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Activities: Context Activities
Baseball: An American Pastime
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[8526] Ansel Adams, Baseball Game (1943), courtesy of the Library of Congress, Ansel Adams Manzanar War Relocation Photographs [LOT 10479-4, no. 22].
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Questions Archive
When Alexander Cartwright, founder of the New York Knickerbockers team, published rules for his baseball team in 1845, a new national pastime was born. The game of baseball gained popularity throughout the rest of the nineteenth century and was featured in Mark Twain's 1889 novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. During the second half of the nineteenth century, playing baseball became an important symbolic activity in America, as teams tied together communities and defined a new way of belonging or not belonging. As early as the 1880s and 1890s, immigrants learned to play baseball in order to shed their greenhorn status and to show their enthusiasm for something truly American. This transformation is recounted in Chaim Potok's The Chosen (1967) and Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers (1925).
The turn of the century saw the creation of the American League and the two-league system that we are familiar with today. Though professional baseball players in the early part of the twentieth century were largely drawn from colleges, by the 1920s professional players were much more likely to come from the lower and middle classes. Sons of immigrants and midwestern farm boys could rise through the expanding professional farm system and eventually shine on the diamond. These rising stars in baseball helped solidify yet another version of the popular "rags to riches" story. In the 1950s, a number of teams finally moved west, to Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Los Angeles, making the sport more locally available to a wider audience. Baseball often mirrored society at large and reflected its overall attitudes, values, and trends. Organized baseball was racially segregated for decades after its creation. Many cities created their own separate Negro baseball teams that featured outstanding players such as Cool Papa Bell, Josh Gibson, and Satchel Paige.
World War II caused people to question segregation practices and led to the opening of the game to new types of players. One important wartime innovation was the All-Girls Professional Baseball League, in existence from 1943 to 1954. Since many professional male ballplayers and other young men were off serving in the military, women were recruited to play baseball on teams mostly located throughout the Midwest. However, these careers, too, reflected trends in society at large. The codes of conduct and rules of play for these women were much different than they were for male professional players. When the men returned from the war, women baseball players were expected to return to their previous professions and lives, as were the women who took over assembly-line work during the war.
In 1947 Jackie Robinson (1919-1972) became the first African American to officially play in the major leagues. His breaking of the color line was just the beginning of a long struggle for equal status and pay. Racist comments, hate mail, segregated housing, and death threats were to be an everyday part of the game for African American major league players for years to come. When Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's home run record in 1974, he too received racial slurs and death threats. It wasn't until the 1980s and 1990s that African Americans entered the ranks of major league baseball management. The game of baseball tended to reflect in a highly visible public forum some of the backlash against the civil rights movement and the exclusion of people of color from other venues of society.
Jewish players had not been strictly prevented from playing baseball-Hank Greenberg played for the Detroit Tigers in the 1930s and made no effort to hide his religion-but Sandy Koufax, a pitcher for the Dodgers from 1955 to 1960, proved that Jews too could be sports heroes in American postwar culture. Other Jewish players also made a name for themselves. Buddy Myer, an infielder for the Senators, won the batting title in 1935. Al Rosen was a four-time All Star third baseman for the Indians in the 1950s, and Steve Stone, pitching for Baltimore, won the 1980 Cy Young Award. Chaim Potok's novel The Chosen begins its investigation into the conflict between modern orthodox and Hasidic Jews with a baseball game played by teams from the two groups.
Baseball not only reflected changes in race relations in this country, but also brought the subject of labor relations into a much broader cultural context. The "reserve clause" in baseball basically bound a player to one team throughout his career. It took away any right of "free agency," whereby a player could offer himself to the highest bidder. A Supreme Court ruling in November 1953 kept baseball's exemption from antitrust laws in place and the reserve clause in effect. In 1964, players formed a union, the Major League Baseball Players Association, and it took twenty-five more years before a form of "free agency" became available to major league players. These struggles between players and team owners reflect some of the conflict that occurred between labor unions and industry or powerful landowners that is discussed in Unit 12.
Not surprisingly, baseball functions as an important trope in the literature of this era. It stands as an icon for something truly "American." It also, along with other sports, emphasizes the skills and importance of the individual along with the necessity of group organization and collaborative cooperation. Many major American writers have used baseball as subject matter, as exemplified by Ring Lardner's You Know Me, Al, Bernard Malamud's The Natural, and Philip Roth's The Great American Novel.
Questions
- Comprehension: In what ways does the history of baseball in the United States play off the American Dream?
- Comprehension: How does baseball reflect other aspects of American culture?
- Comprehension: Baseball is an important symbol of American-ness in Invisible Man and Goodbye, Columbus. What made baseball such an important symbol of American culture?
- Context: How are the individual and collaborative aspects of baseball reflective of important elements of American society at large?
- Exploration: Baseball is just one example of America's preoccupation with sports and entertainment. Why do you think American culture has this keen interest? What function do sports and entertainment play in your own life? How are sports and entertainment similar to and different from literature and the arts?
Archive
[1992] Anonymous, African American Baseball Players of Morris Brown College, with Boy and Another Man Standing at Door, Atlanta, Georgia (c. 1900),
courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-114266 DLC].
At this traditionally African American institution in Atlanta, baseball has a long and proud history. During the second half of the nineteenth century, playing baseball became an important symbolic activity in America, as teams tied to-gether communities and defined a new way of belonging. The sport was featured in novels such as Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889).
[5162] Dorothea Lange, Fourth of July, near Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1939),
courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USF34-020010-E DLC].
Although baseball had been played widely throughout the United States, using local rules, since the early 1800s, it is said to have been "invented" when Alexander Cartwright formulated formal rules and regulations in 1845; by the 1860s it was widely thought of as America's "national pastime." People from all walks of life played baseball, from immigrants in the late nineteenth century to the depression-era men pictured here.
[6732] Kenji Kawano, Navajo Indian Boys Playing Baseball (2001),
courtesy of Kenji Kawano.
For over two centuries, baseball has been a popular American sport that has attracted players from a number of ethnic, cultural, and economic backgrounds. It wasn't until 1947, however, that major league baseball allowed non-white players.
[8500] Anonymous, Gary Works Baseball Team (1912),
courtesy of the Calumet Regional Archives, Indiana University Northwest.
Members of the baseball team sponsored by the U.S. Gary Steel Works in Indiana. Workers tried out for such teams and practiced in their free time.
[8526] Ansel Adams, Baseball Game (1943),
courtesy of the Library of Congress, Ansel Adams Manzanar War Relocation Photographs [LOT 10479-4, no. 22].
Photograph of a baseball game in one of the Japanese internment camps. In spite of the discrimination against Japanese Americans during World War II, many claimed to wish for a chance to prove their loyalty.
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