Baseball Historians Research Articles

Women's Baseball in the 1860s: Reestablishing a Historical Memory

Women's Baseball in the 1860s:Reestablishing a Historical Memory Debra Shattuck (bio) Theories about the exact origins of our national pastime still evoke lively debate among baseball historians, but one fact needs no debate: throughout the history of "American" baseball, most players and spectators have considered it a masculine sport—wholly unsuited for girls and women.1 In 1856, the New York Times opined, "The game of Base Ball is one, when well played, that requires strong bones, tough muscle and sound mind; and no athletic game is better calculated to strengthen the frame and develop a full, broad chest, testing a man's powers of endurance most severely."2 Harper's Weekly put it more succinctly in 1865 when it proclaimed, "There is no nobler or manlier game than base-ball."3 This sentiment has persisted pretty much unaltered for over a century and a half. Despite baseball's masculine reputation, countless women have embraced the national game as their own. From at least the 1850s onward, American women have played baseball; served as team owners, officers and official scorekeepers; umpired men's and women's games; written about baseball as journalists; and supported their favorite teams as enthusiastically as the most dedicated male "cranks" and "fanatics."4 Accurately portraying the history of women's involvement with the national pastime is a challenge because of the dearth of primary and secondary sources documenting their activities. Until scholars introduced the formal discipline of women's studies in the mid-twentieth century, most recorded history was just that—"his" (men's) story. According to traditional histories of the United States, women's role in shaping the nation was an indirect one: women influenced events through the moral authority they exerted as wives, mothers, and teachers. Not surprisingly, the early decades of serious baseball scholarship that began in the mid-twentieth century reflected the same pattern of historical interpretation: Men accomplished great things on the baseball diamond and women watched from the sidelines, imparting a high moral tone to the proceedings merely through their presence. [End Page 1] The historical misrepresentation of women's involvement with baseball has perpetuated the now deeply ingrained attitude in the United States that the baseball diamond is, and has always been, the sole domain of men. Women are encouraged to watch, but they must not play. This assumption stretches back to the mid-nineteenth century when baseball began to evolve into its present form and assume its lofty status as the national pastime. Women have been unable to establish their legitimacy as baseball players due to the lack of historical memory between generations of women players. In Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century's End, Sara Evans describes how succeeding generations of women's rights activists reinvented feminism because they had little historical memory of those who had gone before them. The same can be said of women baseball players. Each new generation of players thought it was the first because it had no historical memory of preceding generations. Contemporary media perpetuated this historical amnesia by touting each new women's team or player as a "novelty." The letters, diaries, and reminiscences of women players from the nineteenth century onward indicate a similar belief that what they were doing was out of the ordinary and "new." One player from the late 1870s recalled that she and her teammates considered playing baseball "contraband pleasure."5 Because each generation of women players were unable to establish strong links to previous generations, they were unable to alter the perception that they were usurpers of a masculine pastime, not legitimate participants in a gender-neutral sport. With each passing decade that women players were labeled "novelties," baseball's reputation as a masculine sport became more deeply entrenched. Today's female players battle the same prejudices their predecessors faced in the nineteenth century. Only when the historical memory of women baseball players is restored, and only when enough girls and women play the game so that media and spectators no longer consider them "novelties," will the mantra "baseball is for boys and softball is for girls" become obsolete. Contrary to prevailing myths, girls and women have never been...

The Politics of Baseball: Essays on the Pastime and Power at Home and Abroad (review)

Ron Briley, ed. The Politics of Baseball: Essays on the Pastime and Power at Home and Abroad. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. 250 pp. Paper, $39.95. scholars like to say that the game reflects nearly every aspect of American culture. The same might be said for politics, and Ron Briley's The Politics of Baseball: Essays on the Pastime and Power at Home and Abroad brings the two--baseball and politics--together in a collection of essays whose range of topics supports the claim that the national pastime touches most, if not all, of American culture in some way or another. As editor, Briley evenly divides the sixteen essays into two sections, one on domestic politics and the other on international issues. The authors range from notable baseball scholars, such as Robert Elias, to several promising newcomers. Part One, Baseball and Domestic Politics, includes essays on three subjects of interest to Briley in his 2004 book, Class at Bat, Gender on Deck, Race in the Hole. Among the strongest of these is Scott Peterson's work on Lester Rodney, who was sports editor for the Daily Worker from 1936 until he was drafted into World War II. Drawing on primary research from the Daily Worker and New York Times for the 1937 baseball season,. Peterson contrasts the rhetoric of Rodney's reports and columns with those of two mainstream sportswriters, demonstrating that Rodney championed players' rights, agitated very early for the integration of the game, and thus provided a critical voice missing from the sports journalism of the day. Lisa Alexander's essay Are We There Yet? asks whether MLB is ready for an openly gay player. This topic is examined in a more complex and artful manner in Richard Greenberg's 2003 Tony-Award-winning play, Take Me Out; still, Alexander's expository effort adds insight, particularly on the question of possible media reaction. Michael J. Haupert's study, Professional Wages in the Era of Integration, not only illuminates this topic but adds to the variety of methodology of the volume in its use of statistical regression analysis. The remaining four essays in Part I address issues of race, religion, and particular politicians. John Tures tries to calculate whether having played in the majors helps candidates win elections. Though the essay is interesting, the statistical methodology here does not match the quality of Haupert's, especially when Tures tries to compare non-playing candidates with former players. While this essay covers a large group, Raymond Schuck's contribution attempts to show what, if anything, Bob Dole's 1996 election gaffe--referring to Hideo Nomo as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers--cost Dole on the campaign trail. Wendy Knickerbocker's piece on Billy Sunday revisits ground familiar to most baseball historians, but will be valuable to those with little knowledge of Sunday. Addressing religion, race relations, and team public relations, Joshua Fleer shows how these can coalesce for good as he elucidates the reasons Willie Horton, though not in the Hall of Fame, is enshrined with a statue in Comerica Park alongside the five Tigers in Cooperstown. Sam Jethroe's Last Hit, at least for this reviewer, was one of the most interesting essays in the volume. N. Jeremi Duru, a law professor, revisits the 1995 lawsuit that Jethroe brought against MLB for denying his pension. Aside from the interesting story of Jethroe's post-retirement years, the lucid discussion of the judgment against him affords readers a legal perspective rarely seen in baseball scholarship. Focusing on international matters, the second half of the volume opens with two essays on how baseball has been used to promote American interests abroad, each from a different perspective. Russ Crawford sees these efforts as nationalism in the service of imperialism, while Brian Price, a West Point grad and Army officer, believes baseball has served as an Ambassador of democracy and American values (154). …

Playing in Shadows: Texas and Negro League Baseball , and: Our White Boy (review)

Reviewed by: Playing in Shadows: Texas and Negro League Baseball, and: Our White Boy Alan C. Atchison Playing in Shadows: Texas and Negro League Baseball. By Rob Fink, foreword by Cary D. Wintz. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2010. Pp. 188. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9780896727014, $29.95 cloth.) Our White Boy. By Jerry Craft with Kathleen Sullivan, foreword by Larry Lester. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2010. Pp. 272. Illustrations, references, index. ISBN 9780896726741, $29.95 cloth.) In the decades since the 1960s, football, especially the professional game, has greatly increased in popularity, not only in Texas, but throughout the United States. Because of this five-decade growth in the status of America's Game, many Texans are unaware of the National Pastime's past influence on the state's history, including the more than 110 Texas towns and cities that have hosted professional baseball franchises. It is safe to assume then that even fewer are aware of the role of semi-professional and amateur baseball in developing the Lone Star State's culture. And certainly even fewer are cognizant of black Texans' impact on the game at both the state and national levels. With hopes of changing this situation, Playing in Shadows and Our White Boy, both part of the Sport in the American West Series, provide valuable insights into the effects of the game on African American culture and the role of the game in integrating Texas communities. [End Page 343] Rob Fink's Playing in Shadows examines baseball as played by African Americans, both semi-pro and professional, in Texas and the contributions of black Texans to the game at the national level from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Using secondary sources in general and some primary sources, mostly newspaper articles and interviews, Fisk compiles a brief history of black Texans and the summer game, exalting the role of prominent Texas-born African Americans in the success of the professional Negro Leagues. Most prominent, of course, was Andrew "Rube" Foster, to whom Fink dedicates an entire chapter, almost one-tenth of the book. Other notable black Texans who became stars in the Negro Leagues, including Louis Santap, "Smokey" Joe Williams, and Willie Wells, receive appropriate mention in Fisk's chronicle. Because the two chapters on these and other great black stars, many of whom are now enshrined in baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, rely heavily on secondary sources, serious baseball historians and fans of the Negro Leagues are undoubtedly familiar with the information. Still, Playing in Shadows provides a service by not only condensing the key feats of these stars into one monograph, but, more importantly, connecting them to the Lone Star State's overall role in "shaping the state's African American community, as well as the Negro Leagues and the game of baseball" (13). Yet, Fink asserts that the local stars, teams, and leagues had the greater impact and reflect most directly the black culture of Texas in the twentieth century. In the chapters on the professional Texas-Oklahoma-Louisiana League (1929-1931), the various semi-pro leagues, and the Houston Eagles of the Negro American League, Fink's reliance on primary sources is profound and, thus, his contribution to baseball history is most significant. Here the author weaves together various stories of the attempts and, sadly, the failures of organizing leagues, signing players, and attracting fans. As did white teams and leagues, African Americans had to overcome depression and wars. But black owners also had to deal with the civil rights movement and the "push for integration of white teams and leagues" (91). Success of that push eventually doomed both the professional and semi-pro African American teams, statewide and nationally. The integration of professional white baseball, at least at the major league level, is as well documented and well known to even the casual fan and many non-fans as the attempts to integrate black leagues and teams is unknown and undocumented. And Fink does briefly mention Eddie Klep, Lou Chirban, and Louis Clarizion, white players signed by Negro American League teams who "hoped to attract more white fans" (120) in order to compete...

The Union Association

The Union Association has taken a fearsome beating over the years from early baseball historians, many of whom go so far as to argue that it should no longer be accorded major league status. From all appearances, the weight of the evidence is strongly on their side. Several important contributors to the game in the 1880s-most prominently Fred Dunlap, Jim McCormick, and Orator Shaffer-produced statistical achievements in the Union Association that were so far above their season norms that it almost seemed they were professionals playing with amateurs. Others like Hen Moore and Charlie Geggus enjoyed brilliant rookie seasons, only to never again be offered even an invitation to audition for a major league club after the Union Association folded. Yet the much maligned rebel confederation was a burial ground for a number of veteran major leaguers as well.Some, such as Jack Leary, Henry Luff, and Frank McLaughlin, were too hapless, hopeless, and helpless in their personal lives even to survive more than a few weeks against Union Association competition. One notable-Boston pitcher James Burke- disappeared without a trace after his manager, Tim Murnane, complained to the Boston press that he suspected Burke of tanking the last two games he had pitched and accused him of careless and indifferent play. The UA's ranks tended to be filled by marginal talents who had appeared in only a handful of major league games prior to 1884, and then pursued undistinguished careers in the minors afterward. Yet there were several players-still relatively young by baseball standards-for whom the UA was the unexpected last stop in lengthy major league careers. Here are their stories.Bill SweeneyBlond, clean-cut, worldly at an early age, Bill Sweeney was both the Union Association's leading pitcher and its greatest casualty, falling prey to a team captain who abused him to no end. He is the lone pitcher never to have resurfaced in the majors after enjoying a 40-win season. Capable of playing every position on the diamond, Sweeney might have remained in the bigs even after his arm all but fell off had he been a better hitter, but his .221 career average and .497 OPS-mostly compiled against suspect UA competition-was hardly enticing to post-1884 major league teams.Born in Philadelphia, Sweeney began his career as a catcher in 1877 for the amateur Fairmonts and moved to the box the following year. After hurling a 21-inning win and driving home the winning runs with a triple, he was invited to join the independent Philadelphia Athletics for the remainder of the 1878 season. Lured to faraway California that winter, Sweeney launched his pro career in San Francisco as a teammate of Bob Blakiston on the 1879 Californias by winning 13 of 17 decisions and hitting .349. His season highlight came on July 20 when he fanned 18 in an 8-2 win over Oakland. The following year Sweeney switched to the San Francisco Athletics, where he shared the pitching in the early spring with major league star Jim Galvin, who was toying with the notion of jumping the National League's Buffalo team, and Jim Devlin, the banned ex-Louisville hurler. His catcher generally was future major leaguer Tom Dolan. In such company Sweeney could only hope to serve as a utility player and change pitcher, although he did begin to get more work in the box after Galvin ended his holdout in May and headed east to join Buffalo. When he slipped to 8-7 and a .242 BA, California swiftly lost its appeal and he returned to Philadelphia.Slow to mature as a pitcher, Sweeney was not ready to test his arm against big-league competition until 1882 when he was 25 and the American Association's inaugural season was already well underway. Inexplicably, Philadelphia A's captain Juice Latham installed him in center and batted him cleanup in his major league debut, and then put him at cleanup again three days later when he made his maiden pitching appearance. Sweeney performed passably as a pitcher in his rookie season, logging a 9-10 record and a 2. …

Knickerbocker Base Ball: The Birth and Infancy of the Modern Game

Although he seems not to have given it much thought at time, pioneer baseball writer Henry Chadwick eventually came to regard first-ever convention of clubs-in 1857 in York-as a pivotal moment in game's history. With this convention, Chadwick wrote in 1881, base may be said to date its origin as a regular established sport, with authorized rules to govern it. Before 1857, he recalled, base was played under club rules merely, those of Knickerbocker Club of York prevailing in that city. Different rules governed clubs in England and Philadelphia, but after 1857 convention the 'New York game' began to obtain an extended popularity, and eventually it swallowed up Town Ball, and England game, and ten years afterward York rules became national.1Few baseball historians have accorded this first convention prominence Chadwick gave it; but its effect may be even greater than Chadwick supposed. To grasp its import, we need to see where baseball of 1857 came from-to look back to birth of New York in organization of Knickerbocker Base Ball Club.The baseball we know today traces its rules in a direct and undisputed line back through 1857 convention to founding of Knickerbocker Club on September 23, 1845. Baseball before that date is wreathed in uncertainty, but what we do know is enough to show transformative character of Knickerbockers' first rules.The name base ball and published descriptions of baseball-like bat-and-ball games date back at least to 1796, when a German compilation of games for youth included a detailed account of das englische Base-ball.2 From 1820s on, English and American books of outdoor games for described a game variously called rounders, base ball, and goal ball.3 But early descriptions were just that-descriptions; instructions on how to game. One of distinctive features of Knickerbocker rules of 1845 is that they constitute earliest extant codification of rules for playing baseball.The Knickerbockers' game and its rules transformed baseball from informal for to formal sport for adults. To call pre-Knickerbocker baseball play for children is not to say game was never played by adults. It was. A number of Yorkers played baseball for years before Knickerbockers organized, and there is ample evidence of early bat-and-ball by adults.4 What is distinctive about Knickerbockers' first rules is that they stabilized and (as it turned out) permanently institutionalized baseball as an adult game.5The very fact of club's formal organization gave it a substance and visibility that informal could never achieve. Although baseball historians like Robert Henderson and David Block have shown that development of baseball has been an evolutionary process,6 it is also useful to employ a different analogy: to look at formal organization of Knickerbocker Club as birth of baseball after long gestation. With club established and its rules set down in black and white, everyone could see game more clearly-could ponder rules and observe regularly scheduled club exercise, with its combination of familiarity and uniqueness that made it attractive for adults. With birth of Knickerbockers baseball gained a public face.Important among Knickerbockers' innovations, 1845 rules narrowed focus of by creating foul territory7 and forbade soaking (the practice of retiring a runner by hitting him with a thrown ball).8 These new rules promoted a less helter-skelter, more mannerly (read: more adult) form of exercise. Another rule lengthened distance between bases at least 20-35 percent, further distinguishing playing field from those of children's games.9The founding Knickerbockers did not intend their game as mere entertainment- for adults-but neither did they want it to be seriously competitive. …

The Black Stars Who Made Baseball Whole (review)

Reviewed by: The Black Stars Who Made Baseball Whole Christopher J. Schneider Rick Swaine. The Black Stars Who Made Baseball Whole. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005. 296 pp. Paper, $35.00. In 1947 Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier. The Black Stars Who Made Baseball Whole dismisses the idea that once the color barrier was breached black players were allowed unrestricted access to baseball after more than fifty years of institutionalized segregation. Rick Swaine spotlights the inaccuracy of this conception through a meticulous retelling of the tales of those black ballplayers who followed Robinson and were overshadowed by his towering legacy. Portions of the color barrier remained in place for years after integration, stifling the efforts of many talented black players who might have otherwise had more successful Major League careers. The most notable of these, of course, is the great Satchel Paige. Robinson's remarkable social and baseball accomplishments remain among the most recognizable and historically significant achievements in sport; however, the many players who followed in Robinson's footsteps, both literally and figuratively, also experienced their share of staunch bigotry while simultaneously facing an incredible task where failure would certainly come at the [End Page 144] expense of millions of black Americans. Swaine's purpose in this book is to propel the accomplishments of those black ballplayers that followed Robinson into a more prominent place in baseball's narrative about the breaking of the color barrier. With great detail and precision, Swaine notes the incredible persistence and remarkable achievements of these black ballplayers, focusing on the challenges both on and off the field that paved the way for future generations of black players—among them the great Hank Aaron, the last Negro Leaguer to play in the Major Leagues. Robinson dominates most discussions that detail the breaking of the color barrier; however, remaining consistent with the book's title and theme, Swaine devotes only one chapter to Robinson's biography and statistics. Although perhaps a bit too brief, the chapter nevertheless highlights the enormous impact Robinson had upon the game, prompting Swaine to describe Robinson as "the most historically significant baseball player ever" (13). To his credit, however, Swaine avoids rehashing an existent, albeit brilliant, narrative that has been told by a great many baseball historians. Swaine refers to the most notable black ballplayers in the early years of integration—the first twenty black players whose Major League accomplishments were among the best and most significant according to the author—as the "first generation." Although Swaine manages to briefly highlight the efforts of many black players who preceded Robinson, the central premise of the book concerns this "first generation." Swaine manages to effectively weave their collective accomplishments into the dominant Robinson narrative but not before noting the incredible importance of Branch Rickey's "great experiment" (i.e., signing Jackie Robinson) and later Bill Veeck's "greatest publicity coup" (i.e., signing Satchel Paige), each of which established the groundwork for the Robinson narrative. The subsequent success of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cleveland Indians prompts Swaine to highlight the significance of each Major League team's eventual integration, spotlighting the black stars on each team whose remarkable feats accompanied this transition. Despite the success of the aforementioned two teams, the book does note that Major League Baseball was indeed slow to sign other Negro League marquee players. As a stated goal of the book, Swaine brings the feats of black ballplayers to new generations of fans while reacquainting seasoned fans with the vast achievements of black ballplayers besides Robinson. In this respect the book certainly lives up to its goal. Swaine's extremely thorough research even includes a very informative and detailed appendix chronicling, among other things, the complete roster of black Major League players from 1947–1959. [End Page 145] The book has a few shortcomings, the most notable of which is Swaine's zeal to recognize the select few black ballplayers who "never had a chance" in a series of very brief vignettes. Although his intentions are good, these snippets seem in some way to trivialize the otherwise "legitimate" success these players might have had in the Major Leagues. Despite this minor drawback, The Black Stars...

Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson's First Spring Training (review)

Reviewed by: Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Spring Training Lisa Doris Alexander Chris Lamb. Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Spring Training. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. 226 pp. Cloth, $24.95. According to Jules Tygiel, "The Jackie Robinson story is to Americans what the Passover story is to Jews: it must be told to every generation so that we never [End Page 147] forget." Chris Lamb's work is the latest iteration of Robinson's story and the process of reintegrating Major League Baseball. While Blackout does not contain that much more historical information about Robinson's struggles than Arnold Rampersad's Jackie Robinson or Tygiel's Baseball's Great Experiment, Lamb does provide illuminating historical context to the events he discusses. For Lamb, "The story of Jackie Robinson's first spring training captures America as it moved, or staggered, toward its promise of equal rights for all" (7). Blackout includes all of the events baseball historians and enthusiasts expect from a Robinson story: Jackie and Rachel's turbulent journey to Florida; background information on Branch Rickey's process to sign Robinson; as well as the ways in which Jim Crow laws, and the people who upheld them, hindered the reintegration process. In addition to these events, Lamb discusses concurrent racial events, focusing specifically on lynching, race riots, and general racial unrest—all of which strengthen Lamb's claim that America staggered toward equality as opposed to willingly and purposefully moving toward it in a straight line. In a far more innocuous fashion, Lamb's narrative does not flow in a straight line either. The historical context often takes the reader into interesting tangents, such as comparing Robinson's journey to that of Kerry Washington, who helped reintegrate the NFL, and the oft-forgotten Eddie Klep, a white player who signed with the Cleveland Buckeyes. Throughout, Lamb contrasts the mainstream white press' indifference to Robinson's signing with the work of alternative press reporters such as Sam Lacy, Wendell Smith, and Lester Rodney, among others, who called for Major League Baseball's reintegration long before Branch Rickey and Robinson became involved. By weaving discussions about the roles alternative press outlets played in Robinson's story, Lamb presents one of the most interesting concepts of this text: the ways in which the mainstream media was complicit, not only in keeping professional baseball segregated but also by downplaying racial conflicts that occurred within the game at any given time. Lamb asks the poignant question: "if we are to give the journalists and particularly the sportswriters of the 1930s and 1940s a free pass on their coverage of race, at what point—if ever—do we make them accountable?" (181). As Major League Baseball continues to become more multicultural and multinational, and as issues of race, ethnicity, and nationality affect the game, this question will undoubtedly be asked repeatedly. In the end, regardless of how familiar Robinson's story is to readers, Lamb's account is a worthwhile and illuminating read. Copyright © 2007 the University of Nebraska Press

The great encyclopedia of nineteenth century major league baseball

This comprehensive reference work covers the early years of major league baseball from the first game - May 4, 1871, a 2-0 victory for the Fort Wayne Kekiongas over the visiting Cleveland Forest City team - through the 1900 season. Baseball historian David Nemec presents complete team rosters and detailed player, manager, and umpire information, with a wealth of statistics to warm a fan's heart. Sidebars cover a variety of topics, from oddities - the team that had the best record but finished second - to analyses of why Cleveland didn't win any pennants in the 1890s. Additional benefits include dozens of rare illustrations and narrative accounts of each year's pennant race. Nemec also carefully charts the rule changes from year to year as the game developed by fits and starts to formulate the modern rules. The result is an essential work of reference and at the same time a treasury of baseball history. This new edition adds much material unearthed since the first edition, fills gaps, and corrects errors, while presenting a number of new stories and fascinating details. In 1954, David Nemec began the lifetime labor that helped produced this work and admits it may never end, as there always will be some obscure player whose birth date has not yet been found. Until perfection is achieved, this work offers state-of-the-art accuracy and detail beyond that supplied by even modern baseball encyclopedias. More than 1200 statistical additions and corrections have been made since the publication of the first edition. As Casey Stengel, who was born during this era, was wont to say, could look it up. Now you can.

National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer (review)

Reviewed by: National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer Ron Briley (bio) Stefan Szymanski and Andrew Zimbalist. National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005. 263 pp. Cloth, $26.95. I must confess to initial disappointment with this fine volume from economists Stefan Szymanski and Andrew Zimbalist. I teach at a prep school that has earned over a dozen state soccer championships, and my own children [End Page 134] play on youth soccer leagues. I have seen hundreds of soccer games, but I still simply do not understand the game's appeal. In rural West Texas, I grew up playing baseball, while soccer was perceived during the Cold War years of the 1950s and 1960s as some type of dangerous foreign import. After all, soccer was played in communist nations. Szymanski and Zimbalist do not explain the appeal of soccer to a baseball purist, but after reading this volume I do have a better comprehension of why and how soccer evolved into the world's most popular sport. Economists Szymanski and Zimbalist focus upon the histories of soccer and baseball as professional games and analyze the challenges confronting the two sports in the twenty-first century. Baseball scholars will be familiar with the arguments presented by Zimbalist in works such as Baseball and Billions and May the Best Team Win: Baseball Economics and Public Policy. On the other hand, many readers of NINE may be less familiar with the scholarship of Szymanski, who teaches economics at the Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London and is the author of Winners and Losers: The Business Strategy of Football. His insights regarding soccer will expand the horizons of many baseball historians. The authors argue that sport reflects culture and that the gulf between American and European values is most apparent in the histories of professional soccer and baseball. Both games developed during the nineteenth century. The model pioneered by the founders of baseball's National League provided for closed sports leagues. Ownership controls the number of franchises and territorial expansion. Strict limitations are placed on player rosters to keep costs down. In addition to baseball's antitrust exemption, public subsidies are often extracted for stadium construction. Essentially, this is a monopoly formula much at odds with the American rhetoric of free enterprise. World soccer, on the other hand, is based upon the English model in which leagues are open. Depending upon a team's performance, it is possible to move up and down within league hierarchies. This more competitive model owes its origins, according to Szymanski and Zimbalist, to the conflict between amateurism and professionalism within English soccer. This division was papered over with a unified governing body (Football Association), which maintained that clubs were "foremost sporting entities, not profit centers" (p. 5). The competitive nature of soccer as a business and sport in which a team's status in the top leagues is fluid has made many clubs and cities reluctant to invest in stadium construction. Most deaths at soccer matches are due to antiquated stadiums rather than fan violence. The authors, attempting to ascertain what is best for the fans of both sports, conclude that the monopoly structure of baseball will inevitably lead to the exploitation of fans and taxpayers, while [End Page 135] the more competitive nature of the soccer world results in financial pressures which threaten the future of clubs and leagues. With an emphasis upon profits and the nation getting a late start in the imperialist game, baseball monopolists in the United States saw little market incentive for expanding their game internationally. The expansion of soccer was fostered by British imperialism, and the game was adopted by locals who relished in beating the colonialists at their own game. Today, the governing body of world soccer, the Federation Internationale de Football Association (fifa), is a community of nations with 204 members. Baseball, on the other hand, is the national sport only in Japan, the United States, and the Caribbean region. In fact, baseball has been dropped as a sport for the 2008 Olympics. Recognizing the need to seek broader financial...

Playing for Their Nation: Baseball and the American Military during World War II (review)

Reviewed by: Playing for Their Nation: Baseball and the American Military during World War II Bill Swanson (bio) Steven R. Bullock. Playing for Their Nation: Baseball and the American Military during World War II. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. 183 pp. Cloth, $30.00. Numerous books and articles have been written about the state of professional baseball during America's involvement in World War II. The quality [End Page 148] of play during this time was significantly affected by the draining of the talent pool, with many professional baseball players drafted to support the war effort. Most of these books examine how the war affected the professional game in America. Bullock's book, however, provides a unique perspective: a portrayal of baseball within the military establishment during World War II and the inseparable link between baseball and the war effort. Bullock states that "from the turn of the twentieth century to the beginning of World War II, the American people enjoyed an unusual and unprecedented fascination with the game of baseball . . . it personified the nation's values and helped to unify an increasingly diverse population." It was only natural, with the outbreak of hostilities and the United States' forced entry into World War II, that baseball would be an important figure on the American military landscape. Baseball in the military during the war was a morale booster for the American servicemen. It provided a taste of the familiar to countless GIs separated from the comforts of home for the first time in their lives. Military commanders believed that participation in baseball games helped prepare their men both physically and mentally for combat, and served to keep idle servicemen out of trouble. Baseball was also a common denominator for men who were suddenly thrust together from every region of the United States. Through participation and conversation, baseball became a unifying force. In addition to widespread participation by the common gi, exhibitions by professional players became a mainstay of military life. Over ninety percent of the players on Major League rosters at the start of the war eventually played for "Uncle Sam's team." The majority of these professional-baseball-player soldiers continued to play ball while on the government payroll, forming some impressive teams. Naturally, this was a source of pride and bragging rights for military commanders. Bullock recognizes professional baseball for its support of the war effort, which served to appease those who questioned the decision to continue playing baseball during the war. Money was raised for the war effort from the proceeds of the annual All-Star games, the World Series, and designated "relief games." Baseball equipment was donated to the military, and Major League players were enlisted to help promote the sale of war bonds. Bullock also discusses the effect of the war on many professional players. For some, it created speculation on "what might have been" with regard to career totals. For others, the time away from the diamond in a professional capacity proved too costly, as their wartime commitment eliminated their window of opportunity, effectively putting an end to their professional baseball career. Bullock's work is a welcome addition to the baseball fan's library because [End Page 149] of its unique perspective. He makes a strong case for baseball's contribution to America's ultimate success in World War II. He provides an exhaustive account of the many outstanding baseball teams "created" (sometimes by borderline unethical means), which played exhibitions to entertain the troops. Bullock perhaps becomes tedious with details on this topic, but nonetheless he creates a vivid picture of how baseball bolstered military life at all levels of play. Therefore, for the baseball historian, Bullock has provided a piece of the puzzle that has been previously missing. His work is an excellent companion to the numerous books about professional baseball during World War II. Bill Swanson Bill Swanson is the chair of the Department of Physical Education/Recreation at Houghton College in Houghton, New York. For the past eleven summers, he has been the batting practice pitcher for the Buffalo Bisons (triple A affiliate of the Cleveland Indians). Copyright © 2006 the University of Nebraska Press

Television and Minor League Baseball

Minor league baseball flourished in the aftermath of World War II. However, a new technology, television, threatened to broadcast major league games across America. The minor leagues contracted by over a third between 1949 and 1953. Was television the culprit as baseball historians suggest? The diffusion of television does not perfectly match the contraction of the minor leagues. Statistical analysis of television’s effects on minor league teams’ survivability and on surviving teams’ attendance provides mixed support for the historians’ thesis. Instead, the minor leagues over expanded into small towns incapable of sustaining professional baseball when the boom ended.

Uncovering the Fix of the 1919 World Series: The Role of Hugh Fullerton

I have never interviewed someone about his or her grandfather before. But that's where I found myself, not long after stepping onto the trail that leads back into the shadowy events of the 1919 World Series, the "Big Fix," its cover-up, and then its gradual revelation. The grandfather I was learning more about was the first whistle-blower on the "Black Sox Scandal." If he did it today, he might rate as Time's Man of the Year. Hugh Fullerton V, who teaches journalism in a Texas college, got to know his grandfather, the sportswriter Hugh S. Fullerton, for a few years before he passed on in 1945. None of the memories they generated together involved baseball, but they did have fun playing together. Hugh recalled that his grandfather did the cooking in his family; his wife, the driving. I was disappointed to hear that Hugh's grandfather left behind no papers or diaries. After all, in the stories he submitted just after the Series, he had names and dates and places—all edited out by his supervisors, either for fear of libel or perhaps at the request of Charles Comiskey. Hugh Fullerton and Commy were close, and from all accounts, Hugh was very loyal. When he called on baseball to end its shady dealings with gamblers, he exempted Mr.Comiskey.1 In one of his last interviews, Joe Jackson claimed to have told Comiskey about the Fix, in the presence of Hugh Fullerton, before the Series. How great it would be if a journal entry would confirm that tiny detail! The story of the uncovering of the Fix begins with Hugh S. Fullerton. Hugh was born in 1873, and according to Norman L. Macht, he was "the best-known baseball writer in the country" for the first quarter of the twentieth century.2 "A titan of the Chicago press box," Fullerton graduated from Ohio State College and started writing in Cincinnati in 1889.3 He moved to Chicago seven years later and in 1919 was on the staff of the Herald and Examiner. He went on after that to write several books, including some fiction. He was one of the [End Page 39] founders of the Baseball Writers Association of America, and he was awarded the J. G. Taylor Spink Award in 1964. Baseball historian David Q. Voigt quotes Fullerton often in describing how the early game evolved—with Fullerton lobbying for "more dash, less mechanical work, more brains by individuals and fewer orders from the bench."4 Fullerton argued in print for more discipline to curb rowdyism but also gave a voice to the players who felt stifled by the system. Voigt ranks Fullerton with Ring Lardner, Grantland Rice, and Franklin P. Adams—all-star company—as individual stylists. Voigt adds: "In 1919 it was Fullerton's detective work that unraveled the web of fact and rumor and exposed the crooked work of the 'Black Sox.'"5 Rumors Rumors of the Fix were "widespread and detailed" and were not confined to the playing field and locker room. A hundred reporters must have heard them, but Hugh Fullerton was "inquisitive" and "tracking down rumors was a joy of [his] life." Thou shalt not quit was the first of Fullerton's "Ten Commandments of Sports."6 Fullerton's "tireless digging" was assisted by Hall of Fame pitcher Christy Mathewson, who had covered the Series for a New York paper. Matty became Fullerton's "expert witness," diagramming each questionable play. According to Charles Alexander: "Comparing notes, [they] marked seven plays by the White Sox as highly suspect. In several articles over the winter, Fullerton not only questioned the honesty of the Series but discussed specific plays by specific players that had convinced him that something was amiss."7 Fullerton smelled something fishy before the first Series pitches were tossed. The rumors were...

Ghost Writing for Baseball Historian Harold Seymour

(A.K.A. DOROTHY Z. SEYMOUR) At once glorious and ignominious: that characterizes my work with Dr. Harold Seymour, The Gibbon of Baseball, the man who made the American national game a respectable subject for formal study by historians, the author of the first scholarly history of baseball. Glorious because I learned how to perform (and love) research; ignominious because my contribution to the work remained unrecognized until after his passing in 1992, although I spent forty-six years working closely with him, first on his dissertation and then on his three-volume series for Oxford University Press, now the standard reference on the subject. Dr. Harold Seymour, a professor of history as well as a lover of the game, has a well-deserved reputation as an innovator. He boldly opened the field of baseball as a subject for serious study. Before him, no other historian had dared to suggest that the word baseball might be uttered in the same phrase as the word history. Only sportswriters had ever tried their hand at writing baseball history, and the journalistic accounts they produced were so flawed that they earned no standing in the eyes of professional historians. Only one other scholar had previously ventured into the realm of sports history: John R. Betts, who produced a book that attempted to cover the history of all of sport. Before Seymour, no historian had tried to approach the American national game as a subject for serious study. Seymour got the idea for a study of baseball in the early 1940s while casting about for a topic for his Ph.D. dissertation at Cornell University. When he wrote the paper for his master's degree, he felt it necessary to choose a topic from his lead professor's field, which was land policy, but he found it deadly dull. He decided that the only topic that interested him deeply enough to write about it on the doctoral level was baseball. Seymour had always loved the game. As a child growing up near Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, he racked his brain to think of ways to get in to see his heroes. He was thrilled when he was selected to help pick up trash in the park or work on the scoreboard, and he exulted when he was chosen to be bat boy. Moreover, he played the game and coached other young men when he was in high school and continued coaching during college. Although he realized his skills weren't quite good enough for the professional level, he was able to help other young men become pros. When he began undergraduate work at Drew University in New Jersey in the 1930s, he thought he might become a physician, but the long afternoon laboratory courses in science interfered with his baseball play for the college, so he changed his major to history and decided to become a teacher, assuming that he would coach baseball on the side. Unexpectedly finding great pleasure in the study of history, he went on to Cornell for his master's degree and realized that, to teach at the college level, he needed a doctorate. One warm and sleepy afternoon at Cornell, during a class in which Seymour was to present and describe the topic he had chosen for his doctoral dissertation, nodding heads suddenly jerked up as he announced his topic as the history of American baseball to 1890 and explained how and where he planned to perform the research. Although eyebrows lifted among the committee of professors whose responsibility it was to direct doctoral work, Seymour managed to convince the group that he had a viable and suitable topic. Fortunately, at that time he had the New York Public Library at his fingertips and spent long hours there on the wonderful collections of early documents that the library still curates--although recently the administration has been thinking of selling them off to collectors, a sale that may make the collections unavailable to current scholars. At this point, I may have convinced the library's administration otherwise. …

Jackie Robinson and Dixie Walker: Myths of the Southern Baseball Player

The year of 1947 was arguably the most pivotal in the history of major league baseball. Baseball historian William Marshall referred to it as the "season of fury," while Red Barber called it the "year all hell broke loose in baseball." What made that year so important was one player—Jackie Robinson. Prior to his ground-breaking season, black baseball players were barred from the major leagues, limited to playing only against other blacks in front of primarily black fans. That started to change once Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey added Robinson to the major league roster. Although Rickey's "great experiment" sparked protests from other players, it also paved the way for the integration of baseball and other sports. 1

Both Sides of the Box: Two Book Reviews of Uncle Robbie

Uncle Robbie Chuck Partington Jack Kavanagh and Norman Macht. Uncle Robbie. Cleveland OH: Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), 1999. 200 pp. Paper, $12.95. In 1945, the Committee on Old-Timers voted Wilbert Robinson into baseball's Hall of Fame. "Uncle Robbie," as he was known by his peers, was selected for his managerial skills. He had managed in the majors for nineteen years, all but one with Brooklyn. Although he managed in 2,819 games, his winning percentage was exactly .500, not an impressive record when compared to other managers who are in the Hall of Fame. He did lead the Brooklyn team to two pennants, in 1916 and 1920, but they lost to the Red Sox and the Indians in the World Series. In his book on managers, The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers from 1870 to Today, Bill James ranks Robinson forty-fifth on his list (tied with Chuck Tanner). So the question remains, what was there about Robinson ' s career, which spanned more than forty years, and two centuries, that compelled the committee to choose him as a member of the Hall of Fame? In their biography of Robinson, entitled Uncle Robbie, baseball historians Jack Kavanagh and Norman Macht offer a chronological narrative of Robinson's career as a player and manager. (Kavanagh, who died in 1999, was working on the biography when illness forced him to ask for assistance from his friend and longtime collaborator Macht. Together, they finished the book.) "Robbie" was a catcher and team captain of the original Baltimore Orioles, the team that was known for its "scientific baseball" and dirty play and won three consecutive pennants in the National League in the last decade of the nineteenth century. When his playing career ended in 1904, Robinson ran a meat market and a café he had opened some years before in Baltimore with John McGraw. However, baseball was in his blood, and he was soon back in the game, hired by his friend McGraw as a coach for the New York Giants. He was with the Giants for five seasons when he and McGraw had a falling out over an incident in the 1913 World Series. The following year, he was hired to manage Brooklyn by Charlie Ebbets, who owned the team. For the next eighteen years, Robinson was at the helm of the team that became known as "the Robins." As Burt Solomon put it in his study of the old Orioles, Where They Ain't: "Robbie did an honorable job, too often with dismal teams." Kavanagh and Macht do a decent enough job describing the details of Robinson's long career, including his relationship with McGraw when they both were with the Orioles and Giants; his development of pitchers, especially Burleigh Grimes and Dazzy Vance; and his handling of Babe Herman, who was [End Page 153] the daffiest of all the Dodgers. What's missing, however, is any real assessment of Robinson's managerial skills, especially since he is in the Hall of Fame. Was he, like his contemporary McGraw, a skillful strategist? As a disciple of Ned Hanlon, his manager at Baltimore, how did he compare with others whom Hanlon had mentored? During Robinson's long tenure with Brooklyn, the role of the manager changed tremendously, especially in game strategies and administrative duties. (For a good discussion of this, see Bill James's Guide to Baseball Managers, especially the period 1910-30.) Addressing these and other similar questions would have made this a more solid biography and maybe would have helped us understand better why he was selected to the Hall of Fame. It is evident that the authors researched and collected a mass of material in order to write this book. They did research in eight libraries and research facilities and scoured the major newspapers of the period for information on the subject and his era. It would have been helpful if they had identified more closely the use of those sources in the text. This volume cries out for footnotes. Finally, I assume that there must not be a collection of Robinson papers and memorabilia since none are mentioned in the text or in the...

I Am Not a Baseball Historian

When I started studying the history of sport in 1970 there were less than a handful of other historians other than physical educators in the field. Sport was widely considered a flippant subject (but not at the University of Chicago). My dissertation and my first book examined the myths and realities of professional baseball during the Progressive Era to evaluate how the sport influenced, and at the same time reflected American society. The liberalization of college curricula, the popularity of social history and the accompanying interest of publishers opened up the field in the 1980s. Sport historians could get major grants, write for major journals and publishers, and win awards. I went on to write other monographs and edit books, successfully carving out a career studying the subject of my interest, primarily the interplay of sport and urbanization.

I Am Not a Baseball Historian

I Am Not a Baseball Historian