At a time when many baseball fans wish for the game to return to a
purer past, G. Edward White shows how seemingly irrational business
decisions, inspired in part by the self-interest of the owners but
also by their nostalgia for the game, transformed baseball into the
national pastime. Not simply a professional sport, baseball has been
treated as a focus of childhood rituals and an emblem of American
individuality and fair play throughout much of the twentieth century.
It started out, however, as a marginal urban sport associated with
drinking and gambling. White describes its progression to an almost
mythic status as an idyllic game, popular among people of all ages and
classes. He then recounts the owner's efforts, often supported by the
legal system, to preserve this image. Baseball grew up in the midst of
urban industrialization during the Progressive Era, and the emerging
steel and concrete baseball parks encapsulated feelings of
neighborliness and associations with the rural leisure of bygone
times. According to White, these nostalgic themes, together with
personal financial concerns, guided owners toward practices that in
retrospect appear unfair to players and detrimental to the progress of
the game. Reserve clauses, blacklisting, and limiting franchise
territories, for example, were meant to keep a consistent roster of
players on a team, build fan loyalty, and maintain the game's local
flavor. These practices also violated anti-trust laws and
significantly restricted the economic power of the players. Owners
vigorously fought against innovations, ranging from the night games
and radio broadcasts to the inclusion of African-American players.
Nonetheless, the image of baseball as a spirited civic endeavor
persisted, even in the face of outright corruption, as witnessed in
the courts' leniency toward the participants in the Black Sox scandal
of 1919. White's story of baseball is intertwined with changes in
technology and business in America and with changing attitudes toward
race and ethnicity. The time is fast approaching, he concludes, when
we must consider whether baseball is still regarded as the national
pastime and whether protecting its image is worth the effort.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781400851362
Publisert
2014
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter