The whole world is watching
From team rosters to stadium cuisine, America’s national pastime has become a global game
In 1903, baseball's National and American Leagues faced off for the first time under a slightly outrageous name: the World's Championship Games (later shortened to the World Series). At the time, no teams were based south or west of St. Louis. The Series' reach didn't truly cover the United States, much less the world.
But now, baseball has become a world game. While all major professional sports organizations, from the NBA to the NHL, have international players on their rosters, there is something uniquely varied about Major League Baseball: It has fans and followers all over the world. And its teams include players from around the globe — from Aruaba, the Bahamas, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Venezuela to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Australia.
Hoops on the Hudson
In Yonkers, New York, a new basketball court four years in the making provides valuable life lessons to the community's kids — and its adults. Read the story
The broadening of MLB began 75 years ago in New York City. On 15 April 1947, Jack Roosevelt Robinson broke the game's unofficial color barrier when he walked onto the grass of Ebbets Field in the uniform of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Jackie wore number 42, which every player in baseball now wears in his honor each year on 15 April.
In 2022, it may be hard to appreciate what his historic moment meant.
When Jackie Robinson took the field, segregation was common in much of the United States. The armed forces that had so bravely stormed the beaches of Normandy were racially divided. U.S. students were learning about the Emancipation Proclamation and the Declaration of Independence, with its assertion that "all men are created equal," but many of their classrooms remained segregated.
And so it was for our national pastime, baseball. The American League and the National League were for white players only; they called themselves the major leagues while excluding Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and many of the greatest athletes to ever play the game, who were restricted to the Negro Leagues. Today, some of those great Black players are enshrined in baseball's Hall of Fame, a small, often posthumous recompense for the careers they should have been able to enjoy.
Jackie Robinson took the field a year before the U.S. military was desegregated by presidential decree, and seven years before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down segregated schools. All those advances came later than they should have. Yet it's fair to say that Major League Baseball helped move history.
The broadening of MLB began 75 years ago in New York City. On 15 April 1947, Jack Roosevelt Robinson broke the game's unofficial color barrier when he walked onto the grass of Ebbets Field in the uniform of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Jackie wore number 42, which every player in baseball now wears in his honor each year on 15 April.
In 2022, it may be hard to appreciate what his historic moment meant.
When Jackie Robinson took the field, segregation was common in much of the United States. The armed forces that had so bravely stormed the beaches of Normandy were racially divided. U.S. students were learning about the Emancipation Proclamation and the Declaration of Independence, with its assertion that "all men are created equal," but many of their classrooms remained segregated.
And so it was for our national pastime, baseball. The American League and the National League were for white players only; they called themselves the major leagues while excluding Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and many of the greatest athletes to ever play the game, who were restricted to the Negro Leagues. Today, some of those great Black players are enshrined in baseball's Hall of Fame, a small, often posthumous recompense for the careers they should have been able to enjoy.
Jackie Robinson took the field a year before the U.S. military was desegregated by presidential decree, and seven years before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down segregated schools. All those advances came later than they should have. Yet it's fair to say that Major League Baseball helped move history.
While diversified rosters surely helped build baseball's global fan base, other factors came into play. Part of the game's appeal is its relatability. You don't need to stand 6-foot-9 like LeBron James and other basketball stars or be 6-8, 384 pounds like Daniel Faalele, who in April was drafted by the NFL's Baltimore Ravens. Some of baseball's greatest players — such as the Astros' Jose Altuve (5-6) and the Dodgers' Mookie Betts (5-9) — wear conventional suit and shoe sizes.
And while football and hockey can be both balletic and exciting, I find them hard to watch without thinking of the prevalence of concussions and other serious injuries. I respect the artistry of players in big-league soccer (called football in most of the world). But all that running and kicking usually results in just a few chances to shout, "Gooooooal!"
Baseball's rhythm, with time between pitches and changing sides each half-inning, encourages conversation. Tom Ricketts, chair of the Chicago Cubs, met his wife, Cecelia, when both were habitues of the bleacher seats in Wrigley Field. "It's the nature of baseball," he once told me, "that we had plenty of time to talk."
My father, blushing and stammering, explained the facts of life to me during a Cubs-Cardinals game at Wrigley Field. I was 12 and was interested, but not distracted.
Like life, baseball is a long season. From late March to October across the United States and Japan, baseball is part of the hum of the day, game reports in the hourly news alongside weather and traffic. The drama of the season builds over time.
And then, there's the food.
I've never heard a fan return from a football or soccer game and rave about what they ate. Nor from basketball, hockey, stock car racing, or lacrosse, for that matter. But a baseball game, usually lasting more than three hours (too long, but that's another story), under the sun like a picnic, is an opportunity to enjoy costly, caloric snacks we often wouldn't permit ourselves. Besides, it's a scientific fact, though I can't prove it, that nothing you eat in a ballpark counts in your daily diet. I guess you can call it one of the miracles of baseball.
Much like MLB rosters, ballpark cuisine has become increasingly diverse, multicultural, and dazzling. There are fat, toasty Cuban sandwiches sold in the stands at Tampa Bay Rays games. Chicago's South Side team, the White Sox, offer elote, grilled corn on the cob dashed — no, rolled and slathered — in toppings such as chili, salt, and butter. The North Side Cubs offer heavy Italian beef sandwiches, sopping and loaded with spicy giardiniera.
L.A.'s Dodgers have long been celebrated for their Dodger Dogs, grilled or steamed, but now they also offer a plant-based dog, smoked with maple hardwood. The San Francisco Giants offer a carne asada burrito bowl and Ghirardelli hot fudge sundaes. The Twins — in Minnesota, the home of tater tot hotdish — sell Korean fried chicken, chilled sesame peanut noodles, and chana masala, the spicy chickpea dish that is a staple of India. And in Seattle, the pièce de resistance at Mariners games are chapulines: toasted grasshoppers dusted with chili-lime salt seasoning.
It's a long way from the old refrain, "Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack." You can now tour the world at an MLB concession stand. I recommend that you do.
As I write this during the 2022 season, the most exciting star in baseball, on any continent, may be Shohei Ohtani, the deeply talented Japanese-born star who plays for the Los Angeles Angels. He was named an All-Star in 2021 and 2022 as both a pitcher and a hitter, upending decades of baseball wisdom (or at least custom) which held that pitchers were too depleted between starts to be swinging a bat. Well, the player they call "Shotime" does both powerfully. Another of today's greats may be Roki Sasaki of the Chiba Lotte Marines, in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball Organization. In April, Sasaki hurled a streak of 17 hitless, scoreless innings with no walks, an effort deemed "perfect" in baseball parlance.
Those extraordinary players on different sides of the ocean — as well as other MLB standouts, such as Mike Trout, Fernando Tatis Jr., Juan Soto, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman — remind us that even after more than a century, there are still records to be broken, precedents to be shattered, and new ways to rejuvenate the game. "Buy me some chana masala and chapulines!"
Scott Simon hosts a long-running show on NPR, contributes to CBS Sunday Morning, and is the author of nine books, including Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball, Home and Away, and My Cubs: A Love Story.
This story originally appeared in the August 2022 issue of Rotary magazine.