ABSTRACT
In the global age, nations remain actors on courts and fields. Using sport for national self-definition became the global thing to do. International competitions, as noted, helped to reinforce that norm. Early-modern nation-building did more than give cultural backing to emerging states: it also made the nation the norm. The status of ‘national’ games is not fixed in any case, showing that the nation is not a uniform, and uniformly important, container of identities. Though Americans did not invent professionalism, American commercial sport marketing and media packaging have also influenced the business of sport elsewhere. In turn, foreign talent has altered domestic games in both baseball and basketball. A generation’s work in the history and sociology of sport has shown the varied resilience of nations and national identities, new pressures exerted on them by globalization, and the complex ways national identities are being redefined in sporting arenas.
