Baseball and the Cold War: An Examination of Values

Abstract

Despite drug problems and compe tition from a multitude of other enter tainments, the game of baseball retains its hold on contemporary ado lescents, both male and female, and can be used to decode the complexi ties of the Cold War. In fact, it can be argued that the current problems confronting the sport show that base ball continues to present a view of American society in microcosm. As writer Roger Angel? has observed, baseball is an ageless sport in which time is seamless and invisible, a bubble within which players move at exactly the same pace and rhythms as their predecessors. Along with most Americans, base ball entered the post-war era with confidence. At the end of the war in 1945, the sport witnessed a new high of nearly 11 million fans attending major league games; this mark was shattered in 1946 as over 18 million fans, perhaps representing a pent up demand for the sport following the turbulent war years, jammed the parks. Attendance continued to climb in 1947 and 1948, reaching over twenty million in the latter year. Why was baseball so successful following the war? Spokesmen for the sport emphasized the importance of consensus. In a 1948 speech be fore the first Minor League Execu tives Conference, Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the man who had brought Jackie Robinson to the major leagues in 1947, listed what he considered the attributes for success