Bisons baseball | Popularity and cultural impact

Writing in 1919, philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen described baseball as America's national religion.[137] In the words of sports columnist Jayson Stark, baseball has long been "a unique paragon of American culture"—a status he sees as "devastated" by the steroid abuse scandal.[138] Baseball has an important place in other national cultures as well: Scholar Peter Bjarkman describes "how deeply the sport is ingrained in the history and culture of a nation such as Cuba, [and] how thoroughly it was radically reshaped and nativized in Japan."[139] Since the early 1980s, the Dominican Republic, in particular the city of San Pedro de Macorís, has been the major leagues' primary source of foreign talent.[140] In the Western Hemisphere, baseball is also one of the leading sports in Canada, Colombia, Mexico, the Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. In Asia, it is among the most popular sports in South Korea and Taiwan.


Two players on the baseball team of Tokyo, Japan's Waseda University in 1921.In recent years, baseball's position compared to football in the United States has moved in contradictory directions. In 2008, Major League Baseball set a revenue record of $6.5 billion, matching the NFL's revenue for the first time in decades.[141] On the other hand, the percentage of American sports fans polled who named baseball as their favorite sport was 16%, compared to pro football at 31%; in 1985, the respective figures were pro football 24%, baseball 23%.[142] Because there are so many more major league baseball games played, there is no comparison in overall attendance. In 2008, total attendance at major league games was the second-highest in history: 78.6 million, 0.7% off the record set the previous year.[61] Attendance at games held under the Minor League Baseball umbrella also set a record in 2007, with 42.8 million;[62] this figure does not include attendance at games of the several independent minor leagues.

As of 2007, Little League Baseball oversees more than 7,000 children's baseball leagues with more than 2.2 million participants in the United States and around the world.[143] Babe Ruth League teams have over 1 million participants.[144] A varsity baseball team is an established part of physical education departments at most high schools and colleges in the United States. By early in the 20th century, intercollegiate baseball was Japan's leading sport; today, high school baseball in particular is immensely popular there.[

source : wikipedia