Scientific Essay from the year 2011 in the subject History - Miscellaneous, grade: 93.00, Vanderbilt University, language: English, abstract: With almost utmost certainty, the sun will rise in the east, set in the west, and Major League Baseball will begin a new season in the spring. Such has been assured since 1871, as professional baseball first complemented everyday American life by virtue of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Player’s (NAPBBP) inaugural season. The formation of the NAPBBP denoted a fundamental separation of amateur and professional baseball clubs, and the eternal intertwining of sport and business. This moment in history would more broadly beget a critical juncture in the development of the modern American identity as this era of the nineteenth century is characterized by a generation of citizens who have only known an autonomous United States, thereby distinguishable as the first purely born and bred American population. With this new status came the need to comprehend what constituted wholly American values beyond just regional, economic, and social distinctions, the remnants of a fractious colonial past. Baseball quickly became part of this new sense of American similitude, labeled the “national pastime” for nearly its entire existence. As baseball grew from a regional game into a nationwide phenomenon, more drastic change accompanied, by means of money permeating the sport. The five seasons of NAPBBP play from 1871 to 1876 transpired during a decidedly dynamic period of American history. The societal identity formation occurring during the early stages of the Gilded Age corresponds both in time, and essence, with baseball’s maturation process, culminating in a purely professional NAPBBP. Through analyzing these simultaneous processes, their relation to one another, and the notion of baseball as a microcosm of American society, what characteristics became inherently American, who had the power to actually establish these allegedly universal ideals, and the implications such principles had on the nation’s population become apparent. Baseball, and more specifically the NAPBBP, offered the principal values of late nineteenth century collective American society.

Before the onset of professional baseball, there existed a myriad of teams and players going back to the 1840s. The early years centered around an organization known as the National Association of Base Ball Players. This group, the antecedents of which date to 1857, governed the world of baseball until the formation of the first all-professional league in 1871. This book is the definitive statistical reference to that organization, from its humble beginnings through its explosive growth after the Civil War, culminating with its coast-to-coast inclusion of several hundred amateur and professional clubs. Relying for the most part on primary sources, the author has included introductory essays for each year, complete team statistics, every game score, and individual batting and pitching statistics for all players.

Baseball is much more than the national pastime. It has become an emblem of America itself. From its initial popularity in the mid-nineteenth century, the game has reflected national values and beliefs and promoted what it means to be an American. Stories abound that illustrate baseball's significance in eradicating racial barriers, bringing neighborhoods together, building civic pride, and creating on the field of play an instructive civics lesson for immigrants on the national character. In A People's History of Baseball, Mitchell Nathanson probes the less well-known but no less meaningful other side of baseball: episodes not involving equality, patriotism, heroism, and virtuous capitalism, but power--how it is obtained, and how it perpetuates itself. Through the growth and development of baseball Nathanson shows that, if only we choose to look for it, we can see the petty power struggles as well as the large and consequential ones that have likewise defined our nation. By offering a fresh perspective on the firmly embedded tales of baseball as America, a new and unexpected story emerges of both the game and what it represents. Exploring the founding of the National League, Nathanson focuses on the newer Americans who sought club ownership to promote their own social status in the increasingly closed caste of nineteenth-century America. His perspective on the rise and public rebuke of the Players Association shows that these baseball events reflect both the collective spirit of working and middle-class America in the mid-twentieth century as well as the countervailing forces that sought to beat back this emerging movement that threatened the status quo. And his take on baseball’s racial integration that began with Branch Rickey’s “Great Experiment” reveals the debilitating effects of the harsh double standard that resulted, requiring a black player to have unimpeachable character merely to take the field in a Major League game, a standard no white player was required to meet. Told with passion and occasional outrage, A People's History of Baseball challenges the perspective of the well-known, deeply entrenched, hyper-patriotic stories of baseball and offers an incisive alternative history of America's much-loved national pastime.

A fascinating look at how America's favorite sport has both reflected and shaped social, economic, and

America's national pastime has been marked from its inception by bitter struggles between owners and players over profit, power, and prestige. In this book, the first installment of a highly readable, comprehensive labor history of baseball, Robert Burk d

In this delightful history of the sport, Frommer captures the flavor, smell, and craziness of the early days of baseball. Starting with its invention in 1842 by the descendant of a British sea captain (and not Abner Doubleday), Frommer traces the development of the sport from the first games on a vacant lot at 27th and Madison in New York to the turn of the century, when the National League was emerging as the preeminent forum for truly professional baseball.