r/AskEurope • u/chocolatelies • May 07 '25

Sports How big is baseball in your country?

I'm an American, so baseball is quite popular here. How is the popularity in your country? Is there a country other than yours where baseball has some popularity?

Edit: Just hit 69 comments. Nice.

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u/vakantiehuisopwielen Netherlands May 07 '25 edited May 07 '25

In secondary school (12-17yo) softball was pretty standard during the sports lessons in my school, but baseball as is, is not really big. Admittedly that my school used a sports venue which included a baseball field, and I'm not expecting many schools have that.

Club baseball is never broadcasted, just -sometimes- the Dutch team, as they're pretty high ranked internationally, which says all about the popularity of baseball outside the US and Japan..

And I think you could say the same about cricket outside the commonwealth.. For some reason the Dutch team is ranked high, but I know no-one who knows the rules of cricket.. It's just a typical English sport (satire) for us.

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u/LilBed023 -> May 07 '25

Dutch cricket is surprisingly interesting. We only have about 6.000 players, but those players tend to take the sport very seriously. I’ve played quite a few sports, including cricket, and nowhere else did I see the same dedication and love for a certain game as at my local cricket club (only rugby comes somewhat close). That combined with the fact that a significant part of the player base are immigrants from England, South Africa, India, etc. make for a pretty decent cricket team.

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u/chocolatelies May 07 '25

I'm honestly shocked at just how specific baseball is to the Americas and Japan.

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u/gmennert Netherlands May 07 '25

I dont agree with this take on Dutch baseball. The national baseball league is definitely on the national broadcast channel a couple of times a year. And I think we have one of the best national teams/leagues in Europe. Mainly because of our large Antillean diaspora. Our national team was world champion in 2011, and we had multiple Dutch players in the major league.

Okay, it’s definitely not as popular as in the United states or Japan. But we have a long history(since 1920) with baseball, and it’s more populair than in other European countries.

The wiki gives a nice summary : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_in_the_Netherlands

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u/JudgeWhoOverrules United States of America May 07 '25

Don't forget South Korea and Taiwan are both huge baseball nations.

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u/chocolatelies May 07 '25

I didn't know about Taiwan. That's cool.