Ace of Diamond
Since 2005, the Philippine baseball became a re-emerging sport finishing just behind the three Asian baseball powerhouses. The Philippines became a powerhouse in the ASEAN region and has developed rivalries with Thailand and Indonesia. As part of a growing national revival, the professional Baseball Philippines league was established in 2007, but lasted for 5 years. The league was in 2019 replaced with a brand new league, the Philippine Baseball League (PBL), with a mix of school and corporate teams. In recent years the country's youth baseball contingents have played in the Little League Baseball regional and international qualifiers as well as in other competitions abroad, and have brought not just national prestige, but also increased interest in the sport among Filipinos, reinforced in the mid-2010s with the broadcasts of the Japanese anime series "Major" and "Ace of Diamond" on digital TV channel Yey!, which also doubled up its popularity among the young that now almost every city in the country has a baseball presence, as well as a rising number of public and private elementary and high schools have a youth baseball team, with amateur baseball teams now in the upswing in almost every corner of the country.