What is your favorite spectator sport? Is it football, baseball, or basketball? Which team do you cheer for the strongest and the loudest? Do you root for the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Philadelphia Phillies, or the Miami Heat? Spectator sports, or sports that you watch, are incredibly popular in the United States. Last YEAR, over 73 million people attended baseball games, and the Super Bowl had a television audience of 111 million! Now that’s a lot of HOT dogs! But football, baseball and basketball are relatively new sports, invented in the 19th century. Have you ever wondered who people cheered for 3,000 years ago? How about these guys! The Beginning of TeAm SpoRts The ancient Greeks may have had their Olympics, and the Romans their gladiators, but when it comes to team sports, nobody beat the Maya. The first sport played by teams with a hard rubber ball was invented in Mesoamerica, probably by the Olmec. The game was played by many civilizations in this region, and evolved over time. Archaeologists aren’t entirely sure what the Maya called their version of the game, but they do know that it was a little bit like volleyball and a little bit like basketball. The Maya played ball on a field that was shaped like the capital letter I. The ball, made out of rubber, was about the size of a volleyball and weighed between 6 to 10 pounds. Players would play on teams of two to four. Each team passed the ball back and forth between themselves and members of the opposing team. They were only allowed to hit the ball with their legs, arms and hips. Hitting with the hands was not permitted. On either side of the I-shaped court, stone hoops were attached to either an inclined or vertical wall. Maya ball players shot the ball through these hoops in order to score points. This was extremely difficult to do. The hoops were not oriented as our basketball hoops are, and REMEMBER, no hands! Centuries ago, a visitor from Spain who watched a Maya ballgame had this to say: “A man, throwing it by hand at close range, could not put it in once in one hundred tries, nor in two hundred.” Explanation:hope it HELPS pls mark me as brainliest