Something about Baseball: Gentrification, “Race Sponsorship,” and Neighborhood Boys’ Baseball

Abstract

This article examines the factors behind a story of racial accommodation in an unlikely space, one formerly renowned for racial violence and exclusion. The space of boys’ baseball provides an opportunity to understand how class and racial changes in a formerly White, working-class neighborhood of Philadelphia, unfolded over a 30-year period. With gentrification, came new class and racial encounters on the local baseball field. The author’s research included participation as a “bench Mom” over a decade, 2 years of ethnographic fieldwork involving observations of more than 100 games in two boys’ age divisions, and 40 in-depth interviews with coaches and parents of players. Factors identified as central to the smooth racial integration of the space are the centrality of baseball to neighborhood “character,” a demographic shortage of White neighborhood children, the “racial sponsorship” of the first Black middle-class children, a growing external accountability toward new Black politicians, and the unique character of baseball itself.