Sports in America

Sports play an important role in American society. They enjoy tremendous popularity but more important they are vehicles for transmitting such values as justice, fair play, and teamwork. Sports have contributed to racial and social integration and over history have been a "social glue" bonding the country together.

Early Americans like Benjamin Franklin and President Thomas Jefferson stressed the need for exercise and fitness promoting for example running and swimming. In the 20th century, American presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy continued to encourage physical activity.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower founded the President's Council on Youth Fitness in 1956 to encourage America's youth to make fitness a priority. The Council later became the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, including people of all ages and abilities and promoting fitness through sports and games. Today, the Council continues to play an important role in promoting fitness and healthy living in America.

The United States offers limitless opportunities to engage in sports - either as a participant or as a spectator. Team sports were a part of life in colonial North America. Native American peoples played a variety of ball games including some that may be viewed as earlier forms of lacrosse. The typical American sports of baseball, basketball ad football, however, arose from games that were brought to America by the first settlers that arrived from Europe in the 17th century. These games were re-fashioned and elaborated in the course of the 19th century and are now the most popular sports in the United States. Various social rituals have grown up around athletic contests. The local high school football or basketball game represents the biggest event of the week for residents in many communities across the United States. Fans of major university and professional football teams often gather in parking lots outside stadiums to eat a "tailgate" picnic lunch before kickoff, and for parties in front of television sets in each other's homes during the professional championship game, the Super Bowl. Thousands of baseball fans flee the snow and ice of the North for a week or two each winter by making a pilgrimage to training camps in the South and Southwest to watch up close their favorate players prepare for the spring opening of the professional baseball season.

Individual competitions accompanied the growth of team sports. Shooting and fishing contests were part of the colonial experince, as were running, boxing, and horse racing. Golf and tennis emerged in the 1800s. Recent decades have given birth to a wide variety of challenging acitivities and contests such as sail boarding, mountain biking, and sport climbing, collectively referred to as "extreme sports".

The sport that evokes more nostalgia among Americans than any other is baseball. So many people play the game as children that it has become known as "the national pastime."

The exact origins of baseball are unknown, but most historians agree that it is based on the English game of rounders.

It became quite popular in the early 19th century; many sources report the growing popularity of a game called "townball", "base", or "baseball". In 1845, Alexander Cartwright formalized a list of rules by which all teams could play. Rules, scoring and record-keeping gave baseball gravity. As one sport historian noted, "Baseball without records is inconceivable." For most Americans, for example, it is common knowledge that Roger Maris's 61 home runs (balls that cannot be played because they have been hit out of the field) in 1961 broke Babe Ruth's record of 60 in 1927.

The first professional baseball league was established in 1871. By the start of the 20th century, most large cities in the eastern United States had a professional baseball team but baseball truly came of age in the 1920s, as Babe Ruth (1895-1948) playing for the New York Yankees became a national hero.

Jackie Robinson comic book Fawcett Pubs, 1951.

Over the decades, every team has had its great players. Jackie Robinson (1919-1972) played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. A gifted and courageous athlete, he was the first African-American player in the major leagues in 1947. Prior to Robinson, black players had been restricted to the Negro League.

Starting in the 1950s, baseball expanded its geographical range. Western cities lured teams to move from eastern cities or formed so-called expansion teams with players made available by established teams. From the start, major league baseball has been divided into the National League and the American League.

The major league baseball season lasts from April to October and includes the regular season, the playoffs, and the World Series. The most victorious team in each league is said to have won the "pennant;" the two pennant winners met after the end of the regular season and a series of playoff within league subdivisions in the World Series. The winner of this series becomes the major league world champion.

Until the 1970s, because of strict contracts, the owners of baseball teams virtually owned the players. Since then, the rules have changed so that players are free, within certain limits, to sell their services to any team. The results have been bidding wars; stars are paid millions of dollars a year. Disputes between the players' union and the owners have at times halted baseball for months at a time. Baseball is both a sport and a business. Many disgruntled fans sometimes view the business side as the dominant one.

Major league baseball (MLB) is the highest level of professional baseball competition in North America including teams from the United States and Canada.

Today, baseball is played in the United States on the amateur level in Little League, high school and university and various community leagues.

Over the course of the 20th century, baseball spread to many nations, notably many Latin American countries, including Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Puerto Rico, but also Japan, Taiwan, and Australia. Cuba's first professional league was formed in 1878, just shortly after the first American league was established. Baseball became popular in Japan after American soldiers introduced it during the occupation following World War II.

Baseball was a demonstration sport at the 1912, 1936, 1956, 1964, 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games. It became a medal sport in 1992. Cuba has won three of the four gold medals since then, with the U.S. claiming gold in 2000. Softball, a variation of baseball, was added in 1996. In 2005, the International Olympic Committee voted to eliminate baseball from the Olympics after 2008. The 2008 Beijing Olympics will probably be the last Games with baseball and softball for the foreseeable future.

Comparable to the soccer World Cup, the first annual World Baseball Classic took place in venues in the United States, Japan and Puerto Rico in March 2006. The purpose of the four-round tournament, which featured 15 teams from overseas plus a United States squad, is twofold - first to build worldwide exposure for the game, and second, to encourage grassroots development of the sport and athletes in both traditional and nontraditional baseball nations.

It originated in 1891 when James Naismith, a young physical education teacher in Springfield, Massachusetts, was instructed by his boss to invent a new game that could be played indoors during the cold winter months to keep the students occupied and out of trouble. Naismith thought back to his boyhood in Canada, where he and his friends had played "duck on a rock," which involved trying to knock a large rock off a boulder by throwing smaller rocks at it. He also recalled watching rugby players toss a ball into a box in a gymnasium. He had the idea of nailing up raised boxes into which players would attempt to throw a ball. Naismith had two bushel baskets, used for carrying peaches, nailed to the balcony at opposite ends of the school’s gymnasium. He set up two nine-man teams, gave them a soccer ball, and told them the object was to toss it into the basket being defended by the opposing team. Most of the rules Naismith drew up still apply in some form today. He called the game Basket Ball, the modern version of which is played by over 250 million people worldwide in an organized fashion, as well as by countless others in "pick-up" games.

Basketball gained quickly popularity due to its simple equipment requirements, indoor play, competitiveness, and easily understood rules. The first professional basketball league was formed in 1898. Today, the National Basketball Association (NBA) is the major professional basketball league in the world, with teams in the United States and Canada. The NBA now has 29 teams competing in two conferences, the Eastern and Western, in four separate divisions. Every year, in the second week of February, the NBA interrupts its season to celebrate the annual All-Star game, featuring the game's best players as selected by fans throughout the United States and Canada. At the end of the season, the champions from the Eastern and Western conferences meet in a best-of-seven series to determine the NBA champion.

Superstar players like Michael “Air” Jordan increased the popularity of basketball internationally. In 1992, a so-called Dream Team, made up of the top American professional basketball players, represented the United States in Olympic Games for the first time. Many teams in the National Basketball Association now have foreign players, who return home to represent their native countries during international competitions, such as the Olympic Games. Dirk Nowitzki who plays for the Dallas Mavericks is Germany’s most popular sports exports to the United States. More than 200 national federations belong to FIBA, the Federation of International Basketball, an independent organization that governs international basketball.

Since its invention, basketball has also been a popular sport for women. Basketball was also a popular sport for women. Women's basketball came of age with the gold-medal victory of the American women's basketball team at the 1996 Olympics, increased media attention to women's college basketball tournament, and the establishment of professional women's basketball leagues. The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) was founded in 1997.

Basketball has a unique appeal. As one sport journalist explained, “The deep appeal of basketball lies in the fact that the poorest of kids can make it rich, and that there is a mystery in how he does it. Neither baseball nor football creates the special, jazzed-up excitement of this game in which the human body can be made to do unearthly things, to defy gravity gracefully. A trust in mystery is part of the foolishly beautiful side of the American dream, which actually believes that the impossible is possible.”

American football is a distinct type of football that developed in the United States in the 19th century from soccer and rugby. It requires teams to run, throw and kick an oval ball across a 100-yard field (91.4 meters), is unrelated to the game most of the world knows by that name, and which Americans call soccer. And even the American game has variants, as there are slightly different rules for the versions played by college teams, professional teams and Canadian Football League teams.

Football is played by school, college and professional teams and is one of the most popular American sports, attracting thousands of participants and millions of spectators annually. American football was made popular by teams representing colleges and universities.

For some of its history, professional American football was played within a single National Football League (NFL), although rival leagues did spring up as the game grew in popularity and the lure of television dollars emboldened competitors. In 1960, one such rival league, the American Football League (AFL) competed for premier talent. As the leagues contemplated a merger, they agreed to a single game each year between their respective champions. Because many collegiate football championships were known as "bowls" for the bowl-shaped stadiums that hosted them, one AFL owner referred to the new game as a "super" bowl. The name proved popular with the public.

The Super Bowl is the final contest of the NFL's season. Each year, on a Sunday at the end of January or beginning of February, tens of millions of Americans declare their own unofficial holiday. Americans increasingly have gathered in private Super Bowl parties, where they enjoy food, drink and televised football. An estimated 130 million to 140 million viewers - nearly half of the U.S. population - will tune in to some part of the game. Four of the 10 most watched programs in U.S. history have been Super Bowls.

What the rest of the world calls football, is known as soccer in the United States. Originally called association football (the name soccer is a corruption of “assoc” which is derived in turn from association), soccer is distinguished from American or Canadian football and from rugby in that it is primarily played with the feet.

Soccer was slow to attract fans in the United States, where such sports as baseball, basketball, and American football were more popular. Today, however, according to FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), the United States has more official soccer players than any other nation in the world - almost 18 million. No other sport crosses so many cultural boundaries, and it no surprise that it is the fastest growing team sport in the United States.

History. Peoples around the world have played soccer-style games for centuries. Games similar to soccer were played in China more than 2,000 years ago. Such games were also played in ancient Greece and Rome. When Pilgrim ships first sailed into the harbors of Massachusetts in the 1620s, they discovered Native Americans playing a soccer-like game called pasuckuakohowog, meaning "they gather to play ball with the foot." Playing fields were beaches a half-mile wide with goals one mile apart. As many as 1,000 people played the rough-and-tumble game at a time. Knowing who was on your team wasn't easy because players wore disguises. Matches sometimes lasted for days, and always ended with a magnificent feast.

In colonial America, games more similar to modern day soccer were also played. In the early 1800s, a number of North American colleges had soccer teams, but the rules were informal and differed from school to school. The first official soccer club in the U.S. -- the Oneidas -- was formed in Boston in 1862, during the Civil War. A monument now stands on the Boston Common, where the Oneidas played their home matches. Immigrants from Europe to industrial communities in the Northeast and Midwest spurred the development of American soccer in the last part of the 19th century. They brought along their soccer traditions and formed local teams. The first attempt to establish a professional soccer league dates back to 1884 when the "American League of Professional Football" was founded but it closed during the same year.

International Participation. The U.S. Soccer Federation was established in 1913. The same year it joined the world governing body FIFA. The first official national championship tournament was played in 1914. Predecessor to the U.S. Open Cup, it is the oldest cup competition in United States soccer and is among the oldest in the world. The annual U.S. Open Cup Open is a single-elimination tournament open to all affiliated amateur and professional teams in the United States.

The USA was one of 13 nations to compete in the first FIFA World Cup competition in Montevideo, Uruguay. Argentina beat the U.S. in the semi-final and the United States team, who was favored to win, finished third overall. The U.S. competed in 1934 and then in 1950 at the World Cup in Brazil. In the 1950 tournament, the American team beat England 1-0, one of the biggest upsets in soccer that year. The U.S. returned to World Cup competition in 1990, after a 40-year absence. Since then, it has qualified for each tournament.

In 1994, the United States hosted the World Cup. That sparked increased interest in the sport and built on the legacy of the North American Soccer League (NASL), which in the late 1970s brought international stars like Pelé and Franz Beckenbauer to the United States.

Soccer is just as popular for girls as for boys in the United States. Over forty percent of soccer players in the U.S. are women. Soccer is the most popular women's sport in college. An estimated 18,188 women played soccer in the three college divisions in 2001, compared with 17,788 in track and field. In some cases, women soccer stars are more well-known than men. Soccer star Mia Hamm was listed recently as one of the "Most Fascinating Women in Politics" in a political magazine poll.

Girls and women also are increasingly participants in sports that have traditionally been seen as out of bounds for women, including soccer, ice hockey, lacrosse, wrestling, and rugby. In one sport that is more and more a favorite for young girls -- soccer-- the results led to a World Cup championship in 1999 and Olympic medals. Players like Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain have helped make the sport more popular.

Many people say women's professional tennis has become more interesting than men's tennis. More people watch the women's games on television than the men's games. One sports commentator said, "The women are not only good players. They are also very interesting people."

Youth is synonymous with energy — mental and physical. Organized and informal sports provide teens with an opportunity to expend some of that energy and, more importantly, to learn the value of fair play, to achieve goals, and to just have fun.

In 2003, 58 percent of boys and 51 percent of girls in high school played on a sports team. The most popular sports for boys are American football, basketball, track and field, baseball, and soccer (international football). For girls, the most popular are basketball, track and field, volleyball, softball, and soccer. As a result of a U.S. law that encourages women to take part in athletics, girls' participation in high school athletics has increased by 800 percent over the past 30 years. Other organized high school sports often include gymnastics, wrestling, swimming, tennis, and golf. Away from school, teenagers participate year-round in community-sponsored sports leagues. In addition, particularly in the summer, they engage in informal "pick up" games of one sport or another in the streets and parks of their neighborhoods.

In 2001, a higher percentage of high school seniors reported participating in athletic teams (39 percent) and music/performing arts activities (25 percent) than academic clubs (15 percent), student council/government (11 percent), and newspaper/yearbook (10 percent). Females were more likely to participate in newspaper/yearbook, music/performing arts, academic clubs, student council or government, and other school clubs or activities than males. Males, however, were more likely to participate in athletics.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-05