 
A FIBA-type competition could fly in the future, as basketball is exploding in popularity around the world.

A baseball competition isn't out of the question. If someone has the money, time and is willing to invest in the sport in other countries- baseball is pretty inexpensive. All you need is a glove, a bat and a field. It's not going to fly like soccer would but it's got as much going on cost-wise as basketball does.

If you found some philanthropist who was willing to build fields abroad, perhaps in the post-WWII era you might get increased popularity in Marshall Plan Europe. Or you could have baseball spread via. trade links (as it was to Japan and Korea). South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc.) and the Caribbean are ripe areas for baseball to really take a foothold as these areas also have cricket as a highly popular sport.
 
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