Well, you have produced more than a few Major League and AAA players who played somewhere above kids' ball before they got here... I saw Craig Shipley in Albuquerque 10 or 15 years ago, and he could play...
Most of these guys leave Australia aged about 15 and go to play in the US (same as what happens to our soccer players going to Europe or the UK). There is no pro (or even semi-pro) league here. One was tried back in about the mid 90's I think but it went broke very quickly. There is some adult baseball, but it is at the recreational level (probably like rugby in the US) watched mainly by family. A lot of top cricketers used to play baseball in winter, but they don't have the time now.
Just FYI, "British" strength in the early Olympic football tournaments was due at least as much to Scotland as England. Certainly in the annual matches pre-WWI, the Scotland teams more than held their own against the England teams. The overall record now is about 45-40 to England, mostly due to our crap record since WWII. The annual results from 1900 to 1914 were: Scotland 4-1 England (1900) England 2-2 Scotland (1901) England 2-2 Scotland (1902) England 1-2 Scotland (1903) Scotland 0-1 England (1904) England 1-0 Scotland (1905) Scotland 2-1 England (1906) England 1-1 Scotland (1907) Scotland 1-1 England (1908) England 2-0 Scotland (1909) Scotland 2-0 England (1910) England 1-1 Scotland (1911) Scotland 1-1 England (1912) England 1-0 Scotland (1913) Scotland 3-1 England (1914) 5 Scotland wins, 4 England wins, 6 draws. --- As for baseball, I think it's a bit unlucky to be voted out. It would have been interesting if they had proposed to play it at (say) the Oval in 2012, the funny dimensions would have been interesting if nothing else. But if you have baseball in, you should also have cricket IMO. It is comparable (if not greater) in terms of population and number of countries interested in the sport.
I feel baseball is just as 'much' of a sport as golf or chess are. None of them have any place in the Olympics because they are hobbies for fat kids at most, not sports. Face it.
golf and baseball require hand eye coordination. chess obviously does not.in any case, you may consider baseball a moedified and vastly improved version of cricket. what i don't get at all is curling. what in the hell is that?
Basically it is lawn bowls on ice. It's a fair enough selection of sport for the winter games as it is reasonably popular in most N European countries + Canada. As pointed out before, sports for the summer games have to be held to a different standard.
you have to run in baseball, its just in quick bursts, not up and down the field like soccer or basketball. it is an odd game, obviously if you can play every single day for 7 months staright it is not physically demanding. you can play all day and never break a sweat unless you are the pitcher or catcher. i assure you that playing catcher is very rough for many reasons. the game is also at times dangerous, since you have bats and a very hard ball being thrown or hit at high speeds involved. i am not the biggest baseball fan in the world, but i don't think you fully understand the intricate details of the sport. it is certianly not golf.
Yeah well and there's holes in the grass in golf which makes walking around quite risky. I'm not even talking about the alligators... Intricate details my ass... apart from getting hit by the occasional pitch, it's all wussy-wussy fest.
Nothing ever happens in soccer that even begins to approach the violence of a collision at home plate...
Nothing ever happens in soccer that even begins to approach the violence of a collision at home plate.
I don't know about where you live, but in New York in summer you will break a sweat just being outside. Add to that the fact that they are always at attention and most players are going to have to run somewhere if a ball is hit.
All of those injuries can be matched by something on the baseball field before we even get to home plate collisions... although the thigh tear is worse than anything I've seen personally...
Collisions at home plate? You're nuts. The only "violence" standout here is that the collision is totally intentional. Heck in one of my soccer games this weekend a girl and a guy collided (incidentally, not on purpose) and the impact would have knocked the helmet off and de-ball the glove of of any catcher in MLB. The girl lost a lot of blood (via broken nose) and the guy probably will have a black eye or maybe even a fractured cheekbone, and that's just Sunday rec league!
And I've seen that in rec league softball... Ray Fosse's career was ended in a home plate collision in the All Star game, Greg Olsen had a leg broken in several places and that's just the first two I can name... Ed Ott, Ozzie Virgil, Randy Hundley... Ott's career was ended, Hundley's at least seriously affected, Virgil played several more years but wasn't the same... Catchers' careers are on the average just over half the length of other players-- this isn't the only reason, but its a big part of it. Second basemen have only about 75% the career expectancy of other players, and collisions at second base are most to all of the reason for that... Then we can turn to baserunners hitting the base wrong or getting stepped on-- Jason Kendall for example... And then there's the matter of getting hit by a pitch occasionally; somebody passed that off rather cavalierly but Micky Cochrane and Don Zimmer and Paul Blair and Tony Conigliaro and Dickie Thon and many many others couldn't... Then there's Pete Reiser and outfield walls, and Tony Kubek and the bad hop grounder in the larynx, and several pitchers whose arms broke from the force of their own delivery, and several more who were hit in the face by line drives, and we still aren't to collisions in the outfield...
why does a sport have to be dangerous to be considered a "real" sport anyway. i played basketball, golf and track growing up for precisely that reason. i had no desire to get injured. football (american, that is)? no way was i playing that. ice hockey? not a chance i was going to lose all of my teeth.
The problem is that Ernie Witt, the manager for Canada, may not select players like Gagne (if he's still healthy) or Bay.
I'd sure like to see you get beamed by a fastball and end up sharing a room with Ray Chapman. Then you can tell us about wussy-wussy fests. BTW, Americans say the exact same thing about soccer.