Baseball
Baseball sees less activity in Italy than most other sports. Introduced to Italy by American servicemen during World War II, professional baseball leagues were not established until after the war.The Italy national baseball team is traditionally ranked as the second best team in Europe, behind the Dutch national team. Italy's performance during the Olympics has been consistently high for a European team, but is noted for its reliance on American and Latino players of Italian descent. The highest level of play in Italy today is considered to be on par with Class A ball in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Sport In Italy
Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
“I don’t like comparisons with football. Baseball is an entirely different game. You can watch a tight, well-played football game, but it isn’t exciting if half the stadium is empty. The violence on the field must bounce off a lot of people. But you can go to a ball park on a quiet Tuesday afternoon with only a few thousand people in the place and thoroughly enjoy a one-sided game. Baseball has an aesthetic, intellectual appeal found in no other team sport.”
—Bowie Kuhn (b. 1926)
“I’ve gradually risen from lower-class background to lower-class foreground.”
—Marvin Cohen, U.S. author and humorist. Baseball the Beautiful, Links Books (1970)
“Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)