National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer

Two major sporting events will hit the sports landscape next year. For baseball fans, they will be treated to the first ever World Baseball Cup. For the rest of the world, it will be the FIFA World Cup in Frankfurt. One is a major sport’s attempt to reach a more global audience. The other defines it. One league is “open” the other, “closed.” And, both leagues have pros and cons from a business standpoint, which is where Stefan Szymanski and Andrew Zimbalist’s book, National Pastime, truly shines.

National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer, digs into the history and place in society both soccer and baseball have placed in their respective cultures while tracing their evolutions and events that shaped the league structures and businesses we see today.

On baseball’s side of the ledger, Zimbalist traces the evolution of stick and ball games, most notably cricket, through its various permutations to the game we see today. Key points in this historic evolution were the shift of the game from a predominantly upper-middle class sport of amateur standing, to a game that spread to the middle and lower classes with players paid as professionals, as well as the organization of the owners into tightly controlled leagues. This latter key point outlines the point in history where soccer splits from baseball in its evolution as the business-centric concepts of baseball as an enterprise are not embraced allowing for free expansion of the game of soccer.

The divergent paths create pros and cons. Zimbalist and Szymanski break down key revenue streams, such as television where soccer was broadcast in Europe and the rest of the world, primarily as a public service for most of the 20th Century, to baseball, where it ostensibly cut its first media deal in the 1890’s when Western Union paid the National League for the right to relay game updates to saloons and pool halls. Another key area that is covered is public subsidy of stadiums for baseball stadiums, while many soccer stadiums have become substandard leading to several tragic episodes involving the deaths of fans in the ‘60s, most notably the tragedy involving the Peru-Argentina Olympic qualifying match in Lima where 328 people died due to stampeding of fans, baseball stadiums have become iconic cathedrals to the sport, most of which, funded by taxation.

The question is, will this book be for you? The book moves back and forth between the histories of the two sports outlining the parallels and differences in terms of history, the spread of the game to other parts of the world, the development of labor markets, broadcasting, competitive balance, and most importantly, what both sports can learn from each other. Those that are looking for a well rounded reference guide to the business of sports should look to this book as a mandatory purchase, as both Zimbalist and Szymanski are exceptional at writing about the economics and business of sports without lulling the reader into a coma. The flow of the book between key topics and the relationship’s they have with soccer and baseball are conveniently broken into easily digestible sections. The book may not be for everyone. Certainly those that have little interest in soccer, or conversely, baseball, will find the book’s movement between the two sport histories and structures distracting. Those that wish to have a truly unique and fascinating reference between the game the world views as the most popular, and the game viewed by many as America’s National Pastime will want to keep this book close by as a solid resource.