Baseball And American Exceptionalism Summary

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Baseball or Sports Cultures in Comparative Perspective

When trying to compare the development of sports in the USA and in other countries, one can find a striking feature is striking - the USA has repudiated soccer almost completely, whereas in Europe, as well as in many other countries, people are massively obsessed over the game. Markovits and Hellerman explained this phenomenon in their book Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism through the path-dependence theory (47). They stated that Americans never chose soccer because it was too foreign, was not “imported” in the right time period, and the niche for the most followed sports was already occupied. Markovits and Hellerman’s path-dependence

It is their hegemonic inclinations. Considering that Japan has borrowed baseball from the USA would be just as offensive as it would be for Americans in case if someone reminds them that baseball originally came from the United Kingdom. Rather, Japan has taken this sport, tailored it accordingly, and used it as a demonstration of its hegemonic power just like the New World had exercised it in many other ways in the Western hemisphere. During the last century, the Japanese domination over the rest of Asia, or at least its considerable part, was also manifested in the passion for baseball that many other Asian countries developed (Whiting 41). Moreover, they developed it in the Japanese way of morality, righteousness, determination, and teamwork on the field. Considering that Japan of the 19-20th centuries was a highly nationalistic and patriotic, especially prior to the Second World War, this was a way of following the American pattern and choosing a sports culture to spread it over and trumpet about county’s glory. This explains the longevity of the baseball sports culture in Japan: they chose their favorite team sport and customized it so it convoluted the values of their culture. There is an exclusively Japanese way of marketing: whatever needs to be sold needs to be “Japanized” for its popularity to soar. This was the path dependence juncture of Japanese baseball, in

The only thing that had changed in the Japanese passion for baseball was the names of teams: all English words were substituted by Japanese analogues (Whiting 78). This became the hallmark of path dependence of the Great Game in Japan: if being officially at war with the USA did not stigmatize baseball as “Yankee sport”, it was never going to belong only to Americans (Whiting