Great Britain qualified for the 2023 World Baseball Classic (baseball’s equivalent of the FWC) for the first time in team history. I love seeing sports that are mainly popular in the US grow in other parts of the world so I wanted to share. Top 2 teams move onto the KO rounds. I’d say USA is heavy favorite to win the group but 2nd place is honestly a toss up, so you never know.
Their group is as follows:
1. USA
2. Mexico
3. Colombia
4. Canada
5. Great Britain
25 comments
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Fuck no. We have cricket and I’m not exactly into that sport either.
Baseball seems like the most boring American sport, and to be honest American football and basketball are already pretty dull in my opinion
Baseball? Nah. Can’t see it
You mean rounders right? Been around for hundreds of years, before it was even played in America.
I think it’s a kids game over here.
A few yuppies in the late 80s started to pretend they were into it, but secretly every Brit thinks it’s just silly boys rounders.
Is that like rounders?
As a mainstream sport, no chance. We already have the few oddballs that follow American football, but they’re generally relegated to the same place as people that are into other niche sports from the British POV like korfball or disc golf.
I barely understand football (still have no idea what the offside rule is supposed to be) so the last thing I’d do is pay attention to what looks to be the dullest American sport going
There is almost no chance. Baseball requires quite a lot of infrastructure to play and it simply isn’t available in the UK. Regardless of the merits, or lack thereof, of the sport itself it has zero chance of ever becoming popular in the UK.
I love Diamond no Ace and Major though …
All American sports are lame
where is Cuba and Dominican Republic in that ranking?
As far as bat and ball team sports go, we’ve been playing cricket in some form since before the US was colonised. Cricket has just as many stats, if not more, than baseball, and games are played in formats that take as little as a few hours to complete, to half a day, a full day, four days at club level, or five day at international level, with series of five, five-day test matches between countries being played over the course of up to six or seven weeks.
It’s a genuinely global sport, spread mostly throughout the emerging British empire, and now embraced as primary or secondary national games by several countries and billions of people. Ironically, the first recognised international was between two club teams from Canada and the US in 1844, with Canada winning. England sailed for Australia, for the first internationals as we now know them, to start a traditional rivalry in the 1860s that continues to this day.
The point being, the infrastructure is already set up, the game itself is woven into the fabric of society, the rivalries are there, the history is storied and continuously being added to, and the similarities of stats and time taken to play, really rule out baseball from becoming anything more popular than a park game over here. The only way I can see it becoming more popular is if there was a sudden influx of American immigrants who brought the love of the game and desire to play it with them, much like some south Asian immigrants are doing in the US with forming amateur cricket clubs.
Having said all that, I’ll try and keep an eye out for the baseball!!
I mean we all had to play rounders at school. It seems similar.
Big baseball league in London around Finsbury Park. Can’t see it taking off in a big way unless they start playing some MLB games in London, like they do with NFL.
Hell no!
I went to a Texas Rangers game a few years ago and it was single-handedly the most boring thing I have ever endured.
It isn’t a patch on curling. Now that’s a sport worth watching
Baseball is just a knock off rounders
Nope. Not a chance.
The season format is all sorts of wrong for it to work anywhere it wasn’t ingrained in the culture prior to modern ways of employment being a thing. 162 three hour games a season minimum? We’ve already got Cricket with a similar problem.
Then theres the fact we speak English and consume American media. It’s plainly clear MLB is running on tradition alone, and is not only totally corrupt but even better at damaging their sports standing over the course of a century than the ECB.
NFL has spent millions on trying to break into the UK and what it’s ended up with is 150k hardcore fans who can sustain an exhibition match in London as a festival of NFL and Americana but no chance of a franchise or a UK league. And thats after years of trying to do the same in the richer, less saturated market in Germany to similar results.
When it comes down to it, theres a market for NFL amongst 51st staters (our version of your anglophiles), a market for NBA amongst the urban yout dem and a market for NHL among matchgoing football/rugby fans, but absolutely nothing for MLB or baseball in general.
If you want an American sport that’s really taken off in the UK and Europe in general, its MMA/UFC.
No chance.
Over here we have a relatively healthy basketball and ice hockey leagues, and they work because they can operate out of arenas with ice chillers (for Disney on ice productions etc) or from public rinks with seating. (There are a few with their own arenas etc) and basketball can also use the arenas or larger sports halls.
So they can dovetail into existing infrastructure.
Same with American football they can use stadiums.
Baseball not so much, they would have to use cricket grounds or really jankily in a stadium which creates awful sight lines and that’s before you even get to the lack of demand
You mean rounders….
So if this is the same as the world cup, what is the world series? I wasn’t aware of this event, don’t think it’s being televised but even if it were the time difference would mean no-one would watch it.
I have been to a couple of baseball games in America and thought they were great fun. I always forget the rules though.
I shouldn’t think so
Cricket
Slim to no chance.
The cultural difference with a lot of American sports is that they go on too long, stop start too much, and their main being seems to be to have adverts in between for the telly.
Very much a social event first and the sport is in the background. It’s the other way round in the UK.
Also, I’ve not checked, but if I did…. Would I find a lot of this “GB Team” are actually Americans with connections to the UK who didn’t make the US team?
No.
!answer