Country
|
Population
|
Current
MLB'ers |
MLB'ers Per Million
|
Asia
|
|||
Taiwan
|
23,386,883
|
3
|
0.13
|
Japan
|
127,090,000
|
12
|
0.09
|
South Korea
|
50,423,955
|
3
|
0.06
|
Saudi Arabia
|
29,994,272
|
1
|
0.03
|
Europe
|
|||
Netherlands
|
16,858,500
|
1
|
0.06
|
Italy
|
60,782,668
|
3
|
0.05
|
Germany
|
80,716,000
|
3
|
0.04
|
North America
|
|||
Curaçao
|
150,563
|
7
|
46.49
|
Dominican Republic
|
9,445,281
|
134
|
14.19
|
Aruba
|
101,484
|
1
|
9.85
|
Puerto Rico
|
3,615,086
|
22
|
6.09
|
United States
|
318,360,000
|
857
|
2.69
|
Cuba
|
11,167,325
|
20
|
1.79
|
Panama
|
3,405,813
|
6
|
1.76
|
Nicaragua
|
6,071,045
|
4
|
0.66
|
Canada
|
35,427,524
|
20
|
0.56
|
Mexico
|
119,713,203
|
17
|
0.14
|
Oceana
|
|||
Australia
|
23,553,300
|
5
|
0.21
|
South America
|
|||
Venezuela
|
28,946,101
|
95
|
3.28
|
Colombia
|
47,673,000
|
5
|
0.10
|
Brazil
|
202,828,000
|
2
|
0.01
|
Sources (as of 7/10/14):
Curaçao?
Curaçao! Formerly part of the Netherlands Antilles, this small island country 40 miles off the coast of Venezuela consisting pretty much of one city, population 150,000, has 7 players currently in the major leagues -by far the greatest per-capita representation in the world; more than three times that of MLB talent powerhouse, Dominican Republic. They also gobbled up the Little League World Series ten years ago with a team that included this future-major leaguer.
Cuba fields 20 players, despite the mutual ban making working in the US a real challenge for Cubans -a testament to baseball's popularity and talent density in Cuba.
Of course the Dominican Republic is well known as an incubator for baseball talent and fields 134 major league players right now, despite having a population about 33 times smaller than the US. With the exception of Curaçao (and its relatively small sample size), the chances of a Dominican becoming a major league player are the best in the world.
South America is an interesting study. Only three countries field major league players, but the vast majority of those players are Venezuelans (including this person who regularly delivers joy and amazement to me). They say that the Venezuelan love of baseball (as opposed to, you know, soccer) is rooted in the long presence of oil companies in Venezuela and their transplanted Americans' bringing the national pass-time along. Strained relationships between our two countries in recent years has reduced the external development influence, and it will be interesting to track the impact of this into the next decade.
Curaçao! Formerly part of the Netherlands Antilles, this small island country 40 miles off the coast of Venezuela consisting pretty much of one city, population 150,000, has 7 players currently in the major leagues -by far the greatest per-capita representation in the world; more than three times that of MLB talent powerhouse, Dominican Republic. They also gobbled up the Little League World Series ten years ago with a team that included this future-major leaguer.
Cuba fields 20 players, despite the mutual ban making working in the US a real challenge for Cubans -a testament to baseball's popularity and talent density in Cuba.
Of course the Dominican Republic is well known as an incubator for baseball talent and fields 134 major league players right now, despite having a population about 33 times smaller than the US. With the exception of Curaçao (and its relatively small sample size), the chances of a Dominican becoming a major league player are the best in the world.
South America is an interesting study. Only three countries field major league players, but the vast majority of those players are Venezuelans (including this person who regularly delivers joy and amazement to me). They say that the Venezuelan love of baseball (as opposed to, you know, soccer) is rooted in the long presence of oil companies in Venezuela and their transplanted Americans' bringing the national pass-time along. Strained relationships between our two countries in recent years has reduced the external development influence, and it will be interesting to track the impact of this into the next decade.
Why Isn't This a Map?
Yeah, I started a few maps of this, but really when I just looked at the numbers I felt a lot more informed. Sometimes numbers are enough. There is an interesting regional story, but I think grouping the list of nationalities by geographic region is plenty. Now I'll admit, the fact that so many major leaguers come from the tiny country of the Dominican Republic is really interesting, but is the number of players per mile (what a map would tout) really that meaningful? Definitely not as meaningful as the number of players by population! If I'd done a strict mapping, I'd lose the tiny but prolific MLB powerhouse of Curaçao as a blip on the vast surface of Earth. So when a map gets in the way of understanding a phenomenon, I don't want to force it (for the same reasons that this is not a map).
On the other hand, there is a "proximity" story that gets lost in a list like this: Haiti. When I see a country like DR, sharing an island with Haiti, who has zero MLB players, there are some important insights about the sporting consequences of poverty and the huge disparities between peoples that may be teaming with talent but without the resources to develop it. And then I start asking myself if national sport development is important in and of itself, as a point of cultural pride and positive international visibility, or if it is tangential evidence (however cool) of a society that has the economic surplus that affords gown-ups the ability to play games, as opposed to laboring to survive. The recent World Cup, with tiny nations competing with global giants (if the global giants even qualified) is a more embiggened example of this.
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