Bisons baseball | Baseball around the world

History of baseball outside the United States
Baseball in Cuba, Baseball in Japan, and Baseball in the United Kingdom
Baseball, widely known as America's pastime, is well established in several other countries as well.

The history of baseball in Canada has remained closely linked with that of the sport in the United States. As early as 1877, a professional league, the International Association, featured teams from both countries.[65] While baseball is widely played in Canada, and many minor league teams have been based in the country, the American major leagues did not include a Canadian club until 1969, when the Montreal Expos joined the National League as an expansion team. In 1977, the expansion Toronto Blue Jays joined the American League. The Blue Jays won the World Series in 1992 and 1993, the first and still the only club from outside the United States to do so. After the 2004 season, Major League Baseball relocated the Expos to Washington, D.C., where the team is now known as the Nationals.


Sadaharu Oh managing the Japan national team in the 2006 World Baseball Classic. Playing for the Central League's Yomiuri Giants (1959–80), Oh set the professional world record for home runs.The first formal baseball league outside of the United States and Canada was founded in 1878 in Cuba, which maintains a rich baseball tradition and whose national team has been one of the world's strongest since international play began in the late 1930s. The Dominican Republic held its first islandwide championship tournament in 1912.[66] Professional baseball tournaments and leagues began to form in other countries between the world wars, including the Netherlands (formed in 1922), Australia (1934), Japan (1936), Mexico (1937), and Puerto Rico (1938).[67] The Japanese major leagues—the Central League and Pacific League—have long been considered the highest quality professional circuits outside of the United States[68] (since the Cuban Revolution, all of that country's players have officially been considered amateurs).

After World War II, professional leagues were founded in many Latin American nations, most prominently Venezuela (1946) and the Dominican Republic (1955).[69] Since the early 1970s, the annual Caribbean Series has matched the championship clubs from the four leading Latin American "winter leagues": the Dominican Winter League, Mexican Pacific League, Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League, and Venezuelan Professional Baseball League. In Asia, South Korea (1982), Taiwan (1990), and China (2003) all have professional leagues.[70]

Many European countries have pro leagues as well, the most successful beside the Dutch being the Italian league founded in 1948.[71] Compared to those in Asia and Latin America, the various European leagues and the one in Australia historically have had no more than niche appeal. In 2004, Australia won a surprise silver medal at the Olympic Games. The Israel Baseball League, launched in 2007, folded after one season.[72] The Confédération Européene de Baseball (European Baseball Confederation), founded in 1953, organizes a number of competitions between clubs from different countries as well as national squads. Other competitions between national teams, such as the Baseball World Cup and the Olympic baseball tournament, have been administered by the International Baseball Federation since its formation in 1938. As of 2009, the organization has 117 member countries.[73]

After being admitted to the Olympics as a medal sport beginning with the 1992 Games, baseball was dropped from the 2012 Summer Olympic Games at the 2005 International Olympic Committee meeting. It remained part of the 2008 Games and will be put to a vote again for each succeeding Summer Olympics. The elimination of baseball, along with softball, from the 2012 Olympic program enabled the IOC to consider adding two different sports, but none received the majority vote required for inclusion.[74] While the sport's lack of a following in much of the world was a factor, more important has been Major League Baseball's reluctance to have a break during the Games so that its players can participate, something that the National Hockey League now does during the Winter Olympic Games. Such a break is more difficult for MLB to accommodate, because it would force the playoffs deep into cold weather.[75] Major League Baseball initiated the World Baseball Classic, scheduled to precede the major league season, partly as a replacement high-profile international tournament. The inaugural Classic, held in March 2006, was the first tournament involving national teams to feature a significant number of MLB participants.[76]