Baseball is America’s pastime, and betting on MLB is the pastime of Americans who like to make the national pastime a little more thrilling that it already is – if such a thing is at all possible. But what makes it the sport of choice of an entire country and one Canadian city? Maybe it is its rich history. Major League Baseball is the oldest of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. So old in fact that the answer to the question of who started baseball is still unanswered and will likely remain that way – giving it a romantic air of mystery, as if it was handed us down directly from the hand of god, like Arthur was handed Excalibur by the Lady of the Lake.
Maybe it is the resilience associated with it. You might think that anyone can stand in place for hours at a time, but you would be wrong. Cal Ripken Jr. is known as the Iron Man, but that moniker could be applied to each and every MLB player, who endure a marathon-like 162 games across seven months – and that’s just the regular season. Playing 19 games against each four divisional opponents may seem repetitive, but it actually helps to foster a true sense of rivalry among teams.
The resilience characterizes the sport itself, which has been hit with controversies such as the Black Sox Scandal (“say it ain’t so, Joe”) as well as Pete Rose’s betting scandal – which is why the best way to go around betting on MLB is at a legitimate online sportsbook like BetNow.eu. More recently, issues concerning the use of performance enhancing drugs by ball players have threatened to tarnish the reputation of baseball. Through it all, the MLB remains respected and popular, recording the highest season attendance of any sports league in the world with more than 73 million spectators in 2015.
More than anything else, baseball arguably represents the ideal of the American Dream better than any other sport. Played since Civil War times, this game has systematically broken down race barriers. The most famous example of this is of course Jackie Robinson, but all Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Nicaraguan players who have been and are a part of Major League Baseball are a constant reminder of the uniting spirit of baseball – which for a long time was the only thing Cuba and the United States shared in common. This is a sport that speaks to the core of the American family – immediate and extended – which is probably why everybody cries at the end of Field of Dreams. And in a way, baseball betting is our way to contribute to all of this.
