thesis statement about the history of baseball

Writing a Historical Baseball Essay: Techniques for Effective Academic Writing

• September 26, 2024
• This Day In Baseball

The Basics of Historical Baseball Writing

Choosing a compelling topic, conducting thorough research, developing a strong thesis, structuring your essay, using evidence effectively, analyzing statistics in context, the importance of context in historical baseball writing.

Addressing Counterarguments

Writing with clarity and precision, proper citation and avoiding plagiarism, editing and revising your essay, concluding thoughts.

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1992 – in a rare spending spree, the astros sign four free agents, pitchers joe boever and rob murphy along with infielders ernest riles and denny walling. it’s the end of the line for walling who spent eleven years previously in houston, a vital man in two division champions during the eighties. he’s forced out with a knee injury after three at bats. none of the others are in houston the following season. , baseball officials are cautiously expecting good news soon from the george w. bush administration that would clear the way for cuba to participate in the first world baseball classic. meanwhile, fidel castro suggests the united states doesn’t want to play cuba in the wbc. the u.s. treasury department last month denied mlb’s application for cuba to play its scheduled first-round games in puerto rico, a u.s. territory. later rounds are to be played on the u.s. mainland. the license is required under 45-year-old american sanctions against cuba. the international baseball federation has said it will not sanction the tournament if cuba isn’t allowed to play., on the day he is scheduled to return to the team after rehabilitating his right knee and left ankle at home, the orioles inform rafael palmeiro not to report to the team. the first baseman/dh, who tested positive for steroids earlier in the season, continues to stir up more controversy as the 40 year-old veteran states the reason for failing the drug test due to a vitamin b-12 shot given by his teammate, miguel tejada..

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• Informative Essay Sample on Baseball: A Brief History

For loads of fans all over the globe, baseball is the center of the universe. Did you know that baseball is over one hundred years old? The first game of baseball was played in the Elysian Fields (Hoboken, New Jersey.) Since then, the baseball game had gone a long way to make itself a huge spectator sport.

Baseball has been an integral part of everyone’s life, whether people played it in childhood or went to see a game with family and friends, or just watched a game on TV. In other words, baseball has always been there.

In this speech, I will tell you about the history of baseball, and how it became one of the favorite pastimes of not only the whole nation but the whole world as well. Together, we will find out more about this wonderful source of entertainment that has been there with us for many years. I obtained information for this speech from the book called “The Baseball Almanac,” as well as from various online baseball archives that are available at www.baseball1.com . There are three main topics that I am going to discuss in my speech. First of all, I’d like to focus on how baseball appeared in the early days. Second, we’ll talk about the rapid growth of the game in the 20th century in America. And finally, I will talk about the late years of baseball with strikes and labor battles within the league.

First, let’s focus on the early days of baseball. Unlike basketball and football, interest in baseball was not sweeping the globe. Throughout the 19th century, small towns formed teams, and baseball clubs were formed in large cities. In 1845, Alexander Cartwright, a team owner himself, put in the list of rules that teams tend to play to and remarkably use even today. The first recorded game was the one between Cartwrights Knickerbockers that played against a New York club in the Elysian Fields that I mentioned early in the speech. Eleven years later, the owners came together to form the National Association of Base Ball Players. In the next year of play, the game supported itself by charging admission for fans to watch the game. The next turning point in the world of baseball would be intertwined with the turmoil of the Civil War. The war hurt many teams, and the number of clubs dropped. However, the war also helped spread the game around to different states that helped the games come back after the war.

Now that we have looked at early baseball times, let us turn to the huge growth of the game in the 20th century. A major step in the game was taken in 1903 when the American and National baseball leagues joined. That’s when the baseball game accelerated uphill.

In 1905, the World Series was implemented, and the two best teams from each league would play for the title. By 1915, players were getting nice salaries and could quit their other jobs and focus on baseball full time. The 20s and 30s were marked as the golden years of baseball. The big names like Babe Ruth and Ted Williams lured more people to the sport. By this time, everyone in America had a favorite baseball team. This made the game a huge source of entertainment back before television. From the 40s and on, the game of baseball only changed for the better. It pushed itself through depression and three wars. Still, by the 60s, the game still managed to captivate a huge audience.

An interesting fact about the game is that once upon a time, there was a baseball player that decided to steal first base from second. Sounds weird, don’t you think? His name was Herman Schaefer. Schaefer did his best in order to distract the pitcher of the opposing team to ensure the player of his team could easily steal home.

Now let us move to the modern era of baseball and the problems related to the labor battles and strikes. In 1965, baseball players were growing tired of cut wages. They hired a man by named Marvin Miller. Miller was a veteran labor organizer that decided to help them change things. This led to the first bargain agreement in 1968 between players and owners. It was a modest improvement. However, most of all, it gave players leverage to negotiate with the owners about the salaries instead of the traditional take it or leave it that the players were used to. By 1975, there had been more than 50 lawsuits to owners from players, who felt they were cheated in terms of salaries or trades. As a result, the owners had the feeling that they weren’t in charge anymore. Thus, the players would have to pay for themselves in the business side of baseball.

In 1975, the season was delayed for 13 games. The reason was that the players went on strike for the right to be free agents when their contract was up. It took some time for the owners to think about the demands, but finally, they said yes to the player’s conditions. This was nothing compared to the season of 1994 when all of the baseball events were shut down due to a strike. The World Series was canceled for the first time in 92 years, and baseball’s commissioner was forced to resign. All the problems between unions, owners, and contract terms led to the cancellation of the season. Many viewed the strikes as a huge waste of time since no real modification was put into effect. Finally, after 234 days and more than 1 billion dollars that were lost, no settlement baseball was back in business.

As for the most successful team of Major League Baseball, the New York Yankees should be mentioned. What is more, the team was also the first side in the field that began to wear numbered jerseys. The tradition goes back to the 1920s. The numbers of the kits were provided in accordance with the batting order of the team.

It was William Howard Taft that was the first-ever US President that threw the ceremonial first pitch in order to kick off the Major League Baseball season. The tradition goes to 1910. At the same time, Jimmy Carter is still the only President of the United States of America that bucked the trend.

In conclusion, I would like to say that my purpose has been to inform my readers on a brief history of the early days of the baseball game, how the game accelerated in the 20th century, and the labor battles and strikes of the modern era. From my message, I hope that everyone has a better understanding of what baseball is, and how it came to be an integral part of our life. So there you go. This is a short story about the game that has been an essential part of the North American sports routine for more than a century now. The bat cracking and the roaring of the crowd is not just simple words for the baseball fans. They are like a real song for those who can and like to listen!

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How Baseball’s Official Historian Dug Up the Game’s Unknown Origins

A lifelong passion for the national pastime led John Thorn to redefine the sport’s relationship with statistics and reveal the truth behind its earliest days

Frederic J. Frommer

Photographs by Elias Williams

Baseball, more than any other sport, is grounded in history, built on legend, an enduring portal into the past. So it made a certain sense in 1999 when Major League Baseball’s ninth commissioner, Bud Selig, created an unusual position in pro sports, ensuring that this most classic of American games would have an official, in-house historian.

Selig first tapped the encyclopedic knowledge of Jerome Holtzman , who had just retired as a longtime baseball writer and columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune . Holtzman, a Chicago native, held the post until his death in 2008. But it’s arguably MLB’s second (and current) official historian, John Thorn , who has truly defined the role, from developing new mathematical ways of understanding the sport to pushing our knowledge of baseball’s roots further and further back into the past.

Thorn was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany in 1947, the son of Jewish parents from Poland who were conscripted into forced labor after Germany invaded in 1939. The family wound up emigrating to the United States in 1949, when Thorn was still a toddler.

“As an immigrant, you want to be an American, but more broadly, you want to be part of the team, you want to be part of the group, you want to have some shared endeavor, and baseball seemed to supply that model more than almost anything,” Thorn says.

He remembers one early baseball experience with glittering clarity. It was an afternoon in 1959, in the Forest Hills section of Queens, New York. He was holding down center field when an opposing batter launched a drive over his head. “I turned fully, racing with my back to the infield, stuck out my glove, and the ball landed in it,” he recalls. “In baseball, I thought, anything could happen. Even I could be a hero.”

Baseball provided an outlet for the young immigrant boy to fit in—not just on the diamond in Queens, but earlier in his Bronx neighborhood. There, he would flip baseball cards with other kids toward the wall of his apartment house; the card flipped nearest to the wall won, and Thorn proudly recalls once winning a Jackie Robinson card. Through these routines, Thorn says, “I felt a part of something larger than myself, my family, my street. I was one of the gang.”

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This article is a selection from the April/May 2024 issue of Smithsonian magazine

Though he was raised in the Bronx, home of the Yankees, Thorn grew up rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers, largely because of Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier on April 15, 1947—two days before Thorn was born. Even as a young boy, keenly conscious of his identity as an immigrant and outsider, he already felt a strong kinship to Robinson: “We were brothers under the skin.”

Thorn’s family moved from the Bronx to Queens in 1954, and he soon had dreams of becoming an explorer who might roam the world unearthing buried treasures—something he would do with striking success as a baseball historian.

First, though, Thorn brought his passion for discovery to the study of literary history. For one year, beginning in 1968, he pursued a doctorate at Washington University in St. Louis, planning to write his dissertation about George Herbert, the 17th-century English metaphysical poet, who Thorn says satisfied “an antiquarian bent—the one that would morph into my study of American history and, notably, baseball.”

Then, in 1969 he had a career epiphany while working on his dissertation. “I was having a hard time with the thesis because the Mets were marching to the pennant,” he recalls, referring to the Miracle Mets, who would win their first World Series that fall in one of the biggest upsets in sports history. “I came to realize that I cared more about the Mets than I did about Herbert or metaphysical poetry.”

As fate would have it, one of his professors recommended an editorial opening at the New Leader , a biweekly magazine about politics and culture, and Thorn jumped at the chance. He wound up working there as an editor from 1969 to 1972. But it was his next gig, as an editor at Hart Publishing, where his love of baseball finally dovetailed with his professional work. The company asked him to refresh a 1950 book called Big-Time Baseball , soon republished as A Century of Baseball Lore , with Thorn as the author. The book, a work of deep and quirky detail, marked the official start of Thorn’s personal quest into baseball history.

“It was a silly little book, written on assignment with a specific mandate to match the style of standing material,” Thorn says. “But one faintly amusing story after another, it struck me even then, built up into a folklore of both the nation and its favorite pastime.”

As Thorn pursued deeper historical research into baseball, he also came to redefine its relationship with statistics, often in concert with the pioneering baseball analyst Pete Palmer. Thorn and Palmer shared a passionate belief that advanced stats could help more accurately illuminate a player’s performance; one example is what’s called “ultimate zone rating,” which seeks to quantify how many runs a fielder has saved.

In 1984, Palmer and Thorn came out with their first book together, The Hidden Game of Baseball , which later statisticians credited with inspiring much of the ensuing statistical revolution by creating sophisticated new ways to measure player performance. In 1989, the duo published Total Baseball , an invaluable book for the pre-internet age that provided exhaustive lists of players’ stats dating back to the 19th century. It was a sensation, giving an untold number of American kids reams of statistical treasure to pore over and memorize. ( Total Baseball is one of several dozen books that Thorn has written, edited or anthologized.) By the time Total Baseball appeared, Thorn and colleague Bill James were becoming rock stars in the growing field of sabermetrics—named for the Society for American Baseball Research, or SABR—which relies on quantifiable evidence to determine which players have the most promise (for example, a high on-base percentage) as well as which plays tend to have lower yields (sacrifice bunts). As the New York Times gushed in 1989, “Bill James and John Thorn have popularized, if not revolutionized, the way baseball is viewed and discussed.”

Over the ensuing decades, Thorn continued to quietly reshape how fans, sportswriters and industry insiders observed, interpreted and anticipated baseball in books and talks, also appearing as an expert in Ken Burns’ mammoth 1994 documentary “Baseball.” Then, in 2003, he came upon a most precious piece of buried treasure, the sort he had been seeking since he was a boy: the first known reference to the game called “baseball” being played in the United States.

While researching a book on the origins of the sport, Thorn had chanced upon an 1869 history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, covering the years 1734-1800. The Pittsfield history referred to a 1793 document that mentioned “baseball.” With prodding from the late major league pitcher Jim Bouton, who then lived about 25 miles from Pittsfield, a city librarian and others looked for the document among the town council’s minutes from the 18th century. After ten days of searching, they finally found a vintage bylaw that mentioned baseball, which turned out to be from 1791—and which painted the sport in an unflattering light. The Pittsfield law flagged the young game as a nuisance that needed regulating: banning people from playing baseball (and other ball games) within 80 yards of the new town meeting house, to protect the building’s windows.

The discovery helped vault Thorn to greater fame than before—and established him as the expert on almost any question about the game. Increasingly, the early years of baseball became his main area of research and led to his 2011 book, Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game , an exceptionally thorough work, written in a breezy style and filled with innumerably delightful and surprising facts. Among them is his note about ancient forerunners to the game: “Bat-and-ball games go back to the banks of the Nile nearly 4,500 years ago in the game seker-hemat , or ‘batting the ball.’” In a review, the New York Times concluded that Thorn “can probably lay claim to knowing more baseball minutiae than any other living human.” Others noticed, too. The year Baseball in the Garden of Eden was published, Selig tapped Thorn as MLB’s second official historian. “John Thorn has been brilliant,” says Selig, who now teaches baseball history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Arizona State.

“I have a theory that one of the big problems in life is that people don’t understand the history of things,” Selig says. “And if you don’t understand the history, how can you understand what’s happening?” He adds: “I can’t emphasize enough how much [Thorn’s expertise] has helped, on real issues that we were talking about.” Today, Thorn’s responsibilities include research, writing a blog and doing media interviews—but his outreach also centrally includes hunting down the answers to queries posed by fans.

One regular question is whether Babe Ruth should be credited with 715 home runs, or 714. In 1918, playing for the Boston Red Sox, Ruth hit a walk-off homer with one man on base—by modern standards, a home run. Yet before 1920, the game ended when the winning run scored—so Ruth was credited with a measly triple. Thorn will explain this history to fans, along with his opinion that Ruth really did hit 715 homers.

Thorn is not afraid to use the modern tools of baseball analytics to take a fresh look at some of the game’s other biggest icons, such as Yankees Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio. On the occasion of DiMaggio’s 100th birthday in 2014, Thorn argued that the player wasn’t the elite center fielder he’s cracked up to be. Appearing on the MLB Network, he said: “If you look at DiMaggio’s range factor, he never led the American League and he never even finished second once.” Brian Kenny, a host for the network, pushed back the next day: “I don’t want the next generation to think DiMaggio was some sort of fraud and he was trumped up because he was popular and he married Marilyn Monroe. This guy from 1936 to ’42 was the best player in baseball, quantifiably.”

“Spirited debate is one of the great things about baseball,” Thorn says. “Only one who has busted myths will recognize their power, their hold on the imagination. Legends command respect, but evidence is good, too.”

Some of the earliest and wackiest baseball inventions never made it to first base

By Brandon Tensley

Drawing Board

Some ideas were especially forward-thinking. A 1913 patent proposed an “amusement apparatus,” which showed a baseball diamond on a board that used stick figures, bells and flashing lights to allow fans in one city to follow a game from afar, using the telegraph for updates. Though the apparatus wasn’t widely available, this display represented a forerunner to real-time game updates on sports websites.

Curve …   Bat?

Bats have largely stayed the same since the late 19th century. But there have been several colorful attempts to modify the instrument: One 1890 patent proposed curving the barrels of bats, which the inventor thought would ramp up the spin of a ball and make it harder to catch. A 1904 patent, meanwhile, suggested notching small grooves in the bat’s barrel, meant to lower the odds of hitting foul balls.

Bells and Whistles

How to determine exactly when a runner reaches a base? An 1875 patent suggests an elegant solution: A base should have a bell inside of it—or perhaps “a sounding whistle, electrical connection or any other suitable enunciating device”—to help the umpire decide if a runner was safe or not. In a similar effort at eliminating human error, an 1888 patent sought to help umpires keep track of balls and strikes with a handheld device that allowed them to slide buttons along a wire with each pitch.

Catcher’s Box

Maybe the most innovative idea in the sport’s history was a 1904 patent intended to provide catchers with an additional layer of defense. The proposed invention would have trapped balls in a cushioned, chest-mounted wire cage and passed them gently to a catcher’s waiting hands.

Correction, April 1, 2024: A previous version of this article mistakenly identified the source of Thorn's painting of Jim Bouton; it was a gift of Bouton's widow. It has been updated to correct the error.

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Frederic J. Frommer | | READ MORE

Frederic J. Frommer, a writer and sports historian, is the author of several books, including “You Gotta Have Heart: Washington Baseball from Walter Johnson to the 2019 World Series Champion Nationals."

Elias Williams | READ MORE

Elias Williams is a New York City-based photographer.

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• Introduction

Early years

Formation of the american and national leagues, babe ruth and baseball’s “golden age”, baseball after world war ii, franchise relocation and league expansion, the minor leagues, labor struggles, beginnings of player empowerment.

• Racial segregation
• Integration
• Women in baseball
• Amateur baseball
• Baseball in Latin America
• Baseball in Asia and the Pacific
• International competition

history of baseball

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• Table Of Contents

Recent News

history of baseball , overview of notable events and people in the history of baseball . Long known as “America’s Pastime,” the sport was not actually created in the United States and has been passed over in popularity by American football . Nevertheless, baseball remains, to many, inextricably tied to America, as a number of star players—such as Babe Ruth , Jackie Robinson , and Hank Aaron —have transcended the sport to become national icons and the country is home to Major League Baseball , the top baseball league in the world. While America popularized baseball and retains a strong cultural connection to it, the sport has also been embraced across the globe, notably in Cuba , the Dominican Republic , Puerto Rico , and Japan , where many contributions have been made to baseball’s deep and varied history.

The term base-ball can be dated to 1744, in John Newbery ’s children’s book A Little Pretty Pocket-Book . The book has a brief poem and an illustration depicting a game called “base-ball.” Interestingly, the bases in the illustration are marked by posts instead of the bags and flat home plate now familiar in the game. The book was extremely popular in England and was reprinted in North America in 1762 (New York) and 1787 ( Massachusetts ).

Many other early references to bat-and-ball games involving bases are known: a 1749 British newspaper that refers to Frederick Louis, prince of Wales , playing “Bass-Ball” in Surrey , England ; “playing at base” at the American army camp at Valley Forge in 1778; the forbidding of students to “play with balls and sticks” on the common of Princeton College in 1787; a note in the memoirs of Thurlow Weed , an upstate New York newspaper editor and politician, of a baseball club organized about 1825; a newspaper report that the Rochester ( New York ) Baseball Club had about 50 members at practice in the 1820s; and a reminiscence of the elder Oliver Wendell Holmes concerning his Harvard days in the late 1820s, stating that he played a good deal of ball in college.

The Boy’s Own Book (1828), a frequently reprinted book on English sports played by boys of the time, included in its second edition a chapter on the game of rounders . As described there, rounders had many resemblances to the modern game of baseball: it was played on a diamond-shaped infield with a base at each corner, the fourth being that at which the batter originally stood and to which he had to advance to score a run. When a batter hit a pitched ball through or over the infield, he could run. A ball hit elsewhere was foul, and he could not run. Three missed strikes at the ball meant the batter was out. A batted ball caught on the fly also put the batter out. One notable difference from baseball was that, in rounders, when a ball hit on the ground was fielded, the fielder put the runner out by hitting him with the thrown ball; the same was true for a runner caught off base. Illustrations show flat stones used as bases and a second catcher behind the first, perhaps to catch foul balls. The descent of baseball from rounders seems indisputably clear-cut. The first American account of rounders was in The Book of Sports (1834) by Robin Carver, who credited The Boy’s Own Book as his source but called the game “base ball” or “goal ball.”

In 1845, according to baseball legend , Alexander J. Cartwright , an amateur player in New York City , organized the New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, which formulated a set of rules for baseball, many of which still remain. The rules were much like those for rounders, but with a significant change in that the runner was put out not by being hit with the thrown ball but by being tagged with it. This change no doubt led to the substitution of a harder ball, which made possible a larger-scale game.

The adoption of these rules by the Knickerbockers and other amateur club teams in the New York City area led to an increased popularity of the game. The old game with the soft ball continued to be popular in and around Boston; a Philadelphia club that had played the old game since 1833 did not adopt the Knickerbocker or New York version of the game until 1860. Until the American Civil War (1861–65), the two versions of the game were called the Massachusetts game (using the soft ball) and the New York game (using the hard ball). During the Civil War, soldiers from New York and New Jersey taught their game to others, and after the war the New York game became predominant.

In 1854 a revision of the rules prescribed the weight and size of the ball, along with the dimensions of the infield—specifications that have not been significantly altered since that time. The National Association of Base Ball Players was organized in 1857, comprising clubs from New York City and vicinity. In 1859 Washington, D.C., organized a club, and in the next year clubs were formed in Lowell, Massachusetts; Allegheny, Pennsylvania; and Hartford, Connecticut. The game continued to spread after the Civil War—to Maine, Kentucky, and Oregon. Baseball was on its way to becoming the national pastime. It was widely played outside the cities, but the big-city clubs were the dominant force. In 1865 a convention was called to confirm the rules and the amateur status of baseball and brought together 91 amateur teams from such cities as St. Louis, Missouri; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; Washington, D.C.; Boston; and Philadelphia.

Professional baseball

Two important developments in the history of baseball occurred in the post- Civil War period: the spread of the sport to Latin America and Asia ( discussed later ) and the professionalization of the sport in the United States. The early baseball clubs such as the New York Knickerbockers were clubs in the true sense of the word: members paid dues, the emphasis was on fraternity and socializing, and baseball games were played largely among members. But the growth of baseball’s popularity soon attracted commercial interest. In 1862 William Cammeyer of Brooklyn constructed an enclosed baseball field with stands and charged admission to games. Following the Civil War, this practice quickly spread, and clubs soon learned that games with rival clubs and tournaments drew larger crowds and brought prestige to the winners. The interclub games attracted the interest and influence of gamblers. With a new emphasis on external competition, clubs felt pressure to field quality teams. Players began to specialize in playing a single position, and field time was given over to a club’s top players so they could practice. Professionalism began to appear about 1865–66 as some teams hired skilled players on a per-game basis. Players either were paid for playing or were compensated with jobs that required little or no actual work. Amateurs resented these practices and the gambling and bribery that often accompanied them, but the larger public was enthralled by the intense competition and the rivalries that developed. The first publicly announced all-professional team, the Cincinnati (Ohio) Red Stockings, was organized in 1869; it toured that year, playing from New York City to San Francisco and winning some 56 games and tying 1. The team’s success, especially against the hallowed clubs of New York, resulted in national notoriety and proved the superior skill of professional players. The desire of many other cities and teams to win such acclaim guaranteed the professionalization of the game, though many players remained nominally in the amateur National Association of Base Ball Players until the amateurs withdrew in 1871. Thereafter professional teams largely controlled the development of the sport.

The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players was formed in 1871. The founding teams were the Philadelphia Athletics; the Chicago White Stockings (who would also play as the Chicago Colts and the Chicago Orphans before becoming the Cubs ; the American League Chicago White Sox were not formed until 1900); the Brooklyn Eckfords; the Cleveland Forest Citys; the Forest Citys of Rockford, Illinois; the Haymakers of Troy, New York; the Kekiongas of Fort Wayne , Indiana; the Olympics of Washington, D.C.; and the Mutuals of New York City. The league disbanded in 1876 with the founding of the rival National League of Professional Baseball Clubs . The change from a players’ association to one of clubs was particularly significant. The teams making up the new league represented Philadelphia; Hartford, Connecticut; Boston; Chicago; Cincinnati; Louisville, Kentucky; St. Louis, Missouri; and New York City. When William Hulbert, president of the league (1877–82), expelled four players for dishonesty, the reputation of baseball as an institution was significantly enhanced .

In 1881 the American Association was formed with teams from cities that were not members of the National League and teams that had been expelled from the league (such as Cincinnati, which was disciplined in 1880 for playing games on Sunday and allowing liquor on the grounds). In 1890, after the National League tried to limit salaries (a $2,000 maximum for pitchers), the players formed the Players’ League, but it quickly failed. The American Association unsuccessfully challenged the National League and late in 1891 merged with it in a 12-team league that constituted a monopoly, an arrangement that prevailed through 1899. By 1900 the National League had shrunk to eight teams—Boston (the team that would eventually become the Braves ), Brooklyn (soon to be the Dodgers ), Chicago (soon to be the Cubs ), Cincinnati (the Reds , who had returned to the league in 1890), New York City (the Giants ), Philadelphia (the Phillies ), Pittsburgh (the Pirates ), and St. Louis (the Cardinals )—and it remained so constituted until 1953, when the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The Western League , organized in 1893, had Midwestern members. When in 1900 Charles Comiskey moved his St. Paul , Minnesota, team to Chicago as the White Sox and the Grand Rapids , Michigan, team was shifted to Cleveland as the Indians , the National League agreed to the moves. However, when permission was asked to put teams in Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., the National League balked , and the “baseball war” was on. The Western League, renamed the American League and officially elevated to major league status in 1901, transferred teams from Indianapolis; Kansas City, Missouri; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Buffalo, New York, to Baltimore (the first of two American League teams to be called the Baltimore Orioles ), Washington, D.C. (the Senators ), Philadelphia (the Athletics ), and Boston (the Red Stockings ). American League teams were also established in Detroit (the Tigers ) and Milwaukee (the first of two teams to be named the Milwaukee Brewers); the latter club moved to St. Louis as the Browns in 1902. When the Baltimore club moved to New York City in 1903 to become the Highlanders (after 1912, the Yankees ), the league took the form it was to keep until 1954, when the St. Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles .

During the “war,” the American League wooed away many of the National League’s star players. In 1903 the leagues agreed to prohibit single ownership of two clubs in the same city and the shifting of franchises from one city to another by either league without permission of the other. They also established rules for transferring players from one league to the other and for moving minor league players into the major leagues. The peace of 1903 resulted in the first World Series , which, after a hiatus in 1904 (the New York Giants refused to play, believing the opposition to be unworthy), was held each year thereafter (with the exception of 1994, when a work stoppage led to the cancellation of the World Series), the winner being the team to win four games out of seven (five out of nine from 1919 to 1921). In the period following the “war,” the two leagues enjoyed a long period of growth. The “inside game” dominated the next two decades, until hitter-friendly rules were instituted in 1920, ushering in the “live-ball era” (the period of inside-game dominance was also known as the “dead-ball era”). The inside game was a style of play that emphasized pitching, speed, and batsmanship. Bunting was very common, and doubles and triples were more heralded than home runs (which during this era were almost exclusively of the inside-the-park variety). Two managers were credited as the masters of the inside game and brought success to their respective teams: John J. McGraw , manager of the National League New York Giants (1902–32), and Connie Mack , manager of the American League Philadelphia Athletics (1901–50).

Baseball suffered a major scandal—subsequently called the Black Sox scandal —when eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of accepting bribes from known gamblers to “throw” the 1919 World Series. Although Charles Comiskey, owner of the White Sox, suspended the players for the 1921 season, they were found not guilty because of insufficient evidence. Presuming a need to restore baseball’s honour, however, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned the eight accused players from baseball for life after he was named baseball’s first commissioner, supplanting the three-man National Commission that had been created in 1903.

During the 1920s, generally known as a golden age of sports in the United States, the premier hero was Babe Ruth . A New York Yankee outfielder affectionately known as the “Sultan of Swat,” Ruth was a large man with an even larger personality, and his reinvention of the home run (the sort that traveled over the outfield wall) into a mythic feat enthralled the nation. His performance not only assured the success of his team but spurred a tactical change in baseball. The inside game, with its bunts and sacrifices, gave way to the era of free swinging at the plate. The resulting explosion of offense brought fans to the ballparks in droves. Even the Great Depression of the 1930s did little to abate the rise in popularity and financial success of the game except at the minor league and Negro league levels. The commercial growth of the game was aided by several recent innovations . The first All-Star Game , an exhibition game pitting the best players in the National League against the best in the American League, was played at Comiskey Park in Chicago in 1933. During the 1920s club owners also cautiously embraced radio broadcasting of games. The first major league game broadcast took place in Pittsburgh in 1921, but during that decade only the Chicago Cubs allowed broadcasts of all their games. Many owners feared that radio would dissuade fans from attending the games in person, especially during the Great Depression. However, the opposite proved to be true: radio created new fans and brought more of them to the ballpark . Night baseball, which had already been used by barnstorming and minor league teams, began in the major leagues at Cincinnati in 1935. Initially, caution and tradition slowed the interest in night baseball, but the obvious commercial benefits of playing when fans were not at work eventually won out. Delayed by World War II , night baseball had become almost universal by the 1960s: all teams scheduled about half of their home games at night except the Cubs, who acceded to night baseball at home only in 1988. The first nighttime World Series game was played in 1971.

From 1942 until the end of World War II, baseball operated under the “green light” order of Commissioner Landis, approved by U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt . Soon after the Pearl Harbor attack , Landis asked Roosevelt if he felt that baseball should “close down for the duration of the war.” Roosevelt, a lifelong baseball fan, replied in a letter dated January 15, 1942, that he felt baseball was valuable to the nation and should continue throughout the war. Once Landis received this letter giving baseball the go-ahead, organized baseball threw itself behind the American war effort, billing itself as “the national nerve tonic” for workers in wartime factories. Attendance at baseball games was still off slightly. Furthermore, many players went into the armed services—most notably Ted Williams , the last man in organized baseball to have a season batting average of more than .400 (.406 in 1941)—and the quality of play suffered somewhat.

The years following the conclusion of World War II were marked by rising attendance, the growth of the minor leagues, and in 1947 the racial integration of the game (for more on the integration of baseball, see Blacks in baseball, below). This period was also marked by new efforts by players to obtain better pay and conditions of employment. A portent of things to come was the formation in 1946 of the American Baseball Guild. Although the guild failed in appeals to national and state labour relations boards, its very existence led to reforms before the 1947 season: a minimum major league salary of $5,000, no salary cuts during a season for a major league player moved to the minors, weekly spring-training expense money of $25, a 25 percent limit on annual salary cuts, and establishment of a players’ pension fund.

Landis’s successor as commissioner, Albert B. (“Happy”) Chandler (1945–51), assured the soundness of the pension fund in 1950 by signing a six-year contract for broadcasting World Series and All-Star games; the television portion alone amounted to $1 million a year, a large proportion being earmarked for the pension fund. Radio and television rights for regular-season games remained with each club. Later commissioners included Ford C. Frick (1951–65), William D. Eckert (1965–69), Bowie Kuhn (1969–84), Peter Ueberroth (1984–89), A. Bartlett Giamatti (1989), Fay Vincent (1989–92), and Allan H. (“Bud”) Selig (1998− ).

The postwar boom was short-lived, however. America was going through tremendous changes. Millions were moving out of the cities and into the suburbs , and population centres in the South and West were growing. Americans had more time and money to enjoy themselves, which they did through vacationing and outdoor recreation. Moreover, the rapid growth of television preoccupied the country. Baseball was slow to adapt. Major league clubs were located only as far west as St. Louis and no farther south than Washington, D.C. Many of the ballparks had fallen into disrepair, were outdated, and were inconvenient for surburbanites driving in for a game. Despite exciting play on the field, attendance began to wane. The added revenue from radio and television broadcast rights could not offset the losses at the gate. The 1950s saw the first franchise changes since 1903. In 1953 the Braves, always overshadowed in New England by the Red Sox, moved from Boston to Milwaukee, where they were offered a new stadium (in 1966 the franchise moved again, to Atlanta, Georgia). The next year, the St. Louis Browns, themselves overshadowed by the Cardinals, moved to Baltimore and became the Orioles. In 1955 the Philadelphia Athletics franchise was moved to Kansas City, Missouri (and in 1968 to Oakland, California). The impact of these moves was slight compared with the move of the Dodgers and Giants from New York City to California (the Dodgers to Los Angeles and the Giants to San Francisco) in 1958. Frustrated in his attempts to win city support for a new stadium, Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley jumped at an offer to relocate the team to Los Angeles, which was then the third largest city in the country. O’Malley persuaded the Giants to move to San Francisco in order to maintain their rivalry and ease the travel burden on National League teams.

Despite the betrayal felt by fans in Brooklyn and Manhattan, the moves were a successful business decision for the clubs. The decade of franchise movement was followed by several rounds of expansion that lasted into the 1990s. Expansion began in 1961 when the Washington (D.C.) Senators were moved to Minneapolis–St. Paul and renamed the Twins, and a new franchise was granted to Washington (also named the Senators); however, it lasted only until 1971, when it was transferred to Dallas–Fort Worth and renamed the Texas Rangers. Also in 1961 another American League franchise was awarded to Los Angeles; it later moved to Anaheim as the California Angels, now known as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim . In 1962 the National League also expanded to 10 teams, admitting new franchises in New York City (the Mets) and Houston (the Colt .45s; after 1964, the Astros). In addition, the 154-game season was expanded in the American League to 162 in 1961, and the National League followed suit in 1962.

Along with this first round of expansion came an era of superb pitching that dominated the league for a generation. The earned run averages for pitchers during this era averaged 3.30, and the major league batting average fell as low as .238 in 1968. Several changes in the game are believed to account for the resurgence of pitching: the strike zone was expanded in 1963; managers explored more-strategic uses of the relief pitchers; and new glove technology improved defensive play. At the same time, a new generation of large multipurpose stadiums came into use. These stadiums typically used artificial turf that was harder and faster than natural grass. As a result, new emphasis was placed on speed in the field and on the base paths. Fearing that the dominance of pitching was hurting fan interest in the game, the major leagues tried to improve hitting by lowering the mound and narrowing the strike zone in 1969. In hopes of further increasing offensive play, the American League introduced the designated hitter in 1973. The changes did increase offensive output, but pitching still dominated through much of the 1970s.

In 1969 new franchises were awarded, this time to Montreal (the Expos , the first major league franchise outside the United States) and San Diego (the Padres ), bringing the National League to 12 teams. In the American League in 1969, new franchises in Kansas City, Missouri (the Royals ), and Seattle, Washington (the Pilots), brought that league to 12 teams, and both leagues were divided into Eastern and Western divisions.

Playoffs between division winners determined the league pennant winners, who then played in the World Series, which was extended into late October. California, which had had no major league baseball prior to 1958, had five teams by 1969. Of the new franchises, only Seattle failed outright and was moved to Milwaukee, where it became the Brewers (moved to the National League in a 1998 reorganization). In 1977 a franchise was again granted to Seattle (the Mariners ) and one was granted to Toronto (the Blue Jays ), bringing the number of American League teams to 14. In 1993 the National League was also brought to 14 with the addition of teams in Denver (the Colorado Rockies ) and Miami (the Marlins ). In 1998 the Arizona Diamondbacks (located in Phoenix) joined the National League, and the Tampa Bay (Florida) Devil Rays (now known as the Tampa Bay Rays ) began play in the American League.

In 1994 both leagues were reconfigured into East, Central, and West divisions. The playoff format was changed to include an additional round and a Wild Card (the team with the best record among the non-division-winning teams in each league). The playoffs were again expanded in 2012, when a second Wild Card was added to each league, and once more in 2022, when a third Wild Card was added, bringing the number of teams that qualify for the playoffs in each league to six. Under the revised system, the two division winners with the best regular-season records receive a bye into the division series. The third division winner plays the Wild Card team with the worst record while the top two Wild Card teams play each other in best-of-three series in the Wild Card round. The top seed in each matchup hosts all of the games in the series, and the winners of each series move on to play a best-of-five division series against the teams that received the byes. Both the league championship series and the World Series have a best-of-seven format.

An explosion of offense occurred in the mid-1980s and after. In particular, home runs increased dramatically, reaching record-breaking numbers from 1985 to 1987 and again in the late 1990s. The reasons for the change from dominant pitching to hitting are not entirely clear. Many have claimed that the ball had been engineered to fly farther, while others have claimed that continual expansion had diluted the quality of pitching. The improved off-season conditioning (which now often included weightlifting) made players stronger and quicker with their bats. Moreover, the 1990s saw another generation of new ballparks , many of which featured small dimensions that were more to the liking of power hitters.

During the second half of the 20th century, expansion was perceived by baseball executives as both a source of added revenue for clubs (large entry fees were charged to new franchises) and a means of generating new interest in the game. In 2001, however, concerns over economically underperforming clubs prompted owners to announce plans to eliminate two teams (widely believed to be the Minnesota Twins and the since-relocated Montreal Expos ). The plan was put on hold after the player’s union pursued legal action to prevent the move, and a 2002 Minnesota court order that forced the Twins to play out the lease at their home stadium effectively ended the talk of contraction for the foreseeable future.

The minor leagues formed an association in 1901 to deal with the problems resulting from the lack of agreement on contract ownership, salaries, territoriality, and other issues. The current structure was created when the major leagues reached their agreement in 1903, and the minor leagues became a training ground for prospective major league players and a refuge for older players.

In 1919 Branch Rickey , then manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, devised what came to be known as the “farm system”; as the price of established players increased, the Cardinals began “growing” their own, signing hundreds of high-school boys. Other major league clubs followed suit, developing their own farm clubs that were tied into the minors. In 1949 the minor leagues were tremendously popular: 448 teams in the United States, Canada, Cuba, and Mexico played in 59 leagues with an aggregate attendance of some 39 million—about twice that of the 16 major league clubs. The minor leagues at that time were divided into six classifications, graded according to the level of playing skills: AAA (triple A), AA (double A), A (single A), B, C, and D.

Attendance eroded soon thereafter when the major leagues began broadcasting and televising their games into minor league attendance areas. By the early 1980s, after the American and National leagues annexed 10 choice minor league territories, the number of minor league teams had been greatly reduced, and only 17 leagues remained. Attendance had dropped, and the minor league clubs generally looked to the major league parent clubs for heavy subsidization. The purpose of the minor leagues had evolved from mainly providing local entertainment to developing major league talent.

This situation improved in the early 1990s. As ticket prices for major league games escalated , attendance at less-expensive minor league games rose apace. Furthermore, development of new stadiums and renovation of existing facilities created more interest in minor league baseball. By 2009 attendance at minor league games had reached more than 41.6 million. The minors had 16 leagues with 174 teams falling into one of five classifications—AAA, AA, A (full season), A (short season), and Rookie. The minor league franchises successfully concentrated on drawing families to their parks with both games and promotional entertainment.

From the beginning of organized professional baseball, the owners had controlled the game, players, managers, and umpires. The players had begun to organize as early as 1885, when a group of New York Giants formed the National Brotherhood of Base Ball Players, a benevolent and protective association. Under the leadership of John Montgomery Ward, who had a law degree and was a player for the Giants, the Brotherhood grew rapidly as a secret organization. It went public in 1886 to challenge the adoption of a $2,000 salary ceiling by the National League. Rebuffed in attempts to negotiate with league owners, the Brotherhood in 1890 formed the short-lived Players League.

During the National League–American League war of 1900–03, the Protective Association of Professional Baseball Players got National League players to switch to the other league, but with the peace treaty the association died. In 1912 came the Baseball Players’ Fraternity , which included most professional players. It was organized after the suspension of Ty Cobb for punching a fan. Later a threatened strike was settled the day before it was to begin.

After a 1953 U.S. Supreme Court decision reaffirmed a 1922 decision stating that baseball was not a business that was subject to antitrust rules, baseball felt assured that its legal and economic foundation was firm. This foundation is primarily based on the Reserve Rule, or Reserve Clause, an agreement among major league teams, dating from 1879, whereby the rights of each team to the services of its players are observed by other teams; i.e., a team could designate a certain number of players who were not to be offered jobs by other teams. The original number of 5 such players was increased to 11 in 1883 and ultimately included a whole team roster.

The recourse the court failed to provide was in substance achieved by the Major League Baseball Players Association—founded in 1953 but largely ineffectual until 1966, when it hired as executive director Marvin Miller , a former labour-union official who also had been active in government in labor-management relations. A skillful negotiator, he secured players’ rights and benefits contractually and established grievance procedures with recourse to impartial arbitration. In 1968 the minimum salary was doubled to $10,000, and first-class travel and meal allowances were established in 1970. A threatened players’ boycott of spring training was averted in 1969 by a compromise assuring a $20,000 median salary.

In 1970 a new suit was brought in federal court contesting the Reserve Clause. The suit was supported by the players’ association, which hired as counsel Arthur Goldberg, a former U.S. Supreme Court justice . The plaintiff was Curt Flood , star outfielder of the St. Louis Cardinals, and the defendants were the commissioner, the two major league presidents, and the major league clubs. Flood claimed that, in trading him to the Philadelphia Phillies without his knowledge or approval, the Cardinals had violated the antitrust laws. He refused to report to the Phillies and sat out the season. The court found against Flood, who appealed, and in 1972 the Supreme Court reaffirmed the 1922 and 1953 decisions exempting baseball from the antitrust laws, but it called on Congress to correct through legislation any inequities. Meanwhile, Flood had signed for the 1971 season with Washington on the understanding that he would not be sold or traded without his permission. He quit in mid-season, however.

In 1972, baseball had its first general strike , lasting 13 days; it caused the cancellation of 86 regular-season games and delayed the divisional playoffs and World Series by 10 days. The players asked for and ultimately got an addition to the pension fund. Another players’ strike was averted in 1973, when an agreement was reached that provided compulsory impartial arbitration of salary negotiations and established a rule that allowed a player with 10 years of service in the major leagues and the last 5 years with the same club to refuse to be traded without his consent.

These were unprecedented victories for the players, but their greatest triumph came prior to the 1976 season. Pitchers Andy Messersmith of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Dave McNally of the Montreal Expos played the entire 1975 season without signing a contract; their contracts had expired but were automatically renewed by their clubs. Miller had been waiting for such a test case. The players’ union filed a grievance on behalf of McNally and Messersmith, contending that a player’s contract could not be renewed in perpetuity, a custom first established in 1879. Arbitrator Peter Seitz found for the players. This decision substantively demolished the Reserve Rule.

Stunned, the owners appealed but without success. Negotiations followed, however, and the union agreed to a modification of the Reserve Rule: players with six or more years of major league service could become free agents when their contracts expired and would be eligible to make their own deals. The ruling allowed eligible players who refused to sign their 1976 contracts to choose free agency in 1977.

Twenty-four players took immediate advantage of this new opportunity and went on the open market. Frantic bidding by the clubs followed. Bill Campbell, a relief pitcher with the Minnesota Twins, was the first free agent to make a new connection. He signed a four-year $1 million contract with the Boston Red Sox , which annually paid him more than 10 times his 1976 salary. The free agency procedure was the principal issue when the players struck for 50 days at the height of the 1981 season (June 12–July 31), forcing the cancellation of 714 games. Once again the players won. In the settlement it was agreed that clubs losing players to free agency would not receive direct compensation from the free agents’ new teams. The union contended that such compensation would impede movement, forcing the signing club, in effect, to pay twice: a huge sum to the player and further compensation to the player’s former employer. Under certain conditions relating to the quality of the player, however, the team that lost the free agent could draft a player from among those assigned to a compensation pool by their teams, and it could select an amateur draft choice from the signing team.

After another, brief shutdown (August 6–7, 1985) centring on salary arbitration, the owners agreed to increase the minimum salary from $40,000 to $60,000, but the number of major league seasons a player had to serve before qualifying for arbitration was raised from two to three. Fan interest continued to rise, and major league attendance records were broken six times in the 1985–91 seasons. The major source of revenue, however, was television. The combined revenue from network television in 1984 was $90 million; one network purchased the rights to televise games in the 1990–93 seasons for $1.1 billion.

In 1994 the owners, unhappy with escalating payrolls and wary of declining television revenues and the growing financial gap between large- and small-market clubs, proposed a new collective bargaining agreement that included a salary cap (a limit on a team’s payroll), elimination of salary arbitration, and a revised free agency plan. The proposal was a dramatic shift from the previous contract and was promptly rejected by the players’ union. The negotiations that followed were inconclusive, and on August 12 the players went on strike, shutting down all major league play for the remainder of the season. When the owners unilaterally imposed the salary cap in December 1994, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) threatened legal action, and the cap was withdrawn. The owners again acted unilaterally in February 1995, eliminating salary arbitration, free agent bidding, and anti-collusion provisions. Again the NLRB responded, seeking an injunction that would force ownership to operate under the old contract until a new agreement could be reached with the union. A U.S. district court granted the injunction on March 31, 1995, and the players’ union quickly announced that the strike was over. The owners accepted the players’ offer to return without a new agreement and to continue negotiations.

The 1994–95 strike lasted 234 days, erased 921 games (669 from the 1994 season, 252 from the 1995 season), forced the first cancellation of the World Series since 1904, disrupted the economies of cities and states, and disappointed millions of fans—all without reaching a resolution. As a result, there was an unprecedented decline in attendance during the 1995 season.

By 2000 attendance had improved but player compensation had soared. The average salary paid to a player had risen dramatically, but the median player salary had not, meaning that the salaries paid to superstars of the game had increased at a much greater rate than those paid to ordinary players. The average salary was about $41,000 in 1974, $289,000 in 1983, nearly $590,000 in 1990, nearly $2,000,000 in 2000, and more than $3,300,000 in 2010. Median salaries were not compiled in the 1970s, but in 1983 the median salary was $207,000, in 1990 it was $350,000, in 2000 it was $700,000, and in 2010 it was more than $1,100,000.)

In 2023, as interest in baseball continued to wane and the length of games (on average more than three hours) was often cited as a cause, Major League Baseball and the players agreed to several rules changes intended to make the game more exciting and quicken the pace of play. The most significant of these was the introduction of a pitch clock , which limited the amount of time between pitches. Other changes included eliminating the infield shift rule and making the bases bigger in order to encourage base-stealing. The average length of a game in the 2023 season was almost 24 minutes less than in 2022.

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Jackie Robinson Thesis Statement

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Early life and college career, breaking the color barrier, legacy and impact.

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Dissertations on the Subject of Baseball

This article was written by  Peter C. Bjarkman

This article was published in The SABR Review of Books

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume III (1988).

If academic dissertations on baseball literature and baseball history provide a fruitful scholarly resource, this is not yet common knowledge among our active baseball researchers. Confirmation of the anonymity surrounding this rich body of work is provided in a curious statement buried within a recent issue of The SABR Bulletin .

Here we learn from a report of the SABR Microfilm Committee (December 1986) that Edward Nichols’ pioneering 1939 Ph.D. thesis (Pennsylvania State University) is “perhaps still the only dissertation on baseball completed in a Department of English at an American University.” What is more distressing than the mere inaccuracy of this statement is what it reveals about the relative obscurity still surrounding academic work on baseball history and baseball culture.

That such inaccuracies should be fostered by SABR, of all groups, further masks the degree to which baseball has remained a favorite pastime (albeit often a secretive passion) of hundreds of American scholars and academics. More importantly, it works to direct aspiring students of the game away from one of the richest if least-mined veins of information on the early history as well as the literary potential of our fascinating national pastime.

Baseball dissertations, then, remain one of the richest resources for scholarly interpretation of baseball, and yet at the same time one of the least explored sources available to students of baseball history and baseball literature. This report is intended as a guide for those wishing to explore these existing academic resources of our Literary Baseball.

“Abstract” summaries are provided below for nineteen readily accessible baseball dissertations on historical and literary topics, all focusing on baseball as a subject in American literary or cultural studies. I have narrowed my survey here to those Ph.D. theses which explore in detail the impact of baseball on American life and American letters; this listing is therefore not exhaustive of all doctoral dissertations which, after one fashion or another, touch either directly or obliquely on baseball as a subject of academic inquiry. This survey is nonetheless hopefully representative of the considerable degree to which American scholars have found baseball and baseball culture a challenging and fascinating subject for scholarly inquiry

Doctoral dissertations exploring baseball as a literary subject hold considerable significance, then, for scholars of both baseball history and American culture: these works chronicle the emergence of a serious adult baseball fiction and explore various important aspects of this emerging literary genre. Baseball dissertations on historical topics also hold a similar scholarly value: together they provide a body of writings which help explain precisely why a serious baseball literature and fiction develop, as they do, only after 1950. And they record as well the historical background on which that fiction continues to draw for its vital socio-cultural perspectives and for its fertile intellectual life source. These scholarly works explore precisely why popular baseball themes of “the pastoral,” “the non-urbanj’ and “the non-commercial” arise only after the national sport has effectively lost its folk roots and today become largely an urban commercial spectacle.

Dissertations on Baseball in American Literature

Bowles, Francis P. America at Bat: The Baseball Hero in Life and Letters Ph.D. Dissertation. The University of New Mexico, 1980 (no DAI catalog listing, abstract or order number; available only through inter-library loan from the University of New Mexico Graduate Library).

The argument gracefully advanced here is that the game of professional baseball, along with its players, reflects psychological and moral truths about the American national experience. Baseball and the men who play it together “embody the collective drives and aspirations of the larger society around them.” This study takes social history as its organizing frame, defining baseball as a central American social institution. From this viewpoint, the “dead-ball” era of the early 20th century as well as the slugging era of the ’20s closely mirror national life during these two remarkably different historical periods. Individual chapters focus on a number of important baseball personages who in themselves reflect contemporary American values and issues: Albert Spalding is presented in the perspective of the Horatio Alger novels; Christy Mathewson is seen as a living embodiment of Gilbert Patten’s Frank Merriwell image which dominated sporting fiction at the turn of the century; John Montgomery Ward’s “Brotherhood Rebellion” provides almost perfect counterpoint to the economic stance of Albert Spalding, just as John McGraw provides an instructive contrast to the conception of the baseball hero created by the fiction of Patten and the on-field play of Mathewson. Following a line of argumentation developed by Tristram Coffin, Bowles demonstrates as well that baseball heroes such as Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Judge Landis complete the normal developmental process of national folklore by personifying expected American types (the ideal prowess hero, the trickster, the ethical figure.) A controversial thesis concerning the position of blacks in American baseball suggests that “because black stars in the major leagues have refused to act out the stereotyped “Old Coon” role that whites have expected them to play, Satchel Paige is the only Negro star to achieve legendary status” within baseball’s national mythology.

Candelaria, Cordelia (Chavez). Baseball in American Literature: From Ritual to Fiction. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Notre Dame, 1976 (200 pp). DAI 37, No. 01, 305-A (Order no. DDJ76-16493).

Explicates the serious adult novel-length prose fiction about baseball produced through the mid-1970s, exclusive of youth baseball novels and other pulp dime-novels devoted to the sport during the earlier half of the present century. Two types of novels are covered: those in which baseball plays only a minor role as one of the several competing organization metaphors, and those in which baseball is the controlling and dominant literary figure, one which establishes the novel’s controlling themes. A central socio-historical thesis emerges: “baseball fiction as a body shows a progression from the simpler dimensions of romanticism and realism to the more complex ironic and autotelic modes, [and this progression] has a cultural correlative in baseball itself.”

Paralleling the complex evolution of our baseball fiction is the evolution of the on-field game as well, from the native 19th-century folk ritual to the increasingly sophisticated and commercialized professional endeavor of the twentieth century. An ever-widening distance between ballgame and folk population is seen as distinctly in the literary uses of baseball as it is in the emergence of the spectator sport itself. The shift in baseball fiction from simply structured and simply narrated action-packed stories to acutely solipsistic fiction is demonstrated with works of such recent novelists as Malamud ( The Natural ), Coover ( The Universal Baseball Association ), John Alexander Graham ( Babe Ruth Caught in a Snowstorm ), and Roth ( The Great American Novel ).

Dagavarian, Debra. A Descriptive Analysis of Baseball Fiction in Children’s Periodicals: 1880-1950. Ed.D. Dissertation. Rutgers University, 1987 (no DAI catalog listing, abstract, or order number; inter-library loan available from Rutgers University Libraries)

The research purpose here is to explore and describe content from an important American cultural artifact: children’s periodical fiction treating the game of baseball. Children’s magazine baseball fiction is analyzed in terms of social and historical origins, as well as intended audience, with a controlling assumption that such fiction plays a vital part in any socialization process for the individual child. The content of such children’s literature is also examined for purposes of shedding light on social roles and interactional patterns that are distinctly unique to American culture.

A largely thematic method of analysis is employed: thirty-five stories were selected from major children’s periodicals dating from the period 1880-1950. Only stories containing the playing of baseball in some form are included and these stories are described through plot explication and identification of primary themes. Five major themes arise here: 1) interpersonal support, 2) individual responsibility, 3) sacrifice in the face of defeat, 4) human modesty, and 5) the value of fair play.

Such recurring popular baseball themes are related to structural aspects of the act of baseball playing viz ., pacing of the game, configuration in the system of play, and mentorship relationships on the field of play. While no salient trends in the thematic analysis were uncovered, it is demonstrated that the nature of the baseball stories examined was clearly didactic in intent, aimed at transmitting idealized American values through the medium of apparently light and entertaining childhood reading materials

Golubaw, Saul. Baseball as Metaphor in American Fiction Ph.D. Dissertation. The State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1975 (234pp). DAI 36, No. 06, 3712-A (Order no. DDJ75-26148).

A critical and historical overview of ways in which baseball has been utilized as appropriate metaphor in American fiction, from late 19th-century novels (e.g., Noah Brooks’ The Fairport Nine ) down to the present (especially The Great American Novel and The Natural .) The earliest metaphorical use of baseball emerged in the visionist period of 1880 to 1919, employing the game not only to relate an exciting sports story but also to honor American values and an American way of life as well. Widespread public disillusionment with the sport in wake of the Black Sox scandal led inevitably to “a more complex and adult revisionist fiction in which not only what occurs on the field is important, but also what transpires off the diamond.” Writers such as Ring Lardner and Heywood Broun begin utilizing the national pastime to “accuse, indict, and castigate America for a host of moral failures.” Evolution of an emerging notion of the game of baseball as meaningless experience and its players as clowns and morons leads next to non-serious baseball narrative (Thurber and Roth) in which the game “is not so much metaphor as it is gag or slapstick routine.”

A conclusion of this thesis is that The Natural ultimately provides “the total baseball metaphor,” a work in which “the romance of the early period, the scorn of the revisionists, and the prankish humor of the non-serious writers all come together” as Malamud utilizes baseball to portray a relationship between a native American hero and a wasteland American society within which he must reside. Golubcow also demonstrates precisely why “with the game as instant metaphor for all of America, a baseball writer is almost destined to fail in covering everything that might be contained in the national experience.” He thus maintains that baseball fiction by its very nature is doomed to fall short of its total goal.

Harrison, Walter Lee. Out of Play: Baseball Fiction from Pulp to Art Ph.D. Dissertation. University of California, Davis, 1980 (172pp). DAI 41, No. 09, 4033-A (Order no. DDJ81-05383).

A definition of baseball games as ritualized combat and highly structured and ritualized significant mock actions is provided within the framework of Jonathan Huizinga’s conception of “play elements” in American culture. Each player of the contest maintains a uniquely defined role in which his actions are permanently integrated with those of his teammates; the game provides a perfect balance between the concept of single combat (pitcher versus batter) and a cooperative team competition through which victory can only jointly be obtained.

An exceedingly small but articulate body of popular late 19th and early 20th century fiction provides the most appropriate literary expression of baseball’s highly formulaic pattern as sport and as artistic subject: “the perilous quest of a family of brothers” to win a pennant in a season-long combat through symbolic warfare, while isolated from the debilitating forces of the everyday world. While Noah Brooks’ Our Baseball Club (the earliest baseball novel) focuses on the unity of team as single-entity, Zane Grey’s The Young Pitcher introduces the concept of the single baseball hero, whose ultimate test is “to avoid insidious corruption from the world outside the baseball diamond.”

Popular fictional baseball stars become literary models reflecting sacred American values, yet temptations of American culture increasingly act to corrupt the sterile and idealized baseball world. While Ring Lardner’s heroes (especially Jack Keefe in You Know Me Al ) fail to understand the significance of their actions as baseball heroes, Mark Harris extends Lardner’s realistic tradition by providing a hero-narrator (Henry Wiggen) who can realize both potentials and limitations in the baseball star as human hero. Harrison concludes that The Natural provides “the most direct expression of the ritualistic importance of baseball” in which “the perilous quest of the baseball season parallels the medieval quest for the Holy Grail.” Extending this pattern of baseball as perilous symbolic quest, such other recent important baseball novels as Universal Baseball Association , The Great American Novel , Philip O’Connor’s Stealing Home , together extend the exploration of the role of baseball as significant element within American culture. 

Kinsley, Patrick Allen. The Interior Diamond: Baseball in Twentieth Century American Poetry and Fiction Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Colorado at Boulder, 1978 (275pp). DAI 39, No. 05, 2939-A (Order no. DDJ78-20530).

Aims to merge the historical and aesthetic realities of baseball with the literary, mythological and cultural importance of the fiction and poetry inspired by the game itself. In some of this literature, baseball symbolizes an ordered pastoral realm, outside of time, where motion emerges as ritual; other baseball literature portrays a corrupt world which, as a reflection of American culture itself, has fallen from idyllic promise to moral inferiority and tainted materialism. Baseball has also been utilized as a fictional metaphor for the art and craft of a literary creation itself. Together these thematic and metaphorical uses of the national game constitute a significant tradition within serious American literature of the twentieth century.

This study devotes separate chapters to the baseball poetry, the fiction of Ring Lardner, the Henry Wiggen novels of Mark Harris, The Natural, Universal Baseball Association, The Great American Novel, and Herrin’s Rio Loja Ringmaster. Kinsley demonstrates that each of the novelists examined sees baseball as a rich symbolic construct, an entirely unique sport providing its own sense of history, ritual, legend, and native American myth. With a season stretching from early spring to early fall, baseball invites explicitly comparison with the seasons of life and growth; its patterns of structured form superimposed upon an artificial landscape furthermore suggest “both the hortus conclusus of the pastoral genre and the creation of a work of art.”

Kudler, Harvey. Bernard Malamud’s “The Natural” and Other Oedipal Analogs in Baseball Fiction Ph.D. Dissertation. St. Johns University, 1976 (305pp). DAI 37, No. 09, 5829-A (Order no. DDJ77-01581).

Aims to explain the surrealistic plot and apparently symbolic characters of Bernard Malamud’s The Natural in a manner that would properly place this novel within the canon of Malamud’s own later fiction, as well as within a tradition of baseball novels developed over the two decades following the appearance of Roy Hobbs. Kudler argues that Malamud built his novel as a symbolic analog to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex , in the same fashion that James Joyce retold the Ulysses legend in the guise of the modern adventures of Leopold Bloom. He contends as well that Malamud constructed a metaphorical baseball novel, utilizing both mythic and Freudian sexual analogs, and in doing so “he created the archetype for the serious baseball novel, describing the game of baseball as primarily an Oedipal duel, with murderous intent on both sides, between a father figure — the pitcher — and his young son, the batter at ‘home’ plate.”

To support this presumed mythic underpinning of the novel, one chapter fully explicates “ironic metaphors” in The Natural , thus deciphering apparent extensive Joycean plot conventions. To demonstrate the presence of a theme of Freudian psychosexual guilt as well as a theme of Sophoclean mythic guilt, a second chapter focuses on the heavy use of such phallic symbols as Hobbs’ bat Wonderboy. Promoted as well is the weighty claim that overall structures and patterns in the game of baseball are inherently Oedipal, and that Malamud was only the first of several baseball novelists “to intuit this phenomenon and interpret it artistically.” Other symbolically Oedipal baseball novels are taken to be Universal Baseball Association , Bang the Drum Slowly , and The Great American Novel .

Lass, Terry Russell. Discoveries of Mark Harris and Henry Wiggen Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Missouri, 1986 (210pp). DAI 47, No. 10, 3757-A (Order no. DA8701387)

Argues that Mark Harris’ tetralogy of Henry Wiggen baseball novels is a “significant but overlooked achievement in contemporary American fiction.” The Southpaw (1953) is seen as the best of the Harris novels, one in which Henry Wiggen “serves his apprenticeship as an amateur athlete, enters the world of professional baseball, undergoes a series of physical and moral trials, and emerges with a story to tell and a style to tell it.” Henry Wiggen’s personal journey of self-exploration and self-discovery is examined in detail throughout three chapters which review the middle novels of the sequence, Bang the Drum Slowly (1956) and A Ticket for A Seamstitch (1957.) A separate chapter traces Henry’s widening social consciousness, his acceptance of the possibilities of social community, and his emergence as an important fictional hero of the ’50s. A final chapter is devoted to the more recent revival of the Henry Wiggen figure in the 1979 novel It Looked Like Forever , as well as drawing critical evaluations of Harris’ baseball tetralogy from a number of unusual and diverse contemporary sources.

Merrell, David Boles. “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”: Baseball as Determinant in Selected American Fiction Ph.D. Dissertation. Texas A&M University, 1979 (196pp). DAI 40, No. 12, 6281-A (Order no. DDJ80-11975)

While novels representing serious baseball fiction have provided several distinctive types of narrative perspective, in all such novels “baseball serves as a determinant of microcosm, character, structure, action, and ethics.” Merrell illustrates this thesis with the following exemplary novels and competing narrative modes: Lardner’s You Know Me Al (a first-person epistolary novel); Harris’ trilogy of Henry Wiggen’s stories (first-person peripheral viewpoint); The Natural (third-person omniscient narrative); and Universal Baseball Assocation (metafictional novel utilizing a central reflector and eventual unmediated reflection of the fictional world). The ordered social world of baseball provides a perfect analog and microcosm for larger American society; baseball novelists like Lardner, Harris, and Malamud place fictional players and teams within actual major league settings, while Roth and Coover create fictional leagues parallel to the features of real professional baseball. Characters populating these novels are drawn from stereotypes of the baseball hero, in the model of Babe Ruth, Joe Jackson, or other representative heroic or tragic (or even comic) real-life baseball figures.

The seasonal cycle of baseball also provides a determinant for the time frame of narrative action: “the feeling of baseball time as determined by the individual game suggests the timeless past and the timeless future.” Narrative action and a moral-ethical framework for such fictive action are also strictly determined by parameters of the actual game of baseball. If action in the baseball novel falls within the bounds of plausible or recorded baseball history (is in line with past statistics and baseball legends), then realism is achieved within the novel; if action and event are improbable, then the novel evolves into fantasy. Baseball’s narrowly and precisely defined ethics (e.g., codes exist for players’ actions, and certain actions such as stealing the catcher’s signs are condoned) provide the means for judging character and action within the baseball story. The novels of Lardner, Harris Malamud, and Roth demonstrate the degree to which the microcosmic world of baseball efficiently functions as a determining vehicle in the structuring of American fiction.

Reynolds, Charles Dewey Hilles. Baseball as the Material of Fiction Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Nebraska, 1974 (272pp). DAI 35, No. 05, 3005-A (Order no. DDJ74-23931)

Although rapid growth of baseball popularity in the middle nineteenth century led to a labeling of the sport as the “national pastime” as early as 1850, it was a full century later before serious baseball fiction caught the nation’s attention. Reynolds explains that adult baseball fiction appeared precisely at a time when the game was being systematically divorced from its adoring public through extensive commercialism (through “big-business baseball” with its TV coverage, elaborate farm systems, and crass commercialism.) By 1950 adults had taken over the child’s game and television had transformed “the country game” into a big-city business which resulted in “a distant activity viewed in a small box.”

Reynolds focuses on three aspects of the literary handling of baseball within serious adult treatments after 1950. The sociological aspect reflects idealism concerning the national pastime as melting pot: city-country distinctions are paramount in baseball fiction because “a country player’s triumphs assert the American Dream,” while socio-economic barriers such as race are rarely mentioned in baseball fiction (the issue not even being considered until Eliot Asinof’s Man on Spikes. ) The imaginative aspect focuses on potential fictional means of overcoming limits of probability in treating a sport based so heavily on the mathematical boundaries of a playing field and on the game’s relevant statistics. The Natural is taken to illustrate how the serious baseball novelist has utilized baseball’s own inherent mythology, rather than trying to create an original mythology for baseball fiction. The moral aspect explores the problem of “ideal versus real,” with The Southpaw  taken as the first novel “to show baseball’s moral dichotomy seriously as an issue for the player,” and Malamud’s story extending the conflict to the issue of “the fixed game” and the nature of heroism. Writers of baseball fiction before 1950 had focused largely upon play on the field. But television has unraveled baseball from the fabric of American life, and “with aesthetic distance and separation of the game in literature from the game on the field, baseball has now become a worthy subject for a serious American fiction.

Smith, Leverett T., Jr. The American Dream and the National Game Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1970 (553pp). DAI 32, No. 03, 1530-A (Order no. 718267).

Aims to demonstrate similarities between literary culture and American culture at large; this is attempted through analysis of both literary documents (literary masterpieces and materials from the field of professional sports, especially from baseball) and historical documents from the realm of popular culture, in the effort to see if both hold political and social values in common. Smith’s thesis is summarized as follows: “that the concept of play, which led a perilous existence in the literature of the 19th century and early 20th century because of the predominance of the work ethic, has, since the end of World War I, begun to gain the kind of status the work ethic once had, and that this ethic is now equally visible in literary works and in the world of professional sports as an ethic-alternative to the supposed ethics of the commercial democratic society as a whole.”

Baseball-related sections include a chapter on the writings of Ring Lardner, a chapter on the evolution of professional baseball between 1919 and 1922 and the impact of the Black Sox on baseball’s relationship to a commercial society, and a section studying the public images of Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth and their crucial relations to shifting values of a commercialized democracy.

Dissertations on Baseball in American Culture and American History

Furst, R. Terry. The Image of Professional Baseball: The Sport Press and the Formation of Ideas About Baseball in Nineteenth Century America Ph.D. Dissertation. New School for Social Research, 1986 (363pp). DAI 47, No. 06, 2323-A (Order no. DA8616022)

Describes and analyzes the process by which the collective image of professional baseball was formed, tracing both negation and affirmation of ideas within the popular sports press which worked to impede or promote the growth of professional baseball from its role as recreational pastime to its emergence as a popular spectator sport in 19th-century America. Furst demonstrates that the public image of baseball fostered through the sporting press was never a stable one: conflict arose from competing images of an older, social-recreational approach to playing the game and a newer and much more competitive professional style of play.

Such important early baseball events as the Cincinnati Red Stockings tour of 1869 are traced through their press accounts, with attention given equally to editorial commentaries, evaluative descriptions by sports reporters, and judgmental reader-letters to the editors of major dailies. It is clear that “the image of professional baseball grew, not as a unitary concept, but rather as a composite of attributes stemming from an interactive complex …  including both reportage and reading of baseball matters in the sport press, discussion of baseball within social and occupational networks, game attendance and changing values (sic) towards work and play.

Goldstein, Warren Jay. Playing for Keeps: A History of American Baseball, 1857-1876 Ph.D. Dissertation. Yale University, 1983 (304pp). DAI 44, No. 09, 2808-A (Order no. DEQ83-29232).

Demonstrates through baseball — the principal if not the only major spectator sport of the late 19th century — the changing and emerging relationships between the experiences of work and play. What results by the turn of the century is the unique notion that these were in fact distinct spheres of human activity. Because the organized game of baseball first emerged from and flourished in a culture and community of skilled urban craftsmen, the language of the game rapidly became barely distinguishable from the language of productive labor; the result was also that players as well as commentators on the game “stressed the skillful play which produced ballfield victories.”

A central focus of this dissertation is the profound transformation of baseball (from club-based fraternal game featuring skilled craftsmen to entertainment business supported by gate receipts) which transpired during the two decades between 1857 and 1876. Club management and sport commentators of this period first introduced the language and practices of “management” and an inevitable result was that relationships between team management and players evolved to parallel that between employers and their workers in all other phases of the American business community. Founding of the National League in 1876 was the first formal association of clubs rather than players, and this action formalized the existing trend toward institutionalizing the new commercial structure of American baseball.

But as baseball emerged as an institution of commercialized leisure activity it also maintained an ideology of “pure recreation” (the myth of the “democratic pastime” now far removed from the anxieties of the daily workplace); this dichotomy in baseball’s public image grew out of an internal development of the game from pure club sport of amateur flavor into profitable business, replete with its own highly specialized professional workplace (the ballpark)

Haven, Jeffrey Lawrence. Baseball: The Origins and Development of the Game to 1903. Ed.D. Dissertation. Brigham Young University, 1979 (232pp). DAI 40, No. 02, 1027-A (Order no. DDJ79-18437).

Focusing on the development of the institution of baseball within the 19th-century American society, this work narrates the historical evolution of the sport from its American origins through the mergers of the National and American Leagues in 1903. Haven emphasizes both a narrative account, which will interest sports enthusiasts, as well as more analytical assessment, which provides significant discussion for scholars of American social history. Historically accurate accounts are provided for the birth of the game in its American version, expansion and development of baseball from the first amateur clubs to touring professional teams, the growth in professionalism under the auspices of the National Baseball League, commercialization within the business of professional baseball and dominant players and teams of the game’s first half-century. 

Hull, Adrian Louis. The Linguistic Accommodation of a Cultural Innovation as Illustrated by the Game of Baseball in the Spanish Language of Puerto Rico Ph.D. Dissertation. Columbia University, 1963 (399pp). DAI 25, No. 12, 7256 (Order no. 64-09884)

Since no Spanish-speaking countries have an indigenous counterpart to the North American game of baseball, adoption of this game by the native culture of Puerto Rico caused linguistic difficulties of considerable impact, especially in terms of the words and expressions necessary to describe adequately the objects, actions, practices, and events of the game. Methods are explored by which a native Puerto Rican population resolved this problem both through utilization of native Spanish-language resources as well as borrowings from American English speech. Hull identifies and also defines linguistic interference emerging from language-contact situations involving the importation of American baseball to the Puerto Rican island nation; the study is largely synchronic in its focus on Puerto Rican baseball language over the four previous years, including the lexical, phonological, morphological, syntactic, and orthographic levels of usage.

A principal source for oral language was the recording of radio broadcasts of baseball games; written materials were gathered from local newspaper accounts of game results and game action. No effort was made, however to distinguish between social, regional, colloquial, or literary levels of language usage, it being assumed here that baseball attracts an audience from all walks of life and that those following the game utilize common expressions and a highly specialized vocabulary also common to the sport.

Four central observations summarize the observed language-change phenomena which has accompanied the cultural innovation of baseball in Puerto Rico: 1) evidence exists for an accelerated language change in the Puerto Rican Spanish used in connection with the game of baseball; 2) evidence exists for deviations from the norm on all linguistic levels (phonological, syntactic, etc.) in Spanish employed to discuss baseball; 3) American English baseball language exerts a strong influence on Puerto Rican Spanish baseball language; and 4) evidence suggests that some deviations in Spanish baseball language are not at all due to any linguistic influence of American baseball language, but rather to natural evolution within the Spanish language forms. 

Kammer, David John. Take Me out to the Ballgame: American Cultural Values as Reflected in the Architectural Evolution and Criticism of the Modern Baseball Stadium Ph.D. Dissertation. The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 1982 (407 pp). DAI 43, No. 10, 3356-A (Order no. DEP83-04350)

Elaborates the unique thesis that “using traditional modes of architectural criticism and then expanding them to encompass popular cultural tastes, one can trace the changes in the ballpark as reflecting changes in American society at large, particularly in the areas of urban demography, transportation, and mass entertainment.” Kammer suggests that while the urban baseball stadium has long been an American fixture, no one has previously examined any serious social implications of changes in architectural style, construction technology, or urban location. Construction of three representative ballparks (Yankee Stadium, Dodger Stadium, and the Houston Astrodome) is explored as a significant reflection of important advances in building technology evolving through three distinct generations of such concrete and steel stadia. A surprising thesis results: with emphasis on middle-class access to the stadium, more luxurious spectator facilities, and increasing standardization in playing-field appearance and dimensions, the more modern baseball stadium can be taken to reflect “a more homogenized, mobile and spectacle-oriented society” than that which preceded World War I. 

Voigt, David Quentin. Cash and Glory: The Commercialization of Major League Baseball as a Sports Spectacular D.S.S. Dissertation. Syracuse University, 1962 (505pp). DAI 24, No. 01, 425-A (Order no. 63-3637).

Traces the history of baseball as a by-product of large-scale industrialization and of a related and historically unique problem of increased leisure time available to working-class masses. Voigt portrays baseball from its earliest appearance as an amateur sport for gentlemanly participants, through its transformation by the final decade of the nineteenth century into a highly commercialized sporting spectacle providing significant new leisure outlets for the masses of middle-class urbanites.

Some primary sources of data for this study are personal correspondences, books, and other records authored by such participants in l9th-century baseball as managers, players, club administrators, and professional sports journalists. Several important observations and descriptions are also drawn from sporting journals and magazines, baseball guides and manuals of the period, and reporting in hometown newspapers on each pennant-winning team of the era. Baseball is treated from a largely sociological frame of reference; the unique American national pastime is here described as a newly emerging type of socially significant leisure-time outlet, as “a sports spectacular catering to the psychological needs of increasingly urbanized Americans.

NOTE: In addition to the seventeen dissertations discussed in this report, two additional early projects also exist which pre-date all published DAI catalog abstracts. These pioneer non-abstracted dissertations are perhaps the most widely cited of those studies treating historical topics; certainly they are the best-known among scholars not yet familiar with the larger inventory of baseball dissertations

Nichols, Edward J. An Historical Dictionary of Baseball Terminology Ph.D. Dissertation. The Pennsylvania State University, 1939 (112pp). DAI 2,196 (no DAI abstract provided — Order no. 00-00127).

Detailed historical accounts are provided for “origins” of most of the terms, labels, and concepts of the national pastime, with significant insight provided into the evolution of our national game against the social backdrop of nineteenth-century industrialization. This work is now mainly significant from a bibliographical or historical perspective, being the first major academic study of baseball carried out in a college English Department.

Seymour, Harold. The Rise of Major League Baseball to 1891 Ph.D. Dissertation. Cornell University, 1956 (659pp). DAI 16, 2145 (no DAI abstract provided – Order no. 0019159).

A detailed history of baseball’s first half-century, this is the earliest draft of parts of Seymour’s pioneer research later published as volume one ( Baseball: The Early Years , Oxford University Press, 1960) of his landmark two-volume social history of the national pastime. Little is found here that is not later available, in more polished form, in the book version treating the same material. This is still, however, the most painstaking academic history of the game’s early decades.

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• Our Stories

The History of Baseball and Civil Rights in America

Baseball remains at its core a simple game – played by millions from the youth level to the national stage.

But the convergence of the National Pastime and American culture dates back to the United States’ transition from an agrarian society to an industrialized power.

In short, a snapshot of any point in time of America’s last 150 years includes the fabric of baseball. And often, baseball was at the forefront of cultural change.

“Jackie Robinson made my success possible,” said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Without him, I would never have been able to do what I did.”

The magnitude of those words cannot be overstated. Dr. King’s lasting work as a Civil Rights pioneer touched all areas of the American experience, yet he credited a baseball player with making his dream viable.

Those 19 words speak to the breadth and depth of baseball’s presence in America. The game represents the American ideal at its root: That hard work and fair play are the keys to success.

Once Robinson was allowed to demonstrate his ability in the big leagues, the doors appeared open to everyone. It was a message that only baseball – with its power to cut across cultures – could deliver.

The following timeline highlights some of American history’s watershed moments, both on and off the field, and illustrates how baseball was – and is – a part of our collective lives.

1865-1876:  Following the Civil War between the North and the South, America experiences an era known as Reconstruction. From 1865 to 1876, Congress will pass a series of civil rights acts, and the nation will adopt three constitutional amendments (the 13th, 14th, and 15th) intended to ensure freedom and citizenship for Black men. Given this more favorable outlook for African Americans, it was accepted (at least for a while) that Black players could play baseball alongside white players.

1878:  Long before  Jackie Robinson  came on the scene,  Bud Fowler  becomes the first Black professional player to integrate white teams. Beginning in 1878, he will play in the minor leagues as a pitcher, catcher and second baseman. Although Fowler was born in Fort Plain, a small town in Upstate NY, he moved to Cooperstown, future site of the Hall of Fame, as a young boy.

1884:  Moses Fleetwood Walker becomes the last Black ballplayer on an otherwise all-white major league team until Jackie Robinson in 1947. Walker’s team, the Toledo Blue Stockings, joined the American Association, a major league that years later merged with the National League.

1887:  Black players like Walker would soon lose their place in baseball. In 1887, major league and minor league team owners adopted a secretive "gentlemen's agreement" or unwritten rule, that said that no new contracts will be given to Black ballplayers. This gentleman's agreement, similar to Jim Crow laws adopted by some American states, effectively forces Black ballplayers out of all professional leagues by 1900. (This is called de facto segregation, which is segregation that occurs in practice without any official law in place.)

1896:  The U.S. Supreme Court case,  Plessy v. Ferguson,  rules that segregation by law is legal and advances the notion of “separate but equal.” (This kind of segregation is known as de jure segregation.) But in examining images of segregated water fountains, job advertisements that excluded Black applicants and even soda machines that prevented African Americans from making purchases, this notion of “equal” access and opportunity is proven to be false.

1916-1919:  Between 1916 and 1919, half a million African Americans will relocate to the North in what became known as the Great African-American Migration. Meanwhile, World War I will come to an end in 1918. These two factors will help set the stage for Rube Foster and the birth of the Negro Leagues.

1920:   Rube Foster , owner of an independent all-Black team, the Chicago American Giants,  founds the Negro National League . This marks  the start of Negro Leagues baseball . With greater population bases, cities in the North can better support the teams in Foster’s new league. Other Negro Leagues will soon sprout up, as part of a large and profitable baseball industry throughout the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.

1939-1945:  More than one million Black Americans  serve their country  in World War II. While their military units were segregated, some play on integrated baseball teams while overseas.

1945:  Branch Rickey, part owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers,  signs Jackie Robinson  to a professional contract. In 1946, Robinson  plays for the Montreal Royals,  the Dodgers’ top minor league affiliate. And then on April 15, 1947, Jackie  makes his debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers,  officially bringing an end to the game’s color barrier.  Robinson thus becomes the  first African American in the 20th century to play in what are considered the modern major leagues.

1947:  While Robinson becomes the first player to break through the color barrier in the National League,  Larry Doby  signs later that season with the Cleveland Indians. Doby becomes the first Black player to  break the color barrier in the American League.  Much like Robinson, Doby will face bigotry and hatred from teammates, opponents and fans, but will overcome such racism to become a star player –  and eventually a Hall of Famer.

1947:   Wendell Smith  is the first Black baseball writer admitted to the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

1948:  The desegregation of baseball foreshadowed other landmark achievements of the Civil Rights movement. In 1948, President Harry Truman desegregated the U.S. military.

1954:  The Supreme Court case of  Brown v. Board of Education  overturns  Plessy v. Ferguson  and rules that “separate” is not “equal.” Despite this, racial segregation of fans will continue at some ballparks in the South.

1957:  Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King, Jr. receive honorary degrees from Howard University. Robinson will become a trusted advisor to King during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

1959:  When Pumpsie Green plays with the Boston Red Sox, the last major league team is integrated. Still, Black ballplayers still find it difficult to make big league rosters.

1964:  Congress passes the Civil Rights Act. In spite of the new legislation, the segregation of fans at minor league ballparks will persist for several years, before finally fading away by the end of the decade.

1966:  During his  Hall of Fame induction speech,  Ted Williams advocates for Negro Leaguers to be eligible for induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

1966:  Emmett Ashford becomes the  first Black umpire to work a major league game.

1971:  Satchel Paige  becomes the first player inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame  based solely on his Negro Leagues career.

1971:  On Sept. 1, the Pittsburgh Pirates field the first all-Black lineup, including future Hall of Famers Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell.

1974:  Hank Aaron, an African American from Mobile, Ala.,  breaks Babe Ruth’s lifetime home run record.  Much like Jackie Robinson many years earlier, Aaron faces racial hatred from some fans who do not want to see a Black man break a record belonging to a white player. Even in the face of death threats made against him (similar to what Robinson faced), Aaron succeeds by hitting his historic 715th home run.

1975:   Frank Robinson  becomes the  first full-time African-American field manager in Major League Baseball,  serving in that role for the Cleveland Indians from 1975 through 1977. He went on to manage the Giants, Orioles, Expos and Nationals.

1976:  Bill Lucas is given the title of  Vice President of Player Personnel for the Atlanta Braves  but in fact serves as the club's general manager. As the first African American to fill that leadership role for an AL/NL team, he assumed all responsibilities of the GM position and was instrumental in helping rebuild the Braves.

1987:  The Rookie of the Year Award is renamed the Jackie Robinson Award, 40 years after Robinson, the inaugural winner, broke the major league color barrier.

1993:  The Houston Astros are the first AL/NL team to give the title of general manager to an African American, Bob Watson. In 1996, he wins a World Series with an AL/NL team, holding the same title with the New York Yankees.

1997:  Commissioner Bud Selig  retires Jackie Robinson’s number  throughout all levels of professional baseball, an honor never before bestowed on any player.

2017:  Bruce Maxwell, a catcher for the Oakland A’s, kneels during the playing of the National Anthem prior to the start of a ballgame in September. At the time, he is the first, and only, Major League Baseball player to join other American athletes in protesting police brutality and racism in this manner.

Dec. 16, 2020:  Major League Baseball designates players who appeared in seven specific Negro Leagues between 1920 and 1948 with major league status.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

In the museum.

OPENING MAY 25, 2024 The Souls of the Game: Voices of Black Baseball  The new exhibit will honor the history of Black baseball and celebrate its impact on the game and on our country. 

EDUCATION PROGRAMS

Civil Rights: Before You Could Say "Jackie Robinson"  In this unit, students will explore American history from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement. They will work both independently and collaboratively to learn how race relations in baseball reflected significant social and cultural developments in the United States. To learn more about this subject from a Hall of Fame expert, click  here  to book a Virtual Field Trip.

The past and present of African-American baseball experiences  Stories that highlight the lives and careers of Black ballplayers through key moments in history, museum artifacts and baseball cards.

Videos that highlight baseball and civil rights history  These videos feature Hall of Famer biographies, curator-led virtual field trips and player interviews.

MUSEUM TOURS

Explore Pioneers of the Game  Students of all ages can learn about Black baseball pioneers and their connection to the National Pastime via a Black History Tour during February Break Week.

COE 208 | The Literature of Baseball

• Formulate Questions/Thesis
• Identify Keywords
• Search Well
• Journal Articles
• Magazine Articles
• Newspaper Articles
• Proceedings
• Cite This link opens in a new window

Thesis Generator

• Thesis Generator May be of help--but use with caution.

Image source: Powernowllc. CC0 1.0.  Wikimedia Commons.

Formulate Questions

Once you have selected an initial topic, the next step is to develop research questions.  You'll do this by using probing questions, such as what, why, when, how, would/could, should.

Phrasing your topic in the form of questions helps direct the research process.  For example, with a topic of " During the Jim Crow era, the Negro League had a profound influence on American politics, culture, social and recreation ", the following questions may be asked:

WHY questions ask for an explanation of something--why something happened, why it did not happen, or why one thing is better than another.  Why did the Jim Crow era persist for so long?  

WHEN questions focus on timing or history.  When did the Jim Crow era occur?

WHERE questions focus the topic on a location, either geographical or other.  Where did Negro League baseball have its most profound impacts (society, culture, baseball, economy)?

HOW questions focus aspects of the topic, on a process, or on the origin.  How did African-Americans playing in the NL impact baseball and society?

WOULD / COULD questions focus on possibilities.   Could the integration of African Americans have occurred sooner?  What prevented this?

SHOULD questions focus on the appropriateness of a particular action, policy, procedure, or decision.  

Source:  Mike Palmquest.   Bedford Researcher .   Colorado State University.

A good research question will lead to your thesis statement.

For example, the question...

...might lead to the following thesis:

"During the Jim Crow era, the Negro League had a profound influence on American politics, culture, social and recreation."

Strong   thesis statements

• Answer a question
• Are engaging 
• Can be challenged or opposed, thus also defended

or "why should I care?" test

• Are supported by your paper
• Are neither too broad nor too vague

Source:  Thesis Statements.  George Mason University. 

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• Last Updated: Aug 13, 2024 3:39 PM
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137 Baseball Essay Topics & Examples

Want to write an essay on baseball? Described as a national religion of the US, this sport is definitely worth exploring!

⚾ Baseball Research Topics

🏆 top baseball essay examples, 🧢 best baseball essay topics, 🥎 interesting baseball topics to write about, 🏏 baseball research paper topics, 👟 baseball argumentative essay topics, 🎓 simple & easy baseball essay titles, ❓ baseball research questions.

Developed from folk games in early Britain, baseball has become the most popular bat-and-ball game in the world. About half of Americans claim to be its fans. In your paper about baseball, you might want to focus on its history. Another interesting idea is to talk about cultural impact of baseball. Whether you have to write an argumentative, descriptive, or informative essay, our article will be helpful. It contains baseball topics to research and write about. You can use them for a paper, presentation, or any other assignment. Best baseball essay examples are added to inspire you even more.

• The evolution of baseball form older bat-and-ball games
• History of baseball in the US
• The Massachusetts game and modern baseball: compare & contrast
• Baseball at the age of steroids
• Baseball in the US culture
• British and Finnish baseball: compare and contrast
• Baseball in the world literature
• Women in baseball
• Comparison of baseball and cricket
• The role of individual players in baseball
• Kansas City Zephyrs Baseball Club, Inc. The main reason for the contentious issues is the profitability disbursement to between the club operations and players. The owners want to maximize their interest through reduction of taxes yet the players want to get […]
• Which Is More Profitable, Baseball or Football? There are other sports which are more profitable than the two but the argument here boils to which sport between the two is more profitable. In regard to the ticket price, baseball becomes more profitable […]
• Toronto Blue Jays Baseball Team’s Sport Marketing The team competes in Major League Baseball and represents the American League East division, and it is the only club in MLB that is not from the United States.
• Koprince’s “Baseball as History and Myth in August Wilson’s Fences” Although the connection between baseball and the thematic development of the play might seem tangential at first, a closer analysis of the manner in which the game I mentioned in the novel will show that […]
• “Life in Baseball’s Negro Leagues” by Donn Rogosin This is the particular phase of racism that has made the dominance so very concrete that the title in itself declares the actual picturesque about the foregrounding towards this dominance.
• History of Baseball and Its Impact on American History It is possible to hypothesize that the regional roots of baseball emphasize the special place of the rural culture in the construction of the contemporary American identity and promote the traits that the rural population […]
• Fences: On Stubbornness and Baseball Even the play’s title, Fences, is a reference to “swinging for the fences” in addition to the literal and metaphorical fences Troy builds that keep the other characters out or in.
• Social Injustice in Negro League Baseball The lack of equal pay for African American players in the Negro Leagues during the 1920s and 1930s was a significant social injustice that exposed and sought to improve the inequality within the baseball industry.
• Linear Regression Applied to Major League Baseball Applying regression techniques by drawing a scatter plot of real-world data of MLB payroll amounts and win totals copied to the Excel spreadsheet, it is practical to establish the nature of the relationship between the […]
• Jackie Robinson, an American Baseball Player Robinson reached significant heights in baseball, becoming the first recipient of the MLB Rookie of the Year Award, becoming the National League’s Most Valuable Player, and being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
• The Role of Ezol’s Journal in Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story Outwardly the journal features the history of Ezol’s life, Ada’s citizens, and the Twin Territories; however, in truth, it goes beyond that and has a much deeper symbolic meaning. Ezol’s journal serves as a portrayal […]
• Promotional Campaign Plan for Sault Ste. Marie Baseball It will be a moment to harness the youthful talents of Sault Ste. The youths of Sault Ste.
• Geometry Web Quest for Soccer, Baseball, Basketball, Bowling, Golf, Volleyball and Pool Field for golf is the biggest and made of grass, sand and water and is the biggest and it has no fixed shape. Soccer field is made of grass or synthetic material and is the […]
• Fraud Within the Tallahassee Beancounters Baseball Team An additional impetus for the audit of the company’s accounts was the granting of a mortgage to the company for the construction of a new training facility.
• Benefits of Baseball League However this research is perhaps better placed in capturing the impact of baseball league because it is not subject to the different errors that are said to be experienced in the assessment of economic development […]
• Mechanics of the Baseball Swing During the game, the ball is to be hit hard by the batting team and the “hitter” to stop at a base before proceeding to other bases.
• Baseball Game Rules and Age Limit In the game of baseball or any other form of the game, the play of a boy corresponds to the work of an over-aged player.
• Baseball Career Personal Experiences Though I was nowhere near the standards of the so called best players, my interest and willingness to give my best, pleased the coach and I was mostly in the starting team.
• The Use of Steroids in Baseball The use of steroids may be used to improve the performance of the baseball teams but this comes at a great cost to the individual’s health and the integrity of the game.
• Negro Baseball League and Professional Players The work clearly tells the reader the saga of the tribulations and humiliations that a black player has to undergo because of the color difference, and the author points out how the game of baseball […]
• Professional Baseball Operation Strategy in Taiwan But when it comes to the professional market, the low attendance rate shows the dilemma of the league operation. To review the development and history of the free agency system in MLB.
• William Ellsworth Hoy, a Deaf Baseball Player In the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, the overall social environment and a widespread hostile public attitude toward disability provided many obstacles to a successful career for any person with a disability.
• The 1994 Major League Baseball Strike and Conflict Although the strike was sometimes claimed to be the one that had the most significant impact on Major League Baseball, the result of the negotiations was not satisfactory to both parties. The conflict between the […]
• Oakland Athletics: Successful Baseball Team It is necessary to understand that this measure is crucial, and it can be combined with a slugging average to determine the capabilities of a particular player.
• Baseball in Sociological Research and Its Features This is followed by a careful determination of the research design to use while conducting a research. It also makes sure that the sociologist is in line with ethical standards of conducting a research in […]
• Media and Negative Ethnicity in Baseball The stakeholders in the game of baseball have made concerted effort to promote integration of major league baseball in the United States.
• Baseball Players’ Salaries Analysis This meant that the salaries of LA Dodgers players were evenly distributed relative to average salary with above-average distribution in NY Yankees and a weak distribution in NY Mets.
• The Financial Problems of Major League Baseball Meanwhile, as the players faced the problem of losing their salary for the last weeks of the season, the owners encountered a big problem since the World Series were wiped out for the second period.
• Data Collection of Major League Baseball The fact that the total population of the players in the Major League Baseball is relatively large made the researcher choose the sampling method to determine the salary that a player should earn.
• Major League Baseball’s Data Set General overview: after choosing the topic, the research team decided to review the available information to ensure that the base of the problem was wide and comprehensive; at this stage, the researchers were concerned with […]
• Major League Baseball Players Association The association also has a role in the modern world of negotiating the salaries of its players. The major league baseball association is a union that is of great help to the baseball players.
• Steroids in Baseball The rejuvenated use can be traced back to the role of the media in promoting sports as a form of entertainment.
• Factors that influence Major League and Minor League Baseball This perhaps leads to the appreciation of the significance of considering the team’s quality in determining the attendance of major and minor Baseball league.
• Baseball and Urbanization For instance, at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, the urban population in the United States was 5% of the total population.
• Technologically Advanced Baseball Bats Research The purpose of this research study is to investigate the advantages of using technologically advanced, or high priced, baseball bats in the Little League Baseball.
• Unions and Compensation in Major League Baseball This paper will discuss concepts of the unionization of professional baseball, impacts of the unionization of the game to players, managers and the game in general.
• 1919 World Series: How It Changed Baseball Forever?
• 2011 Major League Baseball National League Most Valuable Player Individual or Team Award?
• Comparison Between the Games of Baseball and Fastpitch Softball
• Comparison of American Pastime in Baseball and Football
• How Baseball Helped Me Coup Up with the Struggles of My Life?
• African Americans in Baseball
• Analysis of David Brook’s Baseball or Soccer
• Analysis of the Official Website of Major League Baseball
• Analysis of Baseball: An Important Part of American Pop Culture
• Analysis of Baseball Stadiums
• Analysis of the Economic Structure of the Major League Baseball
• Analysis of the Minor League Baseball
• New York Yankees, the Most Successful Franchise in Baseball History
• Baseball Hats Boost Employee Motivation And Job Performance
• Compare And Contrast Baseball And Basketball
• Differences And Similarities Between Baseball And Softball
• How African Americans Helped Shape The Major League Baseball
• How Baseball Has Changed My Life?
• How Baseball Survived the Great Depression?
• How Did Baseball Affect Cuba In The Mid Twentieth Century?
• How Television Has Changed The Game Of Baseball?
• How The Civil War Helped Formed Baseball Into The Great Game?
• How to be a Healthy Baseball Player?
• How To Play Fantasy Baseball?
• Salaries In Major League Baseball
• Stopping on Nine: Evidence of Heuristic Managerial Decision‐Making in Major League Baseball Pitcher Substitutions
• What Is The Status Of Steroids In Baseball?
• Why Baseball Is The Most Amazing Sport?
• Who Integrated Major League Baseball Faster Winning Teams or Losing Teams?
• Why Is Baseball My Favorite Game to Watch?
• A Bad Day in My Baseball Career
• A Background of America’s Favorite Pastime Baseball
• Biography and Life Work of Jack Roosevelt Robinson, a Professional Baseball Player
• Biography and Life Work of Joseph Jefferson Jackson, an American Baseball Player
• Life and Work of Roberto Clemente Walker, a Puerto Rican Baseball Player
• Biography of Babe Ruth
• Achievements of Baseball Legend Ted Williams
• Advertising in Baseball Stadiums
• History of African Americans in Major League Baseball
• History of Baseball in the American Civil War
• History of Steroid Use in the Major League Baseball
• History of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League in America
• Anabolic Steroids are Ruining Major League Baseball
• Evaluation of Customer Satisfaction for Fans Attending Baseball Games at Yankee Stadium
• Baseball and the Civil War of the United States
• Attendance and the Uncertainty-of-Outcome Hypothesis in Baseball
• Baseball, Football, and Basketball: Models for Business
• Baseball Revenue Sharing
• Cheating in the Game of Baseball
• Impact of the Globalization of Baseball
• Myth in Baseball
• National Pastime to Dismal Science: Using Baseball to Illustrate Economic Principles
• Pay and Performance in Major League Baseball: The Case of the First Family of Free Agents
• Physics Of Baseball
• Professional Baseball Stadiums ‘Old’ New Construction Trends
• Risk Management for the Use of a City Baseball Stadium
• Economic Impact on the Dominican Republic of Baseball Player Exports to the USA
• Twenty First Century Baseball and Economics
• Women’s Baseball Leagues in Historical Context
• Work Incentives And Salary Distributions In Major League Baseball
• How Did Racism Impact the Game of Baseball?
• Are Baseball Players Paid Too Much?
• How Did Babe Ruth Change Baseball?
• Does the Baseball Labor Market Contradict the Human Capital Model of Investment?
• How Has Baseball Changed Their Rules?
• Did Abner Doubleday Invent the Game of Baseball?
• How Did Baseball Survive the Great Depression?
• Can Women Really Play Baseball?
• How Was Baseball Changed by Jackie Robinson?
• Does the Baseball Labor Market Properly Value Pitchers?
• How Did Baseball Affect Cuba in the Mid-Twentieth Century?
• Are Major League Baseball Players Overpaid?
• Why Has Baseball Benefited From the New York Yankees?
• How Did Baseball Influence America?
• Does Option Theory Hold for Major League Baseball Contracts?
• How Has the Game of Baseball Been Affected by the Increase in Technology Over the Past Decades?
• Should Baseball Ban the DH?
• How Did Steroids and HGH Destroy Baseball?
• Should Baseball Players Who Used Steroids Be Allowed in the Hall of Fame?
• How Did Television Has Change the Game of Baseball?
• Were Major League Baseball Doubleheaders a Mistake?
• Why Are Americans Addicted to Baseball?
• How Do Baseball Players’ Mental States Influence Their Career?
• Should Baseball Expand the Use of Instant Replay to Review Close Plays on the Bases?
• Does Baseball Lose to Soccer in Some Us States?
• Should Baseball Be Financed by Is Citizens’ Taxes?
• Can Baseball Alleviate Mental Illness Symptoms?
• Should the Pricing Policy for Baseball Tournaments Be Reviewed?
• What Countries Can Complete With the USA in Baseball Ratings?
• NFL Research Topics
• Career Ideas
• Academic Achievements Research Topics
• Success Ideas
• College Education Essay Ideas
• Goals Questions
• Hard Work Research Topics
• Personal Growth Research Ideas
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Baseball - List of Essay Samples And Topic Ideas

Baseball, often referred to as “America’s pastime,” holds a significant place in the cultural and social fabric of the United States. Essays could explore the history of baseball, its evolution over time, and its impact on American society. The discussion could extend to the examination of iconic baseball figures, notable events, and landmark games in baseball history. The intersection of baseball with racial, social, and economic issues, including the integration of Major League Baseball and the impact of free agency, might also be explored. Moreover, a comparative analysis of baseball’s popularity and influence in other countries, and its role in fostering international goodwill and understanding, can offer a broad perspective on baseball as not only a sport but also a social and cultural phenomenon. We’ve gathered an extensive assortment of free essay samples on the topic of Baseball you can find in Papersowl database. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Baseball – National Pastime

Baseball was a sport, developed in the late 1800's, and early 1900's. Baseball is known as the National Pastime. ""The game of baseball evolved along with the United States, for games similar to the modern sport had been played in America since colonial times. In the mid-nineteenth century, New York businessman began forming baseball clubs and establishing the rules of the game"". Alexander Cartwright is the one who first created the rules. The field was shaped like a diamond, and […]

Racial Integration in Major League Baseball

Baseball, America's beloved national pastime, along with apple pie, hot dogs, and racism. Professional American sports were segregated in the first part of the 20th century preventing black athletes from competing with white athletes. In baseball, there were ""Negro"" leagues for non-white players. Racial integration that was lacking in Major League Baseball up until 1947, brought an end to the baseball color line, impacted America, and brought about hope for the future. The color line in American baseball excluded players […]

Babe Ruth’s Effect on the 1920s

 In America, in the 1920s, Babe Ruth was a great symbol of the open era. The 1920s was an era where the people of America had a lack intention to follow the law. This made the 1920s a lawless era (Nash 374). An example of the lack of attention to the law is in the times of Prohibition many Americans gave no attempt to follow that law. Prohibition is the prevention to make or sell alcohol. However, many Americans did […]

We will write an essay sample crafted to your needs.

The Rise of Baseball

Many people love baseball and what it is today, but how did it start off and how have the rules changed over the past 2 centuries? People may love this sport, but they probably don't know about the complicated background about the game that we love today. Many people are probably hearing that a man named Abner Doubleday founded baseball in the summer of 1839, but that is not the case. A man named A.J Spalding used little evidence to […]

The Man who Changed Baseball

Jackie Robinson was the first African American to play on a major league baseball team, and had the huge impact on the color barrier of baseball, and for equal rights. Jackie Robinson was born on January 31, 1919 in Cairo, Georgia. He then moved to Pasadena when he was one years old. When he was eighteen years old he went to a Pasadena Junior College. Then when he was about twenty he went to the University of California at Los […]

Racism in Movie “42”

The movie I chose for this assignment is 42 starring Chadwick Boseman and Harrison Ford. The movie is about Jackie Robinson, a baseball player who broke the color barrier when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. One of the topics we covered in this course was racism. For my generation it is hard to understand how pervasive racism used to be in society. I have three cousins that have a black father. Many of my friends are from different races and […]

History of Equipment in Baseball

Throughout history, baseball equipment has evolved according to the demands of the game and the necessity of the players. As a result, players have been provided with strategic advantages over their predecessors, and many entrepreneurs have capitalized on the business aspect of the sporting goods industry. When baseball first began, equipment was an afterthought; as long as the players had a ball and a bat, the game was on. The luxuries we see today such as padded gloves, protective helmets, […]

An Analysis of the Baseball Sport as a Hobby

A hobby is said to be an activity done regularly for enjoyment purposes during one's free time. Hobbies include a lot of activities such as playing sports, taking part in artistic and creative pursuits, collecting themed items and objects among many other amusements. List of hobbies that one can participate in are always endless and they change frequently due to changes in one's fashion and interests. One can acquire substantial skills through by continuously participating in a particular hobby. In […]

The Erosion of Trust: Unpacking the Astros Cheating Scandal

In the world of sports, the desire to win is undeniably potent. Teams and players often toe the line between gamesmanship and deceit in search of victory. Yet, when the integrity of the game is compromised, the reverberations are felt far and wide, extending beyond the boundaries of the sport itself. Such was the case with the Houston Astros cheating scandal, a profound breach of trust that sent shockwaves throughout the baseball community and sports enthusiasts globally. The genesis of […]

Baseball – Gentleman’s Sport

America's sport baseball was formed with the distinction of being a gentleman's sport. It was a sport that allowed men to play with a bat, a ball, and to run the bases to score. There were obstacles such as striking out, fouls, and getting caught out by the opposing team player. During times of war, it quickly became a favorite sport among Americans because of the length of the game. The time it was played in, usually the summer time […]

Deaf Baseball Players

There was some deaf professional baseball player, who was successful players in the Major League Baseball (MLB), beginning in 1883. But, first thing is give credit to the first deaf player in the MLB was Ed Dundon. Even though Mr. Dundon was the first professional deaf baseball player, William Hoy is given more recognition since he played longer in the MLB. The most recent deaf professional baseball player is Curtis Pride. Becoming a MLB player was not easy for these […]

The Timeless Wit of “Who’s on First?”

For anyone familiar with classic American comedy, the phrase "Who's on First?" is likely to elicit a chuckle, if not a full-blown belly laugh. Created by the legendary comedic duo Abbott and Costello, "Who's on First?" is more than just a comedy sketch—it's a testament to the power of wit, timing, and the intricacies of the English language. Exploring the background, content, and impact of this iconic piece offers insights into why certain comedic works become timeless. Bud Abbott and […]

American Sport – Baseball

Baseball is an American sport that is known and played throughout the world today. Baseball was thought to be created by someone named Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York. The sport of baseball does not really have only one person that created it many people have changed it as it came along to help make it the way it is today. In 1907, a commission was created to look at baseball and a man named Alexander Joy Cartwright came and […]

History of Baseball

Baseball was created 179 years ago and ever since 1839, baseball has been one of the most popular sports in America. According to the Google dictionary the definition is ""a ball game played between two teams of nine on a field with diamond-shaped circuit of four bases."" It is chiefly played in US, Canada, Latin America, and East Asia. Ever since 1839, baseball has included playoffs, equipment, and rules. Playoffs There are many steps necessary in winning the World Series. […]

Baseball: Jackie Robinson in Major League Baseball

In 1947, Jackie Robinson was the first African American to play Major League Baseball outside of the Negro League. While this past April we celebrated the 71st anniversary of breaking the color barrier, the MLB is at the lowest percentage of African American players since the civil rights era. In 2017, 75 percent of the NBA and 64 percent of NFL players were black, while the MLB is only 7.7 percent (Canton 1). Because of the expenses, socio-economic transformations of […]

Negro Baseball Leagues

Negro Baseball Leagues have contributed to the history of America by integrating African Americans and Whites and having a baseball league just for African Americans. The first ever Negro League was the Negro National League created by Rube Foster. The league was composed of six teams in the beginning then eight teams towards the end, most of the teams that were in the Negro National League were from cities that have a higher population of African Americans. The league was […]

Jackie Robinson Civil Rights Movement: Breaking Barriers and Inspiring Change

Have you ever been told not to play a game? Jackie Robinson got told that every time he stepped on the field. His teammates and the fans told him that all the time. But still, with all that hate, he ended up being the player on the field every time he stepped on the field. Jackie Robinson was always trying to stop racism, so his family is now encouraging more African families to stand up if they get told they […]

Farewell to Baseball

Lou Gehrig, nicknamed ""The Iron Horse,"" was an all American first baseman for the New York Yankees. He played for the Yankees his entire career of seventeen seasons. Lou a part of six World Series champion teams, became the league's most valuable player twice, and he was named for the all-star team seven consecutive years, and won the Triple Crown once. In nineteen thirty-nine he was inducted into the baseball hall of fame and was the first player to have […]

The Globalization of Baseball

Globalization is the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale. The influences of globalization can be felt in every city around the world. Technology has enabled individuals as well as organizations the ability to immerse themselves into another culture virtually at the speed of light. Understanding of different societies and cultures has become one of the leading processes of a business. Primarily there has been a greater focus on understanding […]

Baseball Rocks: more than a Game, a Cultural Phenomenon

Baseball started not as a sport but as a gentleman’s game for their leisure weekend during the olden days. It is a game where you need a bat, a ball and four bases. The elements and rules of the game remained the same. There’s a lot of improvements when it comes to equipments the baseball bat design remained similar to the old baseball bats. Willie Keeler described the bat by saying, “Meet the ball and hit ‘em where they ain’t.” […]

Baseball: Abner Doubleday and Alexander Cartwright

Baseball is 179 years old and was invented in the summer of 1839. It was invented by Abner Doubleday and Alexander Cartwright. The first recorded baseball game was in 1846 when Cartwright's Knickerbockers lost to the New York Baseball Club in New Jersey. The National Association of Baseball Ball Players were the founders of the MLB in 1869. Cincinnati Red Stockings became America's first professional baseball team. Many different pitches can cause a wild pitch to occur. The most common […]

Americans and the Bill of Rights

There have been many professional players that have decided to take a stand against their athletic organizations in some shape or form. These players use their sport as a platform to express their personal beliefs to the public. History of this kind of protest first arose in the boxing ring, by a boxer that went by the name of Muhammad Ali. During the year of 1967, every male individual that was on American soil was expected to enlist in the […]

From Sun Kings to Chihuahuas: the Evolution and Impact of Baseball in El Paso

El Paso baseball goes back to the 1890s, but in 2005 The Diablos baseball team was started, which was the first minor league team in El Paso. In 2014 started the new El Paso baseball team who are known as The Chihuahuas. Over the years the team has grown and exceeding tremendously. Baseball in El Paso has become more popular and the stadium gets filled each game day. Previous to the Diablos having ""The Diablos"" as their team name, it […]

An Overview of the Biomechanics and Risk Factors with UCL Injury in Baseball Pitchers

In 1974, orthopedic surgeon Frank Jobe marked a pivotal movement in sports medicine history by performing the world's first reconstruction of the ulnar collateral ligament of the elbow (UCL) on Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Tommy John. This revolutionary surgery, now coined ""Tommy John's surgery"", has become now commonplace amongst individuals pitching at all levels of baseball since. The prevalence of successful reconstruction of the UCL has grown tremendously since Jobe's pioneering surgery. However, the incidence of injury to the UCL […]

Tall Tale on the Diamond: Babe Ruth’s Height in Baseball Lore

When you think of Babe Ruth, you think home runs, charisma, and a figure larger than life. And speaking of larger than life, let’s talk about the Babe's height. Standing at 6 feet 2 inches, Ruth wasn't just a giant in terms of his baseball legacy; he was literally a towering figure during the early 20th century. This essay takes a swing at exploring how Babe Ruth’s height contributed to his legendary status in baseball and what it meant in […]

Affordable Baseball

After a fantastic season general manager of the Oakland Athletics Billy Beane didn't expect to lose his best two players. In 2002 the Oakland Athletics in fact did lose their two best players who were first baseman Jason Giambi and outfielder Johnny Damon. Manager Billy Beane needed to find new players to replace the two stars. Billy brought in Scott Hatteberg, David Justice, and Ray Durham to replace the once had roles of Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon. The first […]

Balancing the Bases: the Case for a Salary Cap in Major League Baseball

In the realm of North American professional sports, Major League Baseball (MLB) stands out for its absence of a salary cap, a distinction that has long fueled debate among fans, analysts, and insiders alike. Unlike the NBA, NFL, and NHL, where salary caps are employed to create parity among teams, MLB relies on a luxury tax system, which, though designed to level the playing field, often results in stark disparities in team spending and competitive balance. The debate around implementing […]

Bo Jackson: a Closer Look at his Athletic Legacy

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Interesting Baseball Essays: How to Write a Perfect One?

Table of Contents

Baseball is one of the most popular sports in all fifty states of America. You will not meet even a single person who knows nothing about baseball. This game became a visit card of the US and it’s also so deeply rooted in the cultural code of Americans that literally everyone plays this game. 

Kids start playing this game in elementary school and continue until the elderly. And of course, like any other cultural phenomenon, a baseball essay may become your assignment for a class at your college. That’s why in this article you will find out everything about writing baseball essays and will learn how to enjoy this process. 

Baseball Essay Topics : How to Choose the Right One?

Baseball essays can be much more complex than you think. This game has a long and interesting history, so you can rest assured that there will be a varied choice of topics from which you will be able to choose your one. That’s why in this section we have decided to collect some of the main tips that will greatly help in your topic choice for your baseball essay .

• Tell the origin. Baseball is a sport with a long history. That’s why once you will be writing a paper on it, the history of this kind of sport is an excellent choice for the topic. 
• Tell about variations. Did you know that there are a lot of different variations of baseball? We can name a few: t-ball, rig ball, softball. Choose one and describe it in full. 
• Explain the influence of this game. You can also decide to explain your vision regarding the popularity of this game, do a little research and tell why baseball received such popularity all over the world and especially in the U.S.

Baseball Essay Structure: Main Components

Like any other paper, your baseball essay will have a strict structure. But do not worry as the article’s structure will not differ too much from papers on some other subjects. To write a successful baseball essay , you shouldn’t even be a super expert in this sport, you just need to follow a simple structure that we’ll provide below. 

• Thesis statement. Every essay should start with a thesis, even when it comes to baseball. Create a short and logical thesis describing the essence of your baseball essay . For example, if your topic is the influence of baseball on the U.S, try to write your position in one sentence and that will be your thesis.
• Body of essay. You should add the main information regarding your topic in the body. Divide the body into several sections and descriptions explain the topic with separate arguments.
• Conclusion. The summary should contain general information about the topic and repeat your thesis. Make sure to avoid adding new facts to your baseball essay conclusion, and focus on the written material.

Cause and Effect Essays on Baseball

If you want to create a great baseball essay you need to draw your attention to the type of essay that is called cause and effect. This type of academic paper is a great solution for you to write about such an important and influential sport as baseball. By using this type of academic writing you will be able to provide as many details as you need to disclose the topic of the discussion. To make things easier for you we’ve collected five ideas that you might use in your cause-and-effect essay on baseball.

• The extreme popularity of baseball in the U.S
• Influence of baseball on the younger generation
• Baseball as a cultural part of American society
• Role of baseball as a key sport in the United States
• Why will baseball never be replaced in America?

Baseball Research Topics

Finally, we are approaching the most interesting and intriguing part of our article, namely the best research topics for your baseball essay . Before writing this section we’ve checked hundreds of different baseball topics, just to highlight those that will be most interesting to you. So let’s not waste time and present the 15 best research topics on baseball. 

• The evolution of the baseball game through history 
•  Comparing baseball in different countries
•  What is the best team in the history of baseball and why?
•  Usage of steroids in baseball
•  Explain the difference between batting and pitching
•  How, when, and by whom were the rules of baseball invented?
•  Explain the main differences between cricket and baseball
•  Why was baseball invented as a team sport?
•  What is the greatest match in the history of baseball?
•  Who is the greatest player in the history of baseball?
•  The features of the baseball stadium
•  History of baseball during the civil war in the U.S.
•  The invention and importance of women’s baseball
•  Why was baseball not added to the Olympic Games?
•  Differences in baseball rules in the U.S and other countries.

So write your baseball essay with our tips and you will definitely get an A+ grade.

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Thesis Statements

What is a thesis statement.

Your thesis statement is one of the most important parts of your paper.  It expresses your main argument succinctly and explains why your argument is historically significant.  Think of your thesis as a promise you make to your reader about what your paper will argue.  Then, spend the rest of your paper–each body paragraph–fulfilling that promise.

Your thesis should be between one and three sentences long and is placed at the end of your introduction.  Just because the thesis comes towards the beginning of your paper does not mean you can write it first and then forget about it.  View your thesis as a work in progress while you write your paper.  Once you are satisfied with the overall argument your paper makes, go back to your thesis and see if it captures what you have argued.  If it does not, then revise it.  Crafting a good thesis is one of the most challenging parts of the writing process, so do not expect to perfect it on the first few tries.  Successful writers revise their thesis statements again and again.

A successful thesis statement:

• makes an historical argument
• takes a position that requires defending
• is historically specific
• is focused and precise
• answers the question, “so what?”

How to write a thesis statement:

Suppose you are taking an early American history class and your professor has distributed the following essay prompt:

“Historians have debated the American Revolution’s effect on women.  Some argue that the Revolution had a positive effect because it increased women’s authority in the family.  Others argue that it had a negative effect because it excluded women from politics.  Still others argue that the Revolution changed very little for women, as they remained ensconced in the home.  Write a paper in which you pose your own answer to the question of whether the American Revolution had a positive, negative, or limited effect on women.”

Using this prompt, we will look at both weak and strong thesis statements to see how successful thesis statements work.

While this thesis does take a position, it is problematic because it simply restates the prompt.  It needs to be more specific about how  the Revolution had a limited effect on women and  why it mattered that women remained in the home.

Revised Thesis:  The Revolution wrought little political change in the lives of women because they did not gain the right to vote or run for office.  Instead, women remained firmly in the home, just as they had before the war, making their day-to-day lives look much the same.

This revision is an improvement over the first attempt because it states what standards the writer is using to measure change (the right to vote and run for office) and it shows why women remaining in the home serves as evidence of limited change (because their day-to-day lives looked the same before and after the war).  However, it still relies too heavily on the information given in the prompt, simply saying that women remained in the home.  It needs to make an argument about some element of the war’s limited effect on women.  This thesis requires further revision.

Strong Thesis: While the Revolution presented women unprecedented opportunities to participate in protest movements and manage their family’s farms and businesses, it ultimately did not offer lasting political change, excluding women from the right to vote and serve in office.

Few would argue with the idea that war brings upheaval.  Your thesis needs to be debatable:  it needs to make a claim against which someone could argue.  Your job throughout the paper is to provide evidence in support of your own case.  Here is a revised version:

Strong Thesis: The Revolution caused particular upheaval in the lives of women.  With men away at war, women took on full responsibility for running households, farms, and businesses.  As a result of their increased involvement during the war, many women were reluctant to give up their new-found responsibilities after the fighting ended.

Sexism is a vague word that can mean different things in different times and places.  In order to answer the question and make a compelling argument, this thesis needs to explain exactly what  attitudes toward women were in early America, and  how those attitudes negatively affected women in the Revolutionary period.

Strong Thesis: The Revolution had a negative impact on women because of the belief that women lacked the rational faculties of men. In a nation that was to be guided by reasonable republican citizens, women were imagined to have no place in politics and were thus firmly relegated to the home.

This thesis addresses too large of a topic for an undergraduate paper.  The terms “social,” “political,” and “economic” are too broad and vague for the writer to analyze them thoroughly in a limited number of pages.  The thesis might focus on one of those concepts, or it might narrow the emphasis to some specific features of social, political, and economic change.

Strong Thesis: The Revolution paved the way for important political changes for women.  As “Republican Mothers,” women contributed to the polity by raising future citizens and nurturing virtuous husbands.  Consequently, women played a far more important role in the new nation’s politics than they had under British rule.

This thesis is off to a strong start, but it needs to go one step further by telling the reader why changes in these three areas mattered.  How did the lives of women improve because of developments in education, law, and economics?  What were women able to do with these advantages?  Obviously the rest of the paper will answer these questions, but the thesis statement needs to give some indication of why these particular changes mattered.

Strong Thesis: The Revolution had a positive impact on women because it ushered in improvements in female education, legal standing, and economic opportunity.  Progress in these three areas gave women the tools they needed to carve out lives beyond the home, laying the foundation for the cohesive feminist movement that would emerge in the mid-nineteenth century.

Thesis Checklist

When revising your thesis, check it against the following guidelines:

• Does my thesis make an historical argument?
• Does my thesis take a position that requires defending?
• Is my thesis historically specific?
• Is my thesis focused and precise?
• Does my thesis answer the question, “so what?”

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• DOI: 10.1353/NIN.2012.0033
• Corpus ID: 155014201

The Cause of Baseball: Baseball and Nation-Building in Revolutionary Cuba

• Kyle T. Doherty
• Published 22 September 2012
• History, Sociology
• NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture

5 Citations

The utility player: an examination of the role of baseball in cuban society, cuban sport policy and south–south development cooperation: an overview and analysis of the escuela internacional de educación física y deporte, beyond the sports page: baseball, the cuban revolution, and rochester, new york newspapers, 1954-1960, respecting the game: foreign tours as academic engagement opportunities for intercollegiate student-athletes, beyond the sports page: baseball, the c uban revolution, and rochester, new york newspapers, 1954-1960, 20 references, full count: inside cuban baseball, the pride of havana: a history of cuban baseball, the quality of home runs: the passion, politics, and language of cuban baseball, 1970s baseball diplomacy between cuba and the united states, raceball: how the major leagues colonized the black and latin game, a history of cuban baseball, 1864-2006, playing america's game: baseball, latinos, and the color line, on becoming cuban: identity: nationality, and culture, :playing america's game: baseball, latinos, and the color line, contesting castro: the united states and the triumph of the cuban revolution, related papers.

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Home > Honors College > Honors Theses > 303

Honors Theses

The utility player: an examination of the role of baseball in cuban society.

Emily Harral , University of Mississippi. Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College

Date of Award

Document type.

Undergraduate Thesis

Croft Institute for International Studies

First Advisor

Douglass Sullivan-Gonzalez

Relational Format

Dissertation/Thesis

In this thesis, I will address the role of baseball in Cuba from 1898-2016. I split the thesis into three distinct time periods: Country inception (1898-1953), Revolution (1953-1989), Special Period (1989-2016). Each of these times periods represents a historically significant shift in the political history of Cuba. Every chapter seeks to define the role and significance of baseball in that time period. Through the use of newspapers, magazines, and speeches, I analyze the importance of baseball in society. Additionally, I include information from notable historians to provide contextual information. Cuban baseball served as a form of connection for the sharing of ideas between the US in the early 20th century. It served as a symbol of industrialization and the political and economic advancements that occur. During the revolutionary period, baseball served as a way to legitimize the Revolutionary Government. In transition to the Special Period baseball became a symbol that holds the Cuban nation together. Through economic and political struggles baseball remained a support system. In the end, I found that baseball plays a contributory role in Cuban Society from 1898 to 2016.

A thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for completion of the Bachelor of Arts degree in International Studies from the Croft Institute for International Studies and the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College.

Recommended Citation

Harral, Emily, "The Utility Player: An Examination of the Role of Baseball in Cuban Society" (2018). Honors Theses . 303. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/303

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