http://newsday.com/sports/baseball/ny-other082915654sep08.story What does this have to do with soccer? IMHO, with baseball/softball in the Olympics, those sports dominate team sport coverage on us tv. Soccer coverage is shunted aside. The issue seems to be economic. The US already has baseball/softball stadiums built, while other nations have to build them and then tear them down afterwards. This gives US candidate cities a big advantage in staging the Olympics. It looks like an interesting debate shaping up for their Nov meetings.
The idea that Baseball is more international than cricket or rugby is rather funny, but anyway... It's not like dropping the sport from the Olympics will result in greater TV coverage for soccer. If anything, if recent trends continue, it will just make possible a couple more hours worth of stupid human interest stories.
i think what he is saying is that crickett and rugby are played by more countries internationally...just a guess.
In 2000, every USA men's and women's soccer game was shown in its entirety, albeit tape delayed and with commercials spliced in. Baseball games were usually shown with several innings edited out.
US Olympic coverage sucks balls, dude. To the extent that I don't really give a rat's doo doo when the Olympics comes along.
Possible, but not by a large margin. Aren't there only something like 12 countries that play cricket? You find that many nations playing baseball just by looking at the countries along the Caribbean.
Jamaica, Trinidad, and a bunch of tiny islands play cricket. Against that, you have Cuba, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico playing baseball. The combined population of the baseball playing Carribean is a lot larger than the cricket playing Carribean.
Wow, must've struck a nerve on Fulham. Didn't know that Bud Selig lurked here. Dude, when baseball can have an international competition that more than one country could win (assuming everyone is sending their best players), then I'll consider it more international than cricket. Also, baseball's pretty concentrated in two geographical areas, and cricket, thanks to the sun, at one time, never setting on the British Empire, is pretty much around the globe. There's no baseball in Africa to speak of, but there's cricket. No baseball in India and only a little in Australia, but there's plenty of cricket. By the way, here's the what I found funny in the original article: Here's the quote from the article I was mostly laughing at: " 'the USOC will defend, with all possible means, the continuation in the Olympics of the No. 1 sport in the USA, baseball," USOC president Marty Mankamyer said in a recent statement.' " My point is that if baseball, which is essentially the national game of one nation, is in the Olympics, then perhaps cricket and rugby union might deserve an appearance, too. Assuming of course their governing bodies want to have to deal with the IOC.
I love when people "guarantee" something on BigSoccer because it gives me a chance to learn if they are right or not. In this case, Fulham is correct - IBAF has 110 members, ICC has 83.
I shouldn't get involved, but I bet the total population of cricket-playing countries (India, Pakistan, etc.) dwarfs that of baseball-playing countries.
Depends on how you figure the population. India is also a member of the IBAF, so baseball might get an edge there. If you figure it by # of players, well... someone who's having a slower day at work than I am will have to do the math for that one. But here's a list of member nations to the IBAF. http://www.baseball.ch/F2/F.html Brazil is a member, but from what I read, Brazil's baseball-playing population is limited to a few thousand japanese immigrants, for instance.
See, I looked at that list and it is simply not realistic. I don't want to get into the merits of each sport, as these discussions can get really rancorous. I've had a couple of them myself with Ben Reilly. Suffice it to say that Austria, for example, is not a baseball-playing nation. Ditto Germany (I've lived in both countries). And realistically, nearly a billion people in India prefer cricket to baseball (assuming that less than 100 percent of the population are cricket fans). Baseball is only big-time in a handful of the countries on that list. To be fair, cricket is only big-time in a handful of countries, too. But if you add up the populations, you'd see a huge disparity (due to India alone). Baseball's a cool game, though. Although soccer is now by far my favorite sport, I still probably understand the nuances and subtleties of baseball better, since I used to play it. Bottom line is I don't see why baseball shouldn't be an Olympic sport. There are plenty of other fruity sports in the Olympics, so why not baseball?
I agree with everything you said (debates over the relative merits of sports can be rancorous, baseball's a cool game, it's probably not that big in Austria, there's no reason for it NOT to be an Olympic sport so long as there are medals given for rythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming, etc.). I was primarily laughing at the USOC yutz who seems to think that because it's the "number one sport" in the US it's entitled to Olympic status. So, in short... I have nothing against baseball (if I did, I would've left yesterday's Pirates/Marlins debacle early, and I didn't!). I do have something against that one guy's statement from the USOC.
Maybe the blatant and rampant steroid abuse in baseball has the IOC a little scared. In no way does baseball approach the popularity of cricket around the world. I don't think baseball, or softball, or soccer, or any popular sport that already has it's own world championship should be in the olympics. The olypics should be reserved for niche sports like curling and shooting things while you're skiing.
Well, baseball is played in some fairly populous countries, like the US, Japan and Mexico. No, they don't add up to India, but they're not exactly "dwarfed" either. I don't think cricket is more "international" just because it is played in India. India cannot be the sole arbiter of how "international" a sport is.
Could you explain why it bothers you that some people think that cricket is "more international" than baseball?