Final answer:
The second sentence, 'America's pasttime is baseball, but the country spends more money on football,' is punctuated correctly, as it appropriately uses a comma before the coordinating conjunction 'but' to separate two independent clauses.
Step-by-step explanation:
The sentence punctuated correctly is: America's pastime is baseball, but the country spends more money on football. This sentence uses a comma before the coordinating conjunction 'but' to join two independent clauses. In written English, when two independent clauses are combined in a single sentence with a coordinating conjunction (such as 'and', 'but', 'for', 'nor', 'or', 'so', or 'yet'), a comma is typically used before the conjunction for proper punctuation.
Example 2 from the reference information, 'Quentin's father gave him a golden pocket watch, which was a priceless family heirloom,' provides another illustration of proper comma use. Here, the comma separates the independent clause from a nonrestrictive relative clause, providing additional information without affecting the overall sentence structure