Cricket and Baseball II

Ross responds to my gentle tweaking about baseball and cricket here. He makes some fair points. But thinking about it just now, it occurs to me that there’s another major difference between British sports and their American counterparts that sets British sports apart. Namely, participation.

With the obvious and notable exception of basketball, it’s notable that very few people actually play the major American sports. Sure, kids play American football and baseball in school and some – a minority obviously – will do so in college but very few adults actually play these sports. I know that there are adult hardball baseball leagues and there are still some independent leagues in which small towns play one another, but for the most part adult Americans are reduced to either watching sports or playing a watered-down version of them, such as softball or flag football (a sort of American football version of touch rugby).