Why did Baseball spread worldwide, and not Gridiron Football?

I haven't the time to read all the posts in this topic so if I repeat something that has already been said then I apologise.

Gridion and baseball are both played here in Australia. Gridion is almost non-existant but I have heard that there is a league played somewhere here in Sydney. I think it's mainly made up of US ex-pats and their kids. I think that it never really took off here is because (to be perfectly honest) most of us find it incredibly boring, weak (no offence to any gridion players out there) and we can't always understand your thoughts behind the rules of the game.

We find it boring because, somehow, American football manages to spread an hour-long game into almost three hours. But more importantly, we find it weak because every player wears a massive suit of armour, the players only have to play for 15 minutes before they get a break, every phase of the game has an entirely dedicated team to it (i.e. When attacking there is one set of blokes on and when defending there is an entirely different set of blokes on) and after every single play, even if it only last a few seconds, the players have a huddle that seems to take an eternity to be done with. And probably not entirely accurate but we pressume that a lot of the players are jacked up on riods.

We don't always get the rules because your team gets 4 goes to make it a mere 10 yards, then the count starts all over again, and the passing forward rule is very alien to a nation were both Union and League are massive.

Overall, I don't think there is much respect for gridion down here.

Besides, we've had Rugby Union and Australian Rules around since the 1850's and then Rugby League came about in the early 1900's. It's unlikely that gridion will ever get a real run down here.

But I do have to admit that when I was in high school, some mates and myself would play gridion every now and then. However, we played full-contact, 3-on-3 or 4-on-4, with no armour, on a "field" that was 3 metres wide and 30 metres long, with a brick building on one side and a 2 metre drop on the otherside. Oh, and we didn't play on grass, our "field" was made up mainly of rocks and dirt. There was also concrete down one end and metel grates down the other. Needless to say, there were many injuries.

Now if American football were played similar to that, then it might get a go down here.

Baseball, although also relatively small, is much bigger than gridion - and getting bigger. I myself play baseball and have since I was 5 years old. I love it. There are many leagues in NSW as I'm sure there are all around the country. Our national team isn't too bad either (I think we got bronze in the last Olympics?). There are quite a few Aussies playing over in the states at various levels. Unfortunately, baseball down here doesn't stand a chance when pitted against cricket in terms of popularity.
 
For someone who grew up in Canada, we've always had football here. Albeit a version with some alterations and our own pro league, but football's always been fairly popular here. Yes, its due mainly to our proximity to the US, which made it possible for us to just turn to the American channel on Sunday to watch the game. (For me it was always the Buffalo Bills, as I grew up in London. I cannot stand the Bills any longer, but remain a fan of the game.) Its also been played here since the formitive years, a game between McGill and Harvard helped the game earn some momentum in Canada around the early 1870's.

Baseball's been here just as long, but its not seen in as positive a light, at least where I grew up. A lot of people here see it as overly long, boring, and slow. Also, the Montreal Expos debacle, the Toronto Blue Jays doing absolutely nothing since the World Series wins in the early 90's, and the whole steroids issue hasn't helped much. Another issue is that when baseball players would get injured, everyone would automatically go "well, in hockey they'd play right through that!" For some reason the people in Southern Ontario have little sympathy for baseball period. Which is odd, since I always seemed to love the sport, even if I was an Expos fan...

But this is all moot as neither sport will supplant hockey as our #1. Ever. ;)
 
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I imagine US forces in Japan played baseball to wind down and it caught on with spectators, Japanese support personnel etc

Its much harder to have a bash at American Football for fun - I guess thats why the 'fun' version just seems to consist of chucking the ball from one person to another in a park...well, thats what American sitcoms etc seem to have father and son do for fun.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Actually, the Japanese developed their interst in baseball well before WW2. The interest began with Cmdr Perry's 1854 visit. It was already Japan's most popular team sport well before WW2 and the US occupation. Probably not a small reason the US and Japanese became "friends" so soon after the war.

The points about American football are right on. The relationship between the "fun" versions of US football such as flag or two-hand-touch (which actually play more like rugby with forward passes) and "real" football as performed by college and professional teams is so wide as to make them different games.
 
Actually, the Japanese developed their interst in baseball well before WW2. The interest began with Cmdr Perry's 1854 visit. It was already Japan's most popular team sport well before WW2 and the US occupation. Probably not a small reason the US and Japanese became "friends" so soon after the war.

IIRC, the Japanese word for baseball, 'yakyuu'(base, or field ball) was first used in the 1880's(and it shows, since it's a translation of the original word using Japanese words, instead of an adaptation of the English word like most loaned words since 1945).
 
A lot of people have said football is so expensive and it is too complicated. To address the first point, As a Canadian I can say that it is no more expensive than hockey in terms of equipment and that is a game which has caught on in many different parts of the world. Hockey is also a younger sport than both baseball and football. I think one of the reasons that it is more popular in other parts of the world is that it had many early ambassadors which brought the game to other parts of the word, something football has lacked.

Secondly, I would not say football is more complicated than other regional sports. I used to have an Indian and an Austrian roommate and the both tried to explain games like cricket and rugby to me in turn and I found them both very hard to follow at first. (I still don’t understand or see the attraction of cricket). People need an open mind to learn a game and if they want think it is stupid from the get go because it is American it can be a lost cause.

I personally love football, (Go Steelers Go) and the reason I think that it is so popular in American is that it speaks to American interests. America has rationally been a nation which likes the tough people. For the person who said it’s boring because people only play for a 15 min quarter has obviously never played the game. In each play there is no coasting, every move counts and you must play as hard as you can every second the clock it on. I have had played, football, hockey, soccer and basketball at one time and I can say Football is the most demining of all sports. Even rugby players on the team said it is at least as hardcore a game.

I could be right or wrong I don’t know, just my 2 cents
 
A lot of people have said football is so expensive and it is too complicated. To address the first point, As a Canadian I can say that it is no more expensive than hockey in terms of equipment and that is a game which has caught on in many different parts of the world.

Actually no. I'd say ice hockey is only slightly more popular than baseball. It's only really a major sport in Canada, Russia and the US (and even then, in the US it takes backstage to gridiron, baseball and basketball). Compare that to cricket which is played as a major sport in Britain, South Asia, South Africa and the white dominions and is a secondary sport in much of the rest of the Commonwealth.
 
Yes, cricket was reasonably popular in parts of the US until the late 19th century. For some reason, Philadelphia was the center of the sport in this country.

A lot of the decline in popularity of cricket in the USA (in the late 19th/early 20th) was the fault of the ICC (called the Imperial Cricket Conference, later changed to the International Cricket Council, as it refused to let the USA join because they were not a part of the Empire, despite numerous petitions asking to. With no chance of international tests and a lack of cooperation between the USA and ICC nations (originally England, Australia and South Africa, later New Zealand and the sub-continent) it declined.

This might deserve it's own thread, but I wonder if this also caused the decline in Canadian Cricket- with baseball coming in from the USA eventually killing it. Historically Canada was a major playing nation before the mid 19th century.
 
A lot of people have said football is so expensive and it is too complicated. To address the first point, As a Canadian I can say that it is no more expensive than hockey in terms of equipment and that is a game which has caught on in many different parts of the world. Hockey is also a younger sport than both baseball and football. I think one of the reasons that it is more popular in other parts of the world is that it had many early ambassadors which brought the game to other parts of the word, something football has lacked.

Secondly, I would not say football is more complicated than other regional sports. I used to have an Indian and an Austrian roommate and the both tried to explain games like cricket and rugby to me in turn and I found them both very hard to follow at first. (I still don’t understand or see the attraction of cricket). People need an open mind to learn a game and if they want think it is stupid from the get go because it is American it can be a lost cause.

I personally love football, (Go Steelers Go) and the reason I think that it is so popular in American is that it speaks to American interests. America has rationally been a nation which likes the tough people. For the person who said it’s boring because people only play for a 15 min quarter has obviously never played the game. In each play there is no coasting, every move counts and you must play as hard as you can every second the clock it on. I have had played, football, hockey, soccer and basketball at one time and I can say Football is the most demining of all sports. Even rugby players on the team said it is at least as hardcore a game.

I could be right or wrong I don’t know, just my 2 cents


Do you mean field hockey or ice hockey?
Both of those sports are pretty expensive to play, compared to cricket or soccer/football. American Football requires a lot of land to play, which needs to be flat and open. Watching cricket on tele you'd assume the same, however you can play cricket in the streets, on the beach and in your backyard (all of which are popular summer activities in cricketing nations!). When a group of people play cricket one especially large or strong person wont dominate the game, and even the most unskilled players can have a shot at different types of skills required. I think these reasons are why cricket can thrive in poorer communities, as opposed to games like rugby, which only really dominated in New Zealand and South Africa.
 
Others may have mentioned it, but I think gridiron football particularly appeals to Americans because of its military structure and symbolism. Most Americans, unlike Europeans in particular, still view war as an acceptable, even honorable and heroic, activity, and our most popular sport reflects this. Teams on offense blast through defensive lines, take and hold territory, throw "bombs", and stop after each play ("battle") to plan further attacks and establish the order of battle by substituting players suited for particular tactics. Teams on defense hold the defensive front, push the attackers back to regain territory, and execute sudden "blitzes" deep behind the front to eliminate strategic assets attempting to execute aerial bombing campaigns, and use the pauses to plan defensive strategy for the next battle. When things arent going well for the invaders, they punt the ball and and go on defense with an improved defensive position.

The record keeping for American football also reflects this. There are far more individual and team statistics kept for things like yardage gained, first downs gained (battles won), tackles made, etc than actual scoring - and these are almost as important to fans as scores (which by themselves are often the most boring plays - uncontested kicks, one yard plunges, etc).

As someone who likes many spectator sports and strategic war games, I realize that more fluid games like soccer or ice hocky also have deep and complex strategy. However, this is frequently invisble in the flow of a game which often looks like 11 guys kicking a ball around at midfield trying to figure out what to do next. In US football, the strategy is more visible than in any other sport.
 
Soccer is very popular in Europe and places that Europe controlled, but pretty absent elsewhere. Baseball became the #1 sport basically in those places where American culture could spread without European colonists stomping it out: the Caribbean (which was politically bound to Europe, but culturally went its own way a long time ago) and Japan, with Japan in turn spreading the game in its territories (China, Taiwan, Korea).

Only after these two sports were in existence did basketball get invented, but basketball still had a 50-year head start on football: it was only after the invention of color TV that it really became possible to explain what the heck was going on in a football game.

And here comes the part that is intrinsic to football, which will continue to make it hard for football to get inroads in places where other sports have already claimed prominence: football has by far the most group strategy. An evenly matched game requires 22 men to choreograph their movements in perfect harmony. If they get out of synch even a little bit, the result is either a huge gain, or else an embarassing loss or turnover. Someone once said that the art of hockey is remembering all the rules without tripping over your own skates. Well, the art of quarterbacking football is detecting whether the defense is running any of a dozen different sets, any of a hundred different schemes, comparing these sets and schemes with the one plan you chose out of thousands, comparing that with how these plans are actually being pulled off in reality, then getting the ball down field within the 5 or so seconds it takes a 150-kg man to run up, knock you down, and sit on your head. Suddenly, facing an inside curveball doesn't seem so bad, eh?
 
Just for fun, here is Zoomar's list of the most important spectator and team sports in the world together with my Americawank opinions

(1) Soccer (which I refuse to call "football". Inexplicably, this US girl's and kids game is easily the most popular sport in the world - no contest)
(2) Basketball (A major US sport also played professionally at a very high level in much of the rest of the world - also a very easy pick-up game for amateur participants)
(3) Cricket (The precursor of US baseball played in all parts of the world which used to be "British Empire Pink".)
(4) The various Rugbies (also benefits from British Imperialism and the fact that it (they) are damn fine games to watch and fun, if painful, to play. Popularity in France and other parts of Europe also doesn't hurt.
(5) Ice Hocky and Baseball (tie). Ice Hockey is played professionally at a high level more widely, but is really only the main sport in one country, Canada. It is also an Olympic sport, which helps, but is only a cold-climate game for amateur participation. Baseball is no longer the main team sport anywhere except possibly Japan, but it very popular and played professionally at a high level in the US and many other countries in the Americas and a few in Asia Not being a permanent Olympic sport hurts.
(6) US Football. The megasport in the US and popular (as "Canadian Football" with a few rule variances) in Canada. In addition to the professional league, the only game in the world where "amateur" contests (collegate games) are played in front of up to 100,000 paying fans and are a big business. Less seen as a legitimate team sport and more as a bizarre spectacle everywhere else.
(7) Hurling, Gaelic football, and Australian rules football (tie). What's to say? These are the major sports in minor countries. To my knowledge they are not played professionally or on an organized basis as a spectator sport anywhere else. Personally I really like Aussie football, but hurling looks like people beating each other over the head with sticks.
(8) Lacrosse. Another head-beating team sport played mostly in US and Canadian colleges by teams of pampered rich kids. Cool because it is a native american game. Major college games can draw as many fans as basketball (10,000-20,000)
(9) Field Hockey and Polo (tie). One is played by rich kids and girls in school, the other by horses and rich male socialites. Nobody really cares.
(10) Softball and Volleyball (tie). One is variant of baseball played on an organized or professional basis mostly by girls and women. Quite popular in the US and several Asian countries as a spectator sport and as a participant sport by men as well as women. The other is a great participant sport as well as a surprisingly exciting spectator sport if played at a high level - or if played by well-endowed females in skimpy attire. Being an olympic sport helps also. Both are very minor professional and collegate sports in the US.

Didn't include various motor sports (which can technically be team sports), but I don't get what's athletic about driving machines around. At least with Polo, the horse is an athlete and the rider at least has to hit and advance a ball.
 
Soccer is very popular in Europe and places that Europe controlled, but pretty absent elsewhere.
I disagree with this.

The Japanese J-League has an average attendance of over 20,000, there is a huge following of English club football for some reason in China and as been pointed out is a popular childrens and womens game in the States.

The games popular across most of Africa, South America, Europe, Japan and is growing in China.

The only parts of the world it resolutely refuses to make the breakthrough in is North America, New Zealand and India that I can see.
 
Like others have said, baseball became really popular only in Japan and several countries around the Caribbean. Almost every country where it became popular did have a major US military presence at some point...


Paul & others,

While there is a weak link between playing baseball and an US military presence, it should be noted that Japan (among others) was playing baseball well before WW2. Baseball was so popular in Japan in the 1930s for example that US All Stars routinely traveled there to play exhibition games during the off-season.

The actual reasons why baseball or any other sport is adopted by a country or culture are far too numerous and interlocking to water down to a single root cause. As with all human cultural activities, there are too many factors at work to easily simplify. For example, while the various occupations and interventions by the US in the early 1900s of various Central American countries may have introduced baseball, something else about the game had to have kept it interesting to the public there.

While games can certainly be introduced on the point of a bayonet, something else needs to happen for those games to continue to be played after the bayonets return home. I should think that physical proximity, plus a myriad of informal cultural exchanges in the shape of business and labor ties, kept baseball interesting to most of Central America. Among the other factors I mentioned, in the Dominican Republic (currently the premier source of "foreign" baseball players in the US' major leagues) baseball is seen as a way out of poverty much like basketball and/or boxing is/was viewed in the inner city.

Dominican nationals and expats in the major leagues regularly provide funds for baseball teams, leagues, and training back home while major league scouts swarm over the island looking for talent. It is those factors, and not a nearly century old US intervention, which keep baseball alive in the DR.


Bill
 
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The Japanese J-League has an average attendance of over 20,000...


FoS,

Colleges in the US - and not gridiron powerhouses either - routinely top that figure every autumn Saturday during the gridiron season. Attendance figures in a pro league don't mean a thing, if they did the MLS figures would mean that football is popular in the US. It's how much football is being played elsewhere in Japan that matters.

... there is a huge following of English club football for some reason in China...

Don't confuse marketing with reality. The desire of non-English speaking people with newly acquired disposable income to own some bit of clothing with a logo seen regularly on satellite TV is not comparable to an actual interest in football. I saw entire township in Irian sporting t-shirts and hoodies that read New Jersey Baseball College. Of course none of them knew what baseball actually was or where actually New Jersey is.

... and as been pointed out is a popular childrens and womens game in the States.

Popular with toddlers in the US. Many childrens' leagues feature players around five while very few feature any in their tweens or teens. Football is easy to learn as running and kicking are activities most children develop early. That's why children's programs exist at the age levels they do in the US. However once a child develops physically, they almost always "graduate" to other sports. Football is used like "training wheels" in the US; it teaches you how to play on a team, sportmanship, and keeps you active until you can play something else. (Please note: This does NOT imply that football is somehow less athletic than other sports. Far from it actually.)

As for the women's game in the US, the women's pro league folded without a whimper several years ago. We've a few college programs that feed female Olympic and World Teams but after that nothing.

The games popular across most of Africa...

Colonized by Europe and very much too poor for mass participation in many other sports.

... South America...

Colonized by Europe and relatively too poor for mass participation in many other sports.

... Europe...

Invented there.

... Japan...

Debateable.

... and is growing in China...

Seeing as China's population is projected to reach 1.4 billion by 2020, tiddlywinks and everything else is "growing there". When China fields pro leagues even slightly comparable to Europe's, let us know. Until then t-shirt sales don't mean what you think they do.

The only parts of the world it resolutely refuses to make the breakthrough in is North America, New Zealand and India that I can see.

Resolutely? And the contempt comes through again. sigh...

That's right, North America, New Zealand, and India absolutely and resolutely refuse to let football breakthrough inside their borders. We've got treaties with each other and have formed an International Football Resistance Alliance to roll back the tide of "footie" across the planet. There are ballot questions on football every election, funds are raised, and speakers whip the masses up into a frothing fervor of anti-football hysteria. We're all card carrying members of the Footies Not For Me club from birth.

Yeah sure, every country that doesn't play football as often or as widespread as Europe is "weird" and "wrong". It can't have anything to do with choosing other games for other reasons. Nope, can't be. It can't have anything to do with being relatively wealthy enough to afford the kit for other games. Uh-uh, no reason there. It simply must be some sort of cryptic Euro-bashing and a general indication of overall stupidity. That's just got to be it because football is so superior to anything else anyone else has every played. It's just got to be a conspiracy!

Score a laugh point.


Bill
 
Bright day
While I do not think baseball is world sport, I did actually play "base"ball as kid with friends or at summercamp multiple times.

Maybe the the fact is that it is more fun at amateur level for everybody? When I was fourteen I and my friends could all enjoy association football. Game of american football would be me picking up the ball and walking down the field, while puny oponents frutilessly try to stop me.
 
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