From: rrhersh@gmail.com   
      
   On Sunday, March 7, 2021 at 1:15:23 PM UTC-5, artyw2@yahoo.com wrote:   
   > On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 1:47:21 PM UTC-7, Bob wrote:    
   > > On Monday, March 1, 2021 at 5:04:27 PM UTC-5, rrh...@gmail.com wrote:    
   > > > On Monday, February 22, 2021 at 12:14:13 PM UTC-5, Bob wrote:    
   > > > > And by "big", I mean comparably to Japan or India. Did it start to and   
   get derailed?    
   > > > Major modern professional team sports all, to a surprisingly good   
   approximation, originated in Britain or North America. The question to answer   
   is why anyone else took them up. The answer is imperialism, whether explicit   
   or economic. (Think of, e.g.   
    Argentina c. 1900. It was an independent country, but its technical   
   infrastructure was operated and largely owned by the British. If the   
   Argentines got feisty the Royal Navy could sail into Buenos Aires harbor and   
   set things straight.) British sporting    
   culture often was adopted by the local elites, and worked down the social   
   ladder from there. Hence Indian cricket and Argentine football (soccer).   
   Japanese baseball was introduced as a delayed part of the Mejii Restoration.   
   Japan was frantically working    
   to catch up to the West. Most of this was technology and industry, but all   
   sorts of cultural flotsam was carried with those. Then after WWII there was an   
   even stronger imperative to take up American culture. Baseball was already   
   known, making it an easy    
   sell. China? They never took to the practices of foreign devils. While the   
   Western powers could boss the government around for favorable trade deals,   
   Western culture had little direct impact on the population. I am morally   
   certain cricket was played in    
   Hong Kong, but I don't know if it spread to the locals, and it certainly   
   didn't go far on the mainland.    
   > > >    
   > > > Richard Hershberger    
   > > While this is true, it's not enough to explain the discrepancy between   
   these sports and soccer in China. Did China adopt soccer fairly late, as part   
   of the second wave of soccer's expansion to the rest of the world? Or do I   
   simply over-estimate how    
   big soccer is in China?   
   > Also, China took up basketball, but not baseball.   
   I don't have a firm grasp on the spread of basketball, much less the   
   international spread.  Basketball is a different animal from traditional   
   sports like football (in its various forms) or baseball and cricket.    
   Basketball was consciously invented in    
   1891.  It took off in the US very quickly, filling the niche for an indoor   
   winter sport that could be played in existing gymnasiums.  There had been   
   attempts at indoor baseball, but even in modified form needed a larger space   
   than your typical gym.     
   National Guard armories were the typical venue.  Eventually they threw in the   
   towel and moved back outdoors as softball.  Basketball worked much, much   
   better and spread among YMCAs and colleges very fast.  How did this play out   
   internationally?  Heck if    
   I know.   
      
   Richard Hershberger   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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