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:
“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)
“It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts.”
—Shirley Chisholm (b. 1924)
“Compared to football, baseball is almost an Oriental game, minimizing individual stardom, requiring a wide range of aggressive and defensive skills, and filled with long periods of inaction and irresolution. It has no time limitations. Football, on the other hand, has immediate goals, resolution on every single play, and a lot of violence—itself a highlight. It has clearly distinguishable hierarchies: heroes and drones.”
—Jerry Mander, U.S. advertising executive, author. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, ch. 15, Morrow (1978)