With high-resolution images all over the globe, Google Earth has captured many sporting events actually in-progress, so today we proudly present – The Top 10 different sports you can actually see people playing on Google Earth!

As a bonus, we’ve tried to work out how each game is going, and to make things even more difficult for ourselves, we’ve limited our search to ballgames only.

10. First let’s look at the 2nd of the 18-hole Las Vegas Country Club Golf Course, where we see the pin lying on the grass and the person closest playing their putt. Everyone else is standing around, probably telling him to hurry up.

9. As the world’s most popular sport, there must be hundreds of games of football being played at any one second. Here we see students playing “the beautiful game” at the University of Tokyo. However, this looks like it’s just a practise session as there’s no goalie at either end.

8. There’s people playing tennis all over the globe but for the top 10 we’ve chosen these two games of doubles being played on clay in Germany.

The eastern game is in full swing, and on the western court the players are standing in their service positions, and judging from the shadows it looks as if the southern team are about to serve!

7. There’s a good turnout for Lawn Bowls at Bell Vue Park Bowling Green in Newport, Wales. Sadly the bowls are just too small to be seen so we can’t tell how the games are going.

6. The stands are filling up at Yankee stadium, and there’s a couple of people on the field, but we’re a little too early for the game.

Hmm, we’ll need another baseball game in progress… here’s four!

In the thumbnail we see a batter up at the plate, and I think the bases are loaded.

5. The Shay in Halifax, England is also used for football games, but today it’s a home game for local rugby league team Halifax RLFC.

The ball is probably somewhere in the west of the pitch and the team to the north are on the offensive.

4. They’re playing lacrosse in Salamanca, New York. You can tell that it’s a men’s game as there are 20 players on the pitch (women’s lacrosse would have 24 players).

3. Here is a cricket match being played in the village of Hoylandswaine, north of Sheffield. It looks like they’re between plays, as the batsman has stepped back from the wicket to the west and we can see the other batsman and the bowler at the eastern end.

2. Here we see a packed gameday at Seahawks Stadium (now Qwest field) with 63,588 people watching the Nevada Wolf Pack at Washington State Cougars on August 31, 2002.

Google Earth Community member GEChump managed to identify the exact play seen in the photo, making this 11:37 remaining in the second quarter with the game tied at 7.

The Cougars eventually went on to win 31-7.

1. Finally, we find a tense one-on-one street-Basketball game being played in Rolde, Netherlands. Due to the left-hand player’s poor defence the right-hand player has just taken a shot at the basket, however they’ve missed and the ball is rebounding back.

Have you found a ball game on Google Earth not mentioned here? Let us know!

Thanks: heamit, mike, Kegan, seamus, Jeff, John Culbert, Jeni, Kristen, Mark, shuvman, vancantona, silkobilko, Crebbin, patmonahan, Majoska, pttech, Adam Rus, Ian, Arlene and the Google Earth Community.

Parking in the Hague has got so difficult that some people are having to take extreme measures – parking on the side of buildings!

This is actually the work of artist Theo van Laar, who has continued the car park markings up the wall and attached a gravity-defying Mini. At night time the car’s headlights even light up! You can see the work from the ground during the day or at night.

Thanks: caelestis & Google Earth Blog

There’s an odd fish-shaped clearing in the forest just outside the Dutch city of Ommen.

However, even using my best Google searching abilities, I can’t find any information on whether or not the clearing is a natural phenomena or a man-made advert for a great fishing spot.

If it is a fishing spot then we could say there’s both fish in the pond and pond in the fish

Thanks: koen L

Here we see that someone has carved the word Lonsdale into the crops of a small field in the Dutch town of Veenendaal.

The name “Lonsdale” could refer to many things; towns, travel agents, accountants, or colleges – but probably the most widely recognised is Lonsdale clothing, a UK brand of sports and fashion wear, particularly aimed at the boxing market.

Sadly, Lonsdale the clothing company had nothing to do with this advert, as it was probably created by right-wing extremists – it seems that here in the Netherlands some of them have adopted Lonsdale branded clothing as their unofficial uniform. Allegedly a carefully placed jacket can leave only “NSDA” showing, which is one letter short of NSDAP, the German acronym for Hitler’s Nazi Party.

It’s comforting then that these particular small-minded idiots appear to be incapable of writing 8 simple letters without getting them upside-down and back-to-front

Thanks: Guardian, Berend & Frans Willemse

Welcome to the third in a series that has seen competitive homeowners across the globe vying to emulate the affluence of their immediate neighbours – Keeping up with the Joneses Part 3! (Also see part 1 and part 2)

This time we’re in Edinburgh, Scotland, where the residents of Corstorphine appear to have been put under some considerable pressure to become the proud owners of their very own trampoline.

I actually couldn’t believe how many of these things there are – here’s one, and another, and another, and another! In fact the list goes on and on and on and on and on and on! I’d particularly like a shot on one of these ones, just to see if – by leaping from a nearby roof – you could make it all the way to one of next-door’s trampolines…

While we’re on the subject, Wilfred van Breda sent us this link to a barge in Rotterdam harbour, which he claims is owned by a friend and actually has a trampoline on board. Hmmm.

The same vessel actually appears elsewhere in the harbour too. Unless of course, this type of craft comes standard with a trampoline…

Thanks to Wilfred van Breda.