Baseball

Baseball in its modern form took shape between the years

1900  and 1930. During this time, baseball became America’s most popular sport because it appealed to Americans of all backgrounds and classes. Baseball supporters proclaimed that the baseball player was the model citizen, because as a team member he subordinated his self to the good of the team. As an individual, he had to make instant judgments on the field. During the time of mass emigration from abroad, proponents of baseball held it up as a tool for integrating all American citizens. At the same time, baseball offered the industrial nation a connection to its rural past. Due to its place in the American psyche, baseball gained widespread popularity, not only among spectators watching professional games, but also in the spread of baseball throughout American institutions and geography.

By 1890 professional baseball leagues had formed as a profit-driven business, in place of the amateur gentleman leagues that had defined the sport previously. The National League, the first formed, functioned as a cartel that controlled the expansion of teams into new cities through charters, the movement of players through the reserve clause, and by unofficially suppressing player salaries. Inserted in every player’s contract, the reserve clause gave the team the exclusive rights to a player unless it traded him or sold him to another team. The National League faced a new challenge to its control around the turn of the century. In 1894, a rival league, the Western League, formed; and by

1901  it renamed itself the American League and claimed status as a major league. The two leagues settled in 1903 by establishing a national commission to rule major league baseball. The new league consisted of eight National League teams and four American League teams.

The decades after the settlement creating the National Commission saw the coming of age of professional baseball as an embodiment of the American character. Baseball emerged in this way for a variety of reasons. First, organized baseball undertook an effort to identify baseball as a uniquely American sport. In 1907, the league set up a commission to study the origins of baseball. Ignoring ample evidence that baseball derived from the British game of rounders, the commission found that Abner Doubleday had created baseball in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York. This history gave baseball its mythical standing as a uniquely American game. In addition to the owners’ efforts, the players themselves provided the heroes who brought the public into the parks. Players in the Major Leagues came from every ethnic background, except African American. Fans could thus identify with players of their own ethnic background. The type of play on the field also led to an increase in popularity. In the first two decades of the 20th century, managers and players employed strategies that became known as scientific baseball. Scientific baseball revolved around strategies for scoring one run at a time. Home runs became scarce as hitters rarely took full swings. This new style of play became popular at a time when craft production was declining. At the ballpark, fans could go to a game and watch their favorite players plying their craft.

The game’s new popularity was evident in the twofold increase in attendance between 1900 and 1910. The owners responded to the new crowds by building new stadiums. Between 1909 and 1923, 15 teams built new concrete and steel ball parks, which attested to the permanency of baseball as an American institution. These ballparks became civic monuments and symbols of a city’s standing as a major metropolitan area. The parks also provided retreats from city life for city residents. For the price of a ticket, one could escape the dirt and noise of the city and enter a nonurban setting of green grass that made a connection to the rural past.

Baseball’s popularity took a brief slide in the late 1910s as a result of World War I and the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal. Because they had suffered financially during the war, team owners suppressed player salaries after the war, when the major leaguers returned. In the 1919 World Series, eight Chicago White Sox players accepted bribes in return for purposely losing the series to the Cincinnati Reds. The ensuing scandal darkened baseball in the eyes of many of its fans. It also led to the creation of the office of commissioner of baseball, which replaced the old three-person commission that had ruled baseball since 1901. One of the first actions taken by the new commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, was to ban the eight White Sox,

Babe Ruth (Library of Congress)

Including the legendary player Shoeless Joe Jackson, from baseball for life.

The 1919 scandal caused only a momentary setback in the game’s popularity. Its recovery was due to the play of one man, Babe Ruth. Ruth almost singlehandedly ended the scientific baseball era. In his second season as a fulltime player, he hit more home runs than all other American League teams combined. Players throughout baseball quickly adapted Ruth’s technique of taking a full swing, and run-scoring soared in the 1920s. In addition to his abilities on the field, Ruth became a larger-than-life figure who endorsed countless consumer products. Ruth, who grew up in a Baltimore orphanage and became the most recognizable figure in American sports, appealed to Americans because he represented what many Americans believed to be their own potential.

Americans did not satisfy their appetite for baseball solely as spectators of professional baseball. Baseball teams popped up throughout America. Towns, companies, colleges, military bases, naval ships, Indian schools, and prisons all had baseball teams. In addition, African Americans, who were not allowed on major league teams after 1890, formed their own teams and leagues. After the turn of the century, women also began to form softball teams, both on college campuses and in town and industrial leagues. Baseball was the first sport to spread through college campuses. Employers established baseball teams. They hoped that participation in the healthy leisure activity of baseball would make workers content and less prone to striking. To stock their teams, companies often resorted to hiring workers solely for their baseball ability. Towns of any size also had their own teams. These teams were made up of local players who played teams from other nearby towns. They also often paid a player or two on their roster so that they could win. In fact, some major league baseball players played for local teams on their off days to earn extra money. By the 1910s, each military base in America had at least one team, and naval captains organized teams and were issued uniforms and equipment as part of their supplies.

The perceived and widely agreed upon beneficial effects of playing baseball led to its use by institutions like federal Indian schools and prisons. Reformers argued that baseball and team sports in general helped build character. The Indian schools aimed at turning their charges into Americans and hoped to use baseball as one of their tools. The rise of baseball coincided with changes in prison organization and baseball became a key component of the new prison reforms that had turned to rehabilitation.

Baseball reflected another part of the American character—racism. Major league baseball barred African Americans beginning in the 1890s. Company teams were segregated by race. African Americans played on some college teams, but those teams often had to cancel games because opponents refused to play against African-American players. African Americans formed their own town teams and semipro teams, and many companies formed teams segregated by race. In the 1920s, a group of African-American teams formed the Negro National League, consisting of six teams that played a league schedule and barnstormed to fill out their schedules. The Negro National League teetered on the brink of extinction throughout the 1920s because it relied on the poorest segment of American society for its attendance. It folded in the 1930s.

See also sports.

Further reading: Benjamin G. Rader, Baseball: A History of America's Game (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992); Harold Seymour, Baseball: The Golden Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971);-, Base

Ball: The People’s Game (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

—Michael Hartman