total number of participating players

It'll take a bit of work but you can go on MaxPreps and count all the teams they have in their database and then multiply by about 18 to find the number of varsity participants.

What percentage of high school teams are in MaxPreps? People in our area usually haven't heard of it.

The "High School Players Guide to College Baseball" estimates 15,720 high school baseball teams in the U.S., it was published about five years ago.

This Page on HSBBW says there are 455,000 HS baseball players in America.

Do those numbers count sub-varsity level players or varsity only? From a participation standpoint, these numbers would obviously be higher if they are included in the mix. Using the 455k/15.7k here, it's 29 players per team which would indicate sub varsity players are included.

quote:

Originally posted by pseudoi:
I am researching an article about baseball's position as America's #1 sport (in terms of participation) I would like to know if anyone knows, or has any estimate on, how many participants there are in high school baseball. (if anyone knows about youth leagues, etc. also I would like that too)

I would contact the NFHS. They are the controlling body for the majority of HS sports....Their website is www.NFHS.org

I would expect that the websites for most youth organizations would have some data or a contact for your research...

America's #1 sport (in terms of participation) is a very broad term. Since you are including youth leagues, I'm going to have to say you will be hard pressed to disprove that sokker has the most participants. All baseball players are of the male persuasion with very few exceptions. Males and females both play that other sport, so it's likely the numbers could be almost double. Do you consider participants that may have only played for a season? If so, I think even infidel_son would be included from many years ago.

Of course a good statistician can always manipulate the terms to prove your theory.