From: snidely.too@gmail.com   
      
   Monday, Richard Hershberger quipped:   
   > 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.   
      
   We played mushball indoors.  Much softer than a softball (even 5th   
   graders could squeeze it slightly).  I've also seen wiffleballs used.   
      
   > National Guard   
   > armories were the typical venue.   
      
   The NG armories I've been in (2, IIRC) didn't have much more room than   
   a gym in their open-space room.  There was probably a 50-60 year   
   difference in constuction dates; the older served time as part of a   
   brewery, when Blitz-Weinhardt was still fairly independent.   
      
   > 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.   
      
   Whence volleyball?   
      
   [About 16 miles, in Holyoke, per WP]   
   "The first rules, written down by William G Morgan, called for a net 6   
   ft 6 in (1.98 m) high, a 25 ft × 50 ft (7.6 m × 15.2 m) court, and any   
   number of players. A match was composed of nine innings with three   
   serves for each team in each inning, and no limit to the number of ball   
   contacts for each team before sending the ball to the opponents'   
   court."   
      
   [loc cit]   
      
      
   /dps   
      
   --   
   I have always been glad we weren't killed that night.  I do not know   
   any particular reason, but I have always been glad.   
     _Roughing It_, Mark Twain   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)