Done a lot of traveling throughout Latin America during the winter and saw a lot of baseball being played. That will not change. The average NBA player is 6'6", 216 pounds. How many humans are on the planet with those measurements, let alone having the athletic ability to play in the NBA? Latin America is not known for having many tall people. No one cares how tall you are in baseball, well, unless you're playing first base.
In Eastern Europe and the Baltic Republics, it's soccer or basketball, not much else. Can't play baseball in those freezing winters. I'm not surprised that the best player in the world today has the name of Nikola Jokic.
Doesn't matter. Average American isn't NBA or NFL size either.
Let's not knock short guys, we can see it with our own NFL team and Deuce and Turpin. I have travelled through Asia, and I can tell you that the average Asian man is usually fairly small, but doesn't matter if you have god given athletic skill and baseball is signing them up. I know baseball doesn't need size as much, but all pro sports have bigger sizes.
I think the bigger picture though is if you build the grassroots leagues, you eventually end up with the overflow of 6'6" guys just like Europe did with the NBA. We take it for granted in our country because recruiting starts young. Some of these guys are groomed from age 8. Shoot, look at Coach Prime, he has a roster of kids who have been playing with him since Pop Warner.
Nevermind the recruiting though, How many 6'6" guys got pulled by their junior high coach to play for the team? A lot. The other countries don't have that infrastructure. Just saying.... it could work. We have a lot of advantages in our country that make it work, and it won't be easy, but I believe in this sport, and know it's just waiting for the right leadership to take it international.
