re: Why are Italy and Great Britain in the WBC

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Congrats on some broadcasting deals in China. Widespread support and grassroots level baseball is long entrenched in more places around the world. How many countries is basketball a top 2 played sport and for how long. A few Eastern Bloc for a few decades. Baseball has been that way in essentially the entire western hemisphere plus Japan for a century. But, I do grant being the 8th most popular sport in France is still probably more lucrative than being #1 in Venezuela

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I’ve seen basketball courts in every major city I’ve been to across the world. Baseball fields? Not so much. If you could get India to transition from cricket you might have something.

The difference is that those Italians and Britains actually have close roots to their ancestors countries. Cajuns are super detached from modern france as they haven’t lived there in at least 200 years. In many cases more like 3-400 years.

I am mostly British and could technically play for them too but that’s different from the ones who are playing for them. I believe they have grandparents at least that were from there. My ancestors haven’t lived in Britain since the 17th-early 19th century in some cases so I am not really anything other than American.

If that’s the case then yeah it is dumb. But Italians didn’t come over all that long ago. Hence why you see tons of “Italian Americans”. You don’t find as many British Americans cause it was super long ago when they came over and they are just American now. And everybody is mostly part British.

I agree. They shouldnt have teams if they're almost all Americans.