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Comment by Theodores | Hacker News Reader

That is funny, I was hoping someone from the rest-of-the-world would ask this.

It seems that this 'sport' (and other U.S. 'sports') is one of those uniquely American things like 'customary units', tea drinking and non-standard spellings where British-ness has to be eradicated. The whole point of the game is that the rest of the world (particularly British people) just don't get it. Life is too short to bother knowing the rules to these U.S. only 'sports', unless you are working with Americans there is no conversation value whatsoever in knowing all those stats that U.S. 'sports' fans obsess over.

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This is an extremely ignorant and needlessly mean comment. Baseball is known as "America's pastime," however, it's not just an American sport; its also popular in Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean, South Korea, and Japan. One MLB team is currently located outside the US and a second used to be. There are professional leagues in many countries outside of North America. A quarter of MLB players were born outside the 50 States [1] Not only that, it traces it's history back to a British game (Rounders).

Plus the British are more know for tea drinking than Americans.

For me, I absolutely love "trick plays," they are great and are part of what makes baseball fun to watch. Fake tags, fake throws, the hidden ball trick, outfielders "deking" that the lost the ball in the sun, or "deking" that they are going to catch a ball. Those are some of my favorite plays. I completely disagree when people call them Bush League plays, if that's your opinion you might as well call advancing on an errant throw, taking first on a dropped third strike, or scoring on a wild pitch Bush League as well.

[1] http://m.mlb.com/news/article/116591920/opening-day-rosters-...

Sometimes an automotive analogy helps. In theory you could say 'Nascar' or 'IndyCar' has an international following and you could cite how some drivers come from outside of the USA to participate. You could even go through the history books and find cars built outside the USA and raced around banked ovals. But no, the rest of the world has F1, the WRC and plenty of other motorsports governed by the FIA and participated in internationally. For the rest of the world there is zero interest in knowing the ins and outs of whatever goes on in U.S. motorsport, it is a waste of time bothering to know.

Regarding tea, Americans don't drink it, not like the British do, my point being that this is one of those anti-British things going back to something that happened in Boston, to do with not wanting to pay taxes to the King.

Given the downvotes I had to check if I had misread 'baseball' for 'basketball', but I hadn't. You are kidding yourself if you believe baseball has a big international following. I also don't believe anyone in America knows anything about Japanese baseball or whatever is going on in the Korean game in any greater depth than what a Manchester United fan knows about what is going on in women's football. The IOC don't think that baseball matters although I am sure it will feature in the Olympics if the host nation is one of the few countries you cite that do play the game.

I fail to understand what the average American's knowledge of Japanese baseball has anything to do with the popularity of baseball in Japan.

Don't bother, this poster is just trolling and moving the goal posts is one method to do so. You could bring up how spirited and competitive the World Baseball Classic was. How it featured teams from all over the world and was watched and understood by fans all over the world.

Or how there are multiple professional leagues on multiple continents. Each with their own followings and eccentricities.

You could also point out that baseball is in fact back in the Olympics. Precisely because it now has an international following.

But none of that matters. Because this poster is in a race to prove how they are more euro-centric than Americans are USA-centric.

Baseball game in Japan, FYI: https://youtu.be/qL87Tq4QKqI

Baseball is played around the world. This comment is slightly insulting and pointless.

> It seems that this 'sport' (and other U.S. 'sports') is one of those uniquely American things like 'customary units', tea drinking and non-standard spellings where British-ness has to be eradicated.

Ignoring the flamebait about spelling and baseball, I have to say I'm confused about the "tea-drinking" part. I've always thought of tea-drinking as much more of a British thing than American, as the overwhelming majority of Americans I've met (from living in the US my entire life) prefer coffee to tea.

You're totally right about it being silly that we don't use the metric system, though.

It's not that hard. Baseball is just like cricket.

You bring a book to the game or match and while reading occasionally look up to pay attention when something actually happens.

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