Lately I have been following baseball, and I found out something very shocking. All my life I knew that baseball was an American sport -- and one of America's favorites. I knew that other countries played baseball, but I didn't know that they were taking it as seriously as the United States. While doing research I discovered that the world ranking for baseball has Japan as top one in the list, for men and women teams.

Japan has won the World Baseball Classic twice since the tournament was created. In the 2006 World Baseball Classic, they defeated Cuba in the finals, and in 2009 World Baseball Classic Japan defeated South Korea in 10 innings to defend their title. The national team is currently ranked number one in the world by the International Baseball Federation. The United States is number two then the Chinese Taipei, South Korea, Cuba and the list goes on. If you're interested check out the list here.

Baseball is one of the most popular sports in Japan. It was introduced in 1872 by an American, Horace Wilson, who was an English professor at the Kaisei Academy in Tokyo. The first baseball team was called the Shimbashi Athletic Club and was established in 1878. Baseball has been a popular sport ever since. According to Japan's National Tourism Organization, "Baseball is so popular in Japan that many fans are surprised to hear that Americans also consider it their national sport."

Baseball had become such a significant part of Japanese culture that when a great many of the Japanese-Americans were sent to Internment camps during World War II they built baseball diamonds. For many, baseball served as a saving grace during their time in the "war relocation camps." There are many books on the topic, such as Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki. It is told from a young Japanese boy's point of view about going to the internment camps during World War II. Due to having nothing to do, his father decided to build a baseball field for everyone to use.

They funneled water from irrigation ditches to flood what would become our baseball field. The water packed down the dust and made it hard. There weren't any trees, but they found wood to build the bleachers. Bats, balls, and gloves arrived in cloth sacks from friends back home. Moms took the covers off mattresses and used them to make uniforms. They looked almost like the real thing.

The first Japanese professional league was formed in 1936, and by 1950 had grown big enough to divide into two leagues, known as Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). (It is called Puro Yakyū, which simply is a translation of professional baseball.) The Central League included the established teams, and the Pacific League was made up of new teams and players. The Pacific League uses the designated hitter style of play. The pro baseball season is eight months long with games beginning in April. Teams play 144 games (as compared to the 162 games of the American major league teams), followed by a playoff system, culminating in a championship held in October, known as the Japan Series.

The rules are essentially those of Major League Baseball, but technical elements are slightly different: The Nippon league uses a smaller baseball, strike zone, and playing field. The Japanese baseball is wound more tightly and is harder than an American baseball. The strike zone is narrower "inside" than away from the batter. Five Nippon league teams have fields whose small dimensions would violate the American Official Baseball Rules.

Also unlike MLB, game length is limited and tie games are allowed. In the regular season, the limit is twelve innings, while in the playoffs, there is a fifteen-inning limit (Games in Major League Baseball, by comparison, continue until there is a winner; the 2002 All-Star Game, an exhibition game, was a notorious exception.) Additionally, since the 2011 NPB season, an inning occurring three hours and thirty minutes after the first pitch was the final inning, due to power limits imposed because of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and Tsunami.

A team cannot have more than four foreign players on a 25-man game roster, although there is no limit on the number of foreign players that it may sign. If there are four, they cannot all be pitchers nor all be position players. This limits the cost and competition for expensive players of other nationalities, and is similar to rules in many European sports leagues' roster limits on non-European players.

In each of the two Nippon Professional Baseball leagues, teams with the best winning percentage go on to a stepladder-format playoff (three vs two, winner vs one). Occasionally, a team with more total wins has been seeded below a team that had more ties and fewer losses and, therefore, had a better winning percentage. The winners of each league compete in the Japan Series.

Sports are such a beautiful thing. The world uses sports as a language to connect and communicate. Competing in the same sport fairly between different countries is an amazing cultural movement.