SPORTS: Nationalism and Internationalism--Soccer and Baseball

I thought that Austin denizen David Crow would claim that both sports originated in Texas, but no:

"I read Ron Bracewell's thoroughly documented report on the origin of baseball with great interest. He might have added a game played in Romania that features batters running around nine bases as a possible antecedent to the U.S. national pastime. Nonetheless, the claim to American paternity for the sport is not based on where it may have originated in its primitive form, but where the rules of the modern game were first formalized. The same holds true for the English title as "inventors" of soccer.

If the game was indeed practiced in the ancient world, it is curious that no transmutation of the game seems to have survived in the Old World (corrections welcome). An interesting feature of the sport is the geographical spread of its popularity. The antecedent of rounders explains Australia's interest in baseball and Latin American prowess at the game is no mystery. The Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano states that just as English sailors practiced their sport of football on Argentine shores, U.S. Marines went into Cuba with a rifle over one shoulder and a baseball bat over the other. But the rising popularity of baseball in Asia (Korea, Japan, and Taiwan) and Southern Europe (Spain and Italy) is difficult to explain."

Ronald Hilton - 10/25/00