Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself

White, G. Edward

ISBN 10: 0691058857 / ISBN 13: 9780691058856

Published by Princeton University Press, 1998

About this Item

Softcover. Clean and glossy pictorial covers of a baseball diamond with red and blue lettering on the cover and white on the spine. Signature of the author, G. Edgar White, on half-title page. No date on title page. Copyright page dated 1996. 368 pages. Interiors are clean and unmarked. A handful of black-and-white photos throughout. A very good copy.

Seller Inventory # 18-2928

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691058857
• ISBN 13: 9780691058856
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

At a time when many baseball fans wish for the game to return to a purer past, G. Edward White shows how seemingly irrational business decisions, inspired in part by the self-interest of the owners but also by their nostalgia for the game, transformed baseball into the national pastime. Not simply a professional sport, baseball has been treated as a focus of childhood rituals and an emblem of American individuality and fair play throughout much of the twentieth century. It started out, however, as a marginal urban sport associated with drinking and gambling. White describes its progression to an almost mythic status as an idyllic game, popular among people of all ages and classes. He then recounts the owner's efforts, often supported by the legal system, to preserve this image.


Baseball grew up in the midst of urban industrialization during the Progressive Era, and the emerging steel and concrete baseball parks encapsulated feelings of neighborliness and associations with the rural leisure of bygone times. According to White, these nostalgic themes, together with personal financial concerns, guided owners toward practices that in retrospect appear unfair to players and detrimental to the progress of the game. Reserve clauses, blacklisting, and limiting franchise territories, for example, were meant to keep a consistent roster of players on a team, build fan loyalty, and maintain the game's local flavor. These practices also violated anti-trust laws and significantly restricted the economic power of the players. Owners vigorously fought against innovations, ranging from the night games and radio broadcasts to the inclusion of African-American players. Nonetheless, the image of baseball as a spirited civic endeavor persisted, even in the face of outright corruption, as witnessed in the courts' leniency toward the participants in the Black Sox scandal of 1919.


White's story of baseball is intertwined with changes in technology and business in America and with changing attitudes toward race and ethnicity. The time is fast approaching, he concludes, when we must consider whether baseball is still regarded as the national pastime and whether protecting its image is worth the effort.

About the Author

G. Edward White is University Professor and John B. Minor Professor of Law and History at the University of Virginia. His books include The Marshall Court and Cultural Change, 1815-1835 and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self.