Sports

Sports in the post-World War II period underwent changes that reflected Americans’ increased leisure time and eagerness to find new means of recreation and entertainment.

The world of sports experienced tremendous transformations during the decades immediately following World War II. These changes encompassed almost every aspect of the games, including who was allowed to play, where the teams played, and how audiences experienced the games. These changes, although often highly controversial, fueled the growth and prosperity of sports in America, allowing them to become even more powerful and pervasive as cultural forces.

A variety of sports vied for Americans’ attention in the postwar years. While many people participated in organized sports, particularly in high school and college, they also found themselves engaged vicariously as spectators of professional sports that became increasingly popular. In 1945, baseball was the undisputed king of sports, with no real challenger. Although boxing could attract large crowds and tremendous levels of interest for isolated events, especially for charismatic fighters such as Muhammad Ali, no sport could compete with baseball over an entire season. Football, basketball, and hockey lagged far behind in terms of popularity, and they were generally seen as less significant, and sometimes barely respectable, endeavors. During the postwar period, however, football came to challenge baseball’s supremacy in the public eye, and the other sports took purposeful strides as well.

In the 1940s, most major professional sports teams were concentrated in the Northeast, with a few teams in the Midwest. Although the National Football League (NFL) and the short-lived All-America Football Conference fielded teams in California, not until 1958, when Walter O’Malley moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles, did baseball move west. During the 1950s and 1960s, as the NFL together with its rival from 1960 through 1969, the American Football League, competed for markets, they established teams in Denver, Kansas City, Oakland, Dallas, Houston, and New Orleans, among other cities. Baseball did not migrate as vigorously, but by 1968, there were teams in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Kansas City, and several other teams had migrated within the East and Midwest.

More revolutionary than the expansion and migration of professional franchises were the shifts in the access Americans had to the teams and their games. Since the 1920s, American had been able to listen to sports on the radio, with the broadcasts creating strong allegiances across broad listening areas. The explosive popularity of television in the 1950s transformed the way Americans enjoyed sports. With television, Americans could watch games from the comfort of their own homes, with a markedly better view of the action than stadium seats provided. In 1958, around 800 professional baseball games were broadcast on television, and by the 1960s, professional football was gaining prominence, largely through its appeal to television audiences. College football, also televised, became equally popular at this time. The expanded interest in and access to top-level professional teams translated into diminished crowds for the smaller, minor leagues.

An influx of new teams combined with existing ones created a professional sports landscape that more closely mirrored the demographics of the United States, as players on the field slowly began to resemble the city populations they represented. Jackie Robinson earned his significant place in American history in the late 1940s as a trailblazer when Branch Rickey signed him to play baseball and integrate the Brooklyn Dodgers and its allwhite organization. Prior to Robinson’s signing, he and other African-American professional baseball players could play only in the Negro leagues on teams that supplemented their normal league schedules with barnstorming tours across the United States, Canada, and Latin America. After Robinson began his tremendously successful Dodger career in 1947, there was no denying the fact that African-American ballplayers deserved opportunities to play in the big leagues. After a 13-year span in which African-American ballplayers won nine National League Most Valuable Player Awards and the same number of Rookie of the Year Awards few could argue that the sport benefited from black athletes. Not incidentally, the country was better off as well, as these players provided inspiration to numerous Americans who joined the Civil Rights

Green Bay Packers playing Detroit Lions in September 1967 (NFL)

Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. The Negro leagues, however, suffered and eventually failed as their stars and crowds flocked to the major leagues. Professional football, basketball, and tennis also integrated at roughly the same time but with much less fanfare.

By the end of the 1960s, professional baseball and professional football were in a close competition for the hearts, eyes, and wallets of the American viewing public. This shared preeminence did not occur because of a lack of alternatives. On the contrary, the National Hockey League’s six teams, located in northern U. S. cities and several in Canada, secured a small television contract and intensely loyal followings by the end of the 1950s. The National Basketball Association (NBA), formed in the late 1940s with the merger of two rival leagues, did not challenge professional football and baseball for sporting supremacy in part because its owners proved too competitive. Unable to cooperate with each other, they did benefit from steady growth. During the 1950s, basketball teams in Pittsburgh, Toronto, St. Louis, and Sheboygan all failed to survive. Although some great teams and rivalries developed during the 1950s and 1960s, the NBA was not nearly as prominent as it later became. Throughout these years, professional tennis and golf provided sporting alternatives for men, and, after the elimination of the All-American Girls’ Baseball League in 1954, the only real professional options for athletic women.

Further reading: Randy Roberts and James S. Olson, Winning Is the Only Thing: Sports in America since 1945 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).

—Brad Austin