Baseball and Twenties Culture
- Leisure
- Age of Folk Games to Player to Spectator (Rader)
- "Baseball Players Practicing," by Thomas Eakins 1875
- work week declined from 60 to 48 hours, Sunday closing laws repealed, growing use of automobile, attendance increased 50%, $200 million spent by consumers for sporting goods, including golf
- leisure was pragmatic and entertaining and immediately gratifying, such as Coney Park, not reflective and uplifting like Olmstead's Central park or Carnegie's libraries.
- Urbanism
- big new urban stadiums such as the new 1923 Yankee Stadium replace smaller, intimate pastoral parks such as the old New York Polo Grounds
- Downtown stadiums built specifically for baseball, with comfortable seats close to the asymmetrical field, such as Fenway in Boston, Wrigley in Chicago, revived in recent stadiums such as Camden Yards in Baltimore that opened in 1992, with capacity of only 48,000 for more intimate views of the field, with cast iron armrests salvaged from the Polo Grounds, with a shorter right field of 319 ft. like Yankee Stadium's 296 ft.
- Media
- sports content of newspapers increased, in Muncie Indiana from 4% in 1914 to 16% in 1923, 25% of newsreels
- KDKA broadcast its1st game by radio in 1921 from Philadelphia
- Graham McNamee was 1st professional baseball announcer 1923 at WEAF
- "called shot" by Babe Ruth Oct. 1, 1932, against pitcher Charlie Root when Yankees defeated Cubs, reported by Joe Williams in his local baseball column and made national news 3 days later by Paul Gallico in the NY Daily News: "He pointed like a duelist to the spot where he expected to send his rapier home."
- Corporatism
- sports was "a managed celebration for commercial ends" (Seymour)
- "Organized" baseball since National League 1876, American League 1903
- Branch Rickey in St. Louis created farm system, and by 1952 the majors owned 55% of 319 minors.
- Charles Cominsky moved Minn. team to Chicago in 1900 and named it White Sox, very tight-fisted, would not clean uniforms or pay decent wages
- 1919 "Black" Sox gambling scandal led by Chick Gandil who threw World Series to Cincinnati, resolved by Judge Kenesaw Landis, 1st commissioner of baseball representing owners, 8 players from Chicago White Sox, including Shoeless Joe Jackson ("Say it ain't so, Joe"), were fired but not convicted
- 1922 Federal League case - O.W. Holmes ruled baseball exempt from antitrust laws
- owners adopted new rules to promote spectator excitement: "lively" ball in 1920, no foreign substance used by pitchers umpires allowed only clean balls that increased from 22,095 in 1919 to 54,030 in 1924, new Bill Doak glove with webbing between thumb and 1st finger made by Rawlings Co.
- batting average rose 45 points to .280
- home runs became more important than skill of Ty Cobb, who could bunt and run and sacrifice at will, holding the bat with his hands far apart, who holds the lifetime batting average record of .366 and the record for most career runs scored of 2245 (but Pete Rose would set record for most career hits of 4256, more than Cobb's 4190)
- Secularism
- Babe Ruth became the greatest secular hero of the "surrogate frontier" of sports, a rugged individualist, man of action, competitive, decisive
- Spectators admired his great physical strength: "Sultan of Swat" and "Colossus of Clout" - famous swing (modeled after Shoeless Joe Jackson) with 52-ounce bat
- hit 714 career home runs 1914-1935, world record until Hank Aaron's 755 by 1976
- hit 60 home runs in 1927 in 154 games, record until Roger Maris hit 61 in 1961 (in 162 games) and Mark McGwire hit 70 in 1998
- 1927 Yankees included "Murderer's Row" of Lou Gehrig who hit .373 and set a record 175 RBIs, Bob Meusel hit .337 with 103 RBIs, Earle Combs centerfielder who hit .356 with 23 triples , Tony Lazzeri with 102 RBIs
- pinstripe uniform - set boundaries between players and outsiders
- hard-drinking, hard-swearing natural man of "measureless lust, selfishness, appetite" (Roger Kahn) - owned 9 autos, wore 22 silk shirts in 3 days in St. Louis, broke training rules, was "bad boy" on the field
- unlike Horatio Alger, Ruth did not struggle to success by hard work and moral behavior
- Consumerism
- sports became a "managed celebration for commercial ends" (Rader)
- products endorsed by Cobb and Ruth
- Ruth made $52,000 in 1922 when average middle class income was $4000
- Ruth made $80,000 in 1930, more than President Hoover's $75,000
- Conflict
- Babe Ruth the celebrity more popular than Ty Cobb the skilled player
- Sports heroes replaced traditional religious and political and military heroes
- Racism in American society kept baseball segregated until Jackie Robinson
Resources:
- D.B. Sweeney played Shoeless Joe in the 1988 film Eight Men Out and Ray Liotta played him in the 1989 film Field of Dreams
- Rader, Benjamin. American Sports (1983)
- Riess, Steven. City Games (1989)
- Seymour, Harold. Baseball: The Early Years (1960), Baseball: The Golden Years (1971), Baseball: The People's Game (1990), was also the first historian to write a Ph.D. dissertation on the history of baseball in 1956.
- Kahn, Roger. Memories of Summer: When Baseball Was an Art and Writing about It a Game (1997)
- Sports History links