BASEBALL AS A MICROCOSM OF AMERICAN WEST SOCIETY: 1900-1935
By
Vanessa E. Shernock
A Thesis Presented to
The Faculty of Humboldt State University
In Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Science in Kinesiology: Teaching/Coaching
Committee Membership
Dr. Justus Ortega, Committee Chair
Dr. Rock Braithwaite, Committee Member
Dr. Gayle Olsen-Raymer, Committee Member
Dr. Thomas Mays, Committee Member
May, 2014 ABSTRACT
BASEBALL AS A MICROCOSM OF AMERICAN WEST SOCIETY: 1900-1935
Vanessa Shernock
PURPOSE: To thoroughly document the connections between the society and culture of the
American west and baseball between the years 1900 and 1935. METHODS: This research is an ethnographic narrative inquiry that utilized qualitative content analysis of primary sources augmented by secondary sources. SOURCES: Primary sources were gathered from the
Library of Congress (LOC) online historical newspaper collection, San Francisco Chronicle microforms, online digital collections like the California Archives and Time Magazine archives, online digital archives of the Covina Public Library and the Casa Grande Public Library, Google
Newspaper Archives, the Las Vegas Age, Historic Oregon Newspapers, the Wyoming Newspaper
Project, the Colorado Historic Newspaper Collection, and the Utah Digital Newspaper collection.
In addition to primary sources, the author embedded secondary sources that fortified her arguments.
RESULTS: This thesis has been broken down into four main topics. The first topic discussed the
19th century extractive industries that created rapid westward expansion and lead to the spread of baseball across the American west. The second topic explored the investments in western baseball as well as the transportation industries, such as railroads and automobiles, that affected the
American west baseball industry. The third topic, progressivism, discussed how progressivism attempted to reform western baseball with respect to alcohol, Sunday baseball, and gambling. The
ii fourth and final topic of this thesis explored western baseball's relationship to Americanism and the
Great Depression. CONCLUSION: The primary source evidence supports this authors argument that throughout the first 35 years of the 20th century, the west's baseball experience was transformed. The regional differences in 1900 that had set American west baseball apart from the baseball in the American east had faded throughout time, and by 1935, American west baseball had been molded, reformed, and popularized to achieve integration into the homogenized American pastime. The American west society in 1900 had still been attached to the ideals of the rowdy western frontier. However, as years passed, American west society, viewed through the perspective of baseball, shed its frontier mentality to become integrated and assimilated into the rest of mainstream American society. As a result, the American pastime thrived in the west.
iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to acknowledge everyone who helped make this thesis possible. First and foremost, I would like to thank Gayle Olsen-Raymer for really stepping up to join my committee and lend her expertise to this thesis. Thank you for pushing me and sticking by me no matter what.
Next, thank you Justus Ortega, Rock Braithwaite, and Tom Mays for all your time and help and patience. Kim Moon, thank you endlessly for being the best departmental administrative assistant a student could have. To my friends and family, yes, it may finally be over! Thank you all for coping with the ups and downs of this process.
iv TABLE OF CONTENTS
Pages
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... iv
INTRODUCTION...... 1
METHODOLOGY...... 16
. RESULTS...... 20
CONCLUSIONS & DISCUSSION...... 49
REFERENCES...... 58
ENDNOTES...... 74
v 1 CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
For whatever reasons one might conjecture, the United States birthed baseball during the
19th Century. The infant stages of baseball took place in the eastern United States when the country fluttered on the brink of industrialization. The men who played baseball during this early period believed in an etiquette-controlled and gentlemanly form of sportsmanship. Teams were comprised of young middle-class men who braved the scornful opinions of many in order to enjoy outdoor fitness and male bonding. The rules of baseball, too, walked the incredible line between the stoic enchantment of chivalry and the competitive edge of the developing mercantile nation-state. By the
Civil War, baseball had pulled itself up by the bootstraps and entered the fray. But the game developed differently in the west.
Baseball existed before the cities in the west brimmed with young blue-collar workers eager to exercise and blow off steam from a busy workweek. The eastern migrants to the west saw wide-open spaces that were ideal for recreation – especially baseball. Unlike Manhattan, where a spare patch of grass for an afternoon game could be illegal, western destinations like California had an abundance of land for games to be played from sunup to sundown (Nelson, 2004). Thanks to
Henry Chadwick, the rules and dimensions of baseball had already spread cross-continentally.
Chadwick, a member of the New York Knickerbocker clubi and author of the The Beadle Baseball
Playerii, traveled to California in 1850 in search of gold and riches. While on his journey,
Chadwick planted the seeds of baseball gospel wherever he took up camp (Morris, 2009).
Chadwick was not unique in his baseball proselytizing. The westward movement had droves of baseball men with riches to make. The peopling of the American west fueled by extractive 2 economics, occurred simultaneously with advances in transportation technologies, which allowed western baseball to have a style all its own.
But baseball’s real roots were still in the east where the two most successful professional baseball leagues of the 19th Century merged in 1901 to form Major League Baseball (MLB). This business arrangement marked the maturation of baseball as an enduring part of American society.
By that time, amateur and professional American baseball games were being played from sea to shining sea; MLB, however, only reached as far west as St. Louis, Missouri. The large quantities of money invested by MLB owners created one major problem: the remaining competing professional leagues elsewhere in the country began to bribe players to jump their MLB contracts and switch leagues and teams. In 1903, to secure MLB’s position as supreme in professionalism, the team owners met and wrote the National Agreementiii. The National Agreement is equivalent to a constitution for baseball and as such, codifies the peace agreement reached between the National and American Leagues to assist in the governing of professional baseball clubs. One key portion of the Agreement disallowed the practice of switching leagues and teams. The strategy worked, and after 1903, MLB achieved its desired power and stability.
However, while many professional leagues continued to thrive where there were no MLB teams, the players suffered by being forced to choose between being trapped in sometimes very unfair contracts, or potentially being banned from professional play in MLB. Since the 1903 agreement, MLB has maintained political and economic control over professionalism. This control affected baseball historical research decisions into the 21st Century. As this author will outline, the vast majority of historical baseball investigations into a mainstream Euro-American baseball experience tend to pertain to the many aspects of MLB history since the 1901 merger. Aside from 3 the multitude of recent baseball histories about Negro leagues, Nissei baseball, and women’s baseball, the majority of new baseball histories being published about early 20th Century baseball apply to MLBiv.
Such baseball histories were not linked to social history. However, the realm of social historyv has a long relationship with the investigation of sport, and baseballvi has an especially strong connection. Although it was not until 1954 that Jacques Barzun linked the study of baseball and American society when he said, "Whoever wants to know the hearts and minds of America had better learn baseball," a much earlier quote by sport historian Joseph Strutt made a strikingly similar pronouncement linking British society to its pastimes. In 1801, Strutt outlined the purpose of his book, Sport and Pastimes of the People of England, by stating, "In order to form a just estimation of the character of any particular people, it is absolutely necessary to investigate the sports and pastimes most generally prevalent among them" (p.1).
Americans have done just that. They are enamored with the game of baseball. Today,
Major League Baseball (MLB) boasts 30 professional teams that make up two leagues. Each season, 2,430 professional baseball games are played across the United States. Millions more semi- professional and amateur games are played in stadiums, backyards, vacant lots, high school diamonds, little-league parks, city parks, and countless other arenas.
In addition to playing baseball, many Americans eagerly read the works of baseball historians who have developed the skill of puzzle masters who fit individual pieces of baseball history together to build a portion of the puzzle of the American past. To complete the puzzle, the baseball historian must also learn about the America that grew alongside it (Briley, 1992).
Knowledge of baseball can shed light upon America's broader social, economic, and political feats. 4 Baseball historians utilize the smaller baseball community to simplify the complexity of American society. This research approach, originally touched upon by Strutt back in 1801, is known as the
“microcosm concept.” Since baseball is called America’s national pastime, baseball historians can assume it is the epitome of American society. Therefore, the microcosm concept allows historians to draw analogies between the miniature society of baseball and the grandiose society of the United
States. Thus, baseball can be analyzed and discussed as it relates to a greater American culture, society, and character (Strutt, 1801 & Barzun, 1954).
Such an analysis requires a literature review of several key topics, each of which will elucidate the relationship of baseball to the American story: sport historiography, baseball historiography, and American west historiography.
Sport Historiography
Most early writings of sport histories were not social histories. The research methods included cataloguing players, teams, and game outcomes, but there was little analysis of sources or critical thinking about their importance. Sports did not become a topic for the American historian until around the middle of the 19th Century when team sports developed a firm hold in American popular culture. After the Civil War, baseball and other team sports had become incredibly popular. In 1866, Charles Peverelly published The Book of American Pastimes, wherein can be found a chapter about baseball. One of the first published pieces to discuss the history of baseball,
Peverelly’s chapter very briefly touched on the microcosm concept. Peverelly made some sweeping generalizations about the inability of Americans to remain focused, and then stated that he believed baseball suited the American character markedly well. But rather than providing evidence to support his opinions, he instead chose to write his book like most sports writers of the time who 5 provided a series of lists that cataloged early sports clubs, their scores, and records. This became the way that amateurs who studied baseball history outside of the academic community interpreted the sport for the next 100 years.
Between the 1860s and the 1940s, only one sport history of any consequence that mentions baseball was published. In 1917, Frederic L. Paxson, an historian of the American West who published the first academic article about American sport in the Mississippi Valley Historical
Review, also helped elucidate the expanding concept of sport as a microcosm. In “The rise of sport,” Paxson outlined his argument for sport as a “safety valve.” He said, “No people has passed through greater changes in a single lifetime than did Americans in the generation which saw the closing of the old frontier”(p. 167). He believed that the closing of the frontier left a void in the
American psyche that had previously been filled by the opportunities presented by the sparsely populated acreage in the west. This loss, coupled with growing industrialization, forced Americans to develop a desire for sport that helped give back that sense of unencumbered freedom. Paxon’s thesis cultivated the microcosm concept by defining the mindset of the rapidly urbanizing
American public based upon the popularity of a growing sport culture. Paxson’s definitions of the
American sport consciousness at the turn of the 20th Century shaped the future of all American sport histories to follow.
By the 1940s, sporting histories expanded on the Paxson safety valve-microcosm theme.
These authors reflected on the impact of the frontier as they argued that sport could be used to catalogue American uniqueness (Pope, 1997). In 1953, Foster Rhea Dulles published, America
Learns to Play: A history of Popular Recreation, 1607-1940. In his book, Dulles argued, “With the gradual passing of so much of what the frontier had always stood for, sports provided a new outlet 6 for an inherently restless people” (Dulles, 199). He went on to say, “ The democracy was to take over sport…” (Dulles, 199). In this same era authors also remarked on the exceptional nature of
American sports. John R. Tunis’ Democracy and Sport (1941) and The American Way of Sport
(1958) concentrated on how the world of team sports helped facilitate democratic ideals like breaking socio-economic boundaries. Tunis argued that sport, “is a proving ground for democracy,” wherein beliefs of the sporting experience such as fair play, sportsmanship, respect for others, and group influences are consequences of the democratic process (Tunis, 1941, 1958). This democratic process was a result of the American frontier, but when the frontier period ended, sports took over as a tool for Americanization.
Along with Tunis, Allison Danzig and Peter Brandwein’s, The Greatest Sports Heroes
(1951), and Frederick W. Cozens and Florence S. Stumpf’s, Sports in American Life (1953), all share common themes about baseball’s relationship to a unique American experience. “…But perhaps it is most of all the essentially democratic nature of the game…” Cozens and Stumpf state,
“Inside the baseball park every man is as good as, if not better than, the one next to him” (Cozens &
Stumpf, 1953). The authors of sport histories during this period were primarily educators invested in perpetuating physical education courses in public schools. The political environment of
American superiority empowered by World War II added fuel to the fire behind sports education
(Pope, 1997). As a way to advocate for the necessity of sport in the educational environment, sport historians began to expand the argument that playing sports helped develop key traits associated with a unique American democratic experience (Cozens & Stumpf, 1953; Danzig & Brandwein,
1951; Pope, 1997; and Tunis, 1941 & 1958).
Contrary to such educators, before the 1960s, the historical academic community generally 7 resisted studying sport within an historical context due to a widespread belief that sport would not help contribute a greater insight into American culture. Gradually, mainstream American historians who had traditionally shunned sport history began to regard research into sport history, and specifically baseball history, with genuine seriousness. But during this era, sport historians began to actively utilize sport as a microcosm of American society and culture. In 1963, Robert Boyle published, Sport: Mirror of American Life and Boyle described his book as, “An attempt to interpret and explain behavior from the vantage point of sport.” By the 1970s, sport scholarship began to truly flourish. Authors like John Lucas and Ronald Smith; Saga of American Sport (1978) built on the themes of earlier sport historians when they argued that sport was an effective way to examine broader American historical experiences. By 1983, historians like Benjamin Rader used the microcosm concept to illustrate the ways sports reinforce, or sometime challenge, American societal values.
Baseball Historiography
Wide-ranging academic interest in baseball history only emerged as late as the 1980s. After more than 100 years of being America’s pastime, the status and popularity of baseball had finally opened the floodgates to academia. Prior to that time, a few historians braved the opinions of their colleagues to write baseball histories. As early as 1960, the first definitive work of baseball history written by an historian appeared—Harold Seymour’s Baseball: The Early Years (1960) vii.
Seymour employed the microcosm concept to write a comprehensive progression of baseball within the context of American history. Seymour went on to publish two more volumes after devoting his first volume to baseball outside of the professional leagues. The next definitive baseball history was David Q. Voigt’s, America Through Baseball (1976). Voigt made clear his 8 use of the microcosm concept when he wrote, “Today, hundreds of institutions… are under scholarly scrutiny as we begin to understand that reflections of American life can be glimpsed wherever groups of Americans share an activity” (Voigt, 4). Voigt and Seymour’s volumes are still considered the most comprehensive histories of baseball.
Despite the late start, American baseball history is quite abundant and includes histories of little leagues, the minor leagues, professional leagues, Negro leagues, and women’s baseball.
Historians have also written descriptive narratives on a variety of topics from the incarnation of baseball and the first codified set of rules by the New York Knickerbockers, to the business history of MLB, to the most exciting moments of baseball’s past such as World Series games and heroic underdog tales. There are also a plethora of biographies of baseball heroes like Ty Cobb, Babe
Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and Willie Maysviii.
In the last two decades of the 20th century, baseball history has been dedicated to a compendium of different topics. Authors like Anton Grobani, Donald Walker, and B. Lee Cooper wrote some of the most inclusive and organized works of bibliographic information about baseball history (Grobani, 1975; Walker & Cooper, 1995). Applicable to this thesis, are Pat Jordan’s two books about his career in the minor leagues. Although Jordan’s books are memoirs published in
1974 and 1975 respectively, The Suitors of Spring, and, A False Spring, are indicative of baseball’s role as a microcosm at different skill and commitment levels. Since the microcosm concept wedded historical baseball analyses, the literature is ever expanding to include baseball’s part in American, social history, economic history, urban history, political history, educational history, and cultural history.
Steven Reiss, one of the most recent and distinguished baseball historians, took the reins of 9 baseball research when he published Touching Base: Professional Baseball and American Culture in the Progressive Era (1980). Reiss’s work examined professional baseball during the Progressive
Era and placed an emphasis on, “The study of professional baseball’s myths, realities, symbols, and rituals,” which he said provided “… better means to better understand American mores, values and beliefs” (p. 4). In addition to the maturation of the microcosm concept, Reiss’s assessment is important to this research as a comprehensive look at American baseball culture during the first 35 years of the 20th Century. Although Reiss’s, Touching Base, discusses baseball as a microcosm of
American culture during the progressive era, his assessment does not expand beyond professional baseball.
American West Historiography
Despite the growth of histories that explore the many aspects of baseball, little research exists that explores baseball as a microcosm of the culture of Anglo-American western settlement at the beginning of the 20th Century in the American west. Although the safety valve concept, championed by Paxson, has been used to try and explain the major growth of team sports in
America, the west’s unique development pattern is described only as a catalyst for the rise of sport.
It is therefore necessary to explore the intersection where the history of the western frontier meets the history of baseball. Thus, a brief discussion of the major works defining the historical study into the character, geography, and meaning of the American west is necessary.
In 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner presented what became known as the Frontier Thesis in which he conveyed his belief that the American frontier was instrumental to the development of
American values like democracy. Using the U.S. census of 1890 as his guide, Turner claimed that the abundance of land that allowed for free westward movement was rapidly diminishing, and that 10 the disappearance of an American frontier could have severe costs for Americanism (Turner, 1953).
Turner theorized that the frontier was a process more than a place. He believed that from the moment Europeans landed on the eastern shores they became exposed to the frontier. As civilization moved westward (trans-Appalachian, trans-Mississippi, and trans-continent), Turner believed, the unique feeling of the frontier shrank from Americans’ metaphorical grasps.
Historians who followed Turner’s thesis theorized that the wild nature of living outside of institutionalized forms of government and society lead to the cultivation of a new type of American.
The image of the rugged individual emerged to explain the strength and stubbornness of the people on the frontier. His following included men like Frederic L. Paxson, Frederick Merk, and Ray Allen
Billington, who accepted and promoted his Frontier Thesis. Though each believed wholeheartedly in the theories of Turner’s frontier thesis, Billington had his own interpretation of the meaning of the frontier. Unlike Turner, Billington had the advantage of seeing American development well into the second half of the 20th century, and began to believe that the frontier was just one sculptor of
Americanism and not the only one.
Writing in the first half of the 20th century, historian Walter Prescott Webb began to develop upon the themes of earlier Turner historians about the unique qualities of the white
American settlers in the west, including the concepts of individualism and lawlessness. However,
Webb also held a strong preoccupation with defining the west in terms of the arid geographical climate (Webb, 1931). Historian Richard White in, “Its Your Misfortune and None of My Own:”
A New History of the American West (1947) described the west as, “A product of conquest and of the mixing of diverse groups of peoples” (p. 4). Though White agreed with historians like Webb that geography helped define arbitrary boundaries for the assistance of discussing western history, 11 he went on to say, “The West began when Europeans sought to conquer various areas of the continent and when people of…[various] ancestry began to meet…The West did not suddenly emerge; rather, it was gradually created” (p. 4). Historians like White slowly realized the importance of telling the whole story of the American west. They began to look for the unheard voices of western history, and look more critically at the violence that became a large part of frontier culture. Because of the work of historians like White, the popularity of Turner’s thesis began to fade away by the mid 1940s.
In the 1950s and ‘60s historians like Henry Nash Smith and Richard Hofstadter helped take the reins of western history out of the hands of Turner disciples. This generation of revisionist historians became known as New West historians (Smith, 1957 & Hofstadter, 1968). The most important changes that emerged in the theses of these postwar western historians were that the frontier did not simply disappear in 1890, and that the west began to take a distinct physical shape based upon geography. No sooner had this new interpretation arisen than a debate began about how to define the American West for historical scholarship.
By 2000, authors like Robert Hine and Jack Faragher expanded on Turner’s thesis by interpreting the American west as both a place and a process wherein the attitudes of those original frontier societies continued to transform the cultural landscape throughout history (Webb, 1931;
Hine & Faragher, 2000). Hine and Faragher collaborated to author, The American West: A New
Interpretive History, (2000) in which they look more heartily at the experiences of the Native
American cultures that predated European colonialism. The two painstakingly collected evidence to debunk many of the myths of the American West (Hine & Faragher, 2000).
Later in the 20th century, historians choose to define the region of the west by geography 12 alone. The focus shifted from the tales of the white conquerors to the battered recollections of the conquered. These historians gave value to the experiences of Native Americans and Mexicans who had tamed western landscapes long before white Americans had even laid eyes upon the western half of the North American continent. Western historians Patricia Limerick and David Wrobel recognize the exclusiveness of the west using simple geography (Limerick,1987; Wrobel, 1993).
Limerick described her paradigm in her 1987 work entitled, The Legacy of Conquest when she wrote, “Conceive of the West as a place and not a process, and Western American history had a new look” (Limerick, 26-27). Historian Donald Worster takes the Limerick interpretation farther by focusing on the environmental history of the American west. Scholars like Limerick, Worster,
Wrobel, Hine, and Faragher are most typically grouped into the school of revisionistix historians because they theorized that the races, genders, and socio-economics of the western region of the
U.S. created a distinct borough on the historical landscape that needed special attention.
The late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen the genesis of a new historian who can choose not to defend the wrongs of the past generations. He/she can accept the mistakes as well as the successes in history that established the society of the present. Limerick and her contemporary counterparts go beyond discussing the histories of the conquerors and the conquered, and instead investigate the reasons behind the myths that accompany historical interpretation of the American
West experience. Worster points out, “ A rising generation of historians insists that it is their responsibility to stand apart from power and think critically about it” (Worster, 15-16). Worster and his colleagues have initiated a dialogue about the atrocities of power and privilege.
Revisionist western historians examine the west as a definite region. This dominant paradigm allows historians to classify historical groups and conduct chronologically based research 13 about each group. Baseball fits into such research as it relates to western and new western history and has not been truly scrutinized. In addition, very few sport historians have made any distinction between the history of baseball played in the east as compared to baseball played out west, or why baseball is indeed different or the same. However, the history of the American west and the history of baseball are uniquely linked. Despite a general consensus by contemporary western historians that Turner’s thesis is out-dated and too narrow in scope, his legacy still endures as a dominant piece of western historiography. Turner’s arguments are similar to many early historical themes from the mid-20th century about baseball, which claim that baseball is the only truly American sport and that baseball is how democracy and Americanism are spread across cultural and socio- economic barriers (Smith, 1975). It is the job of the historian to analyze and look more objectively at the primary sources of both the American west frontier as well as baseball to extrapolate the way baseball history can be used as a microcosm of the Euro-American west.
Purpose
As this literature review has argued, baseball in the American west requires an historical investigation that is distinct and unique. Until now, attention to turn-of-the-century MLB in the east has cast a shadow over a thorough investigation of turn-of the century baseball in the west. Donald
Worster’s western historical methods apply to this situation. The power of MLB must be separated from the study of American west baseball. The first two MLB teams in the west transplanted from
New York in 1958, but prior to that, the west flourished as a breeding ground of minor leagues like the Pacific Coast League.
This thesis argues that the turn-of-the century is an effective mark for beginning an examination of the changing American frontier experience. By 1900, baseball had reached an 14 adolescent phase and so too, had the United States. The Civil War and Reconstruction had finally passed. After the worst divisions of Reconstruction, a rebirth of American democratic ideals again arose. The swift cultural flux resulting from population growth, rapid urbanization, and industrialization forced poverty on large portions of urban people. A major lack of infrastructure allowed power to become concentrated in the corrupt hands of urban political machines. The social movement of progressivism blossomed in small towns and cities across the nation as a way to effect change through political reform.
All this must be considered in light of the myriad of changes at the turn of the 20th Century.
It is here that this historical exploration begins. During this historical period, American people saw major changes both to the society and culture of the entire country, and the culture and structure of their pastime of baseball. This thesis is meant to analyze these changes under the scrutiny of the regional perspective of the American west. In order to thoroughly cover this topic, the author must first define the time period of this thesis.
This thesis spans the time period from 1900 to 1935. In order to decide upon 1935 as the conclusion year for her research, this author analyzed the natural evolution of the American westward movement, and the changes that affected the development of the American west frontier into a region that had been wholly integrated into the American nation. In 1900, the American west had remained a region incredibly apart from the rest of mainstream American. This thesis shows that by the middle of the 1930s, the American west had grown more wholly integrated into larger
American society. Transportation expansion, the progressive movement, the rise of Americanism, and the Great Depression all played an integral role in the growth and development of the American west. Additionally, this research employed the microcosm concept to compare American west 15 baseball to that of American west society, and 1935 appeared as a natural date to mark American west baseball's integration into the American pastime. Thus, the unique time line of American west
Euro-American settlement pushes for this thesis to conclude in 1935. Therefore, the author chose to begin this historical research with the year 1900 and end in 1935.
Though there has been research by baseball historians about specific regions of the west, early 20th century baseball in the American west is mainly unexplored in the historical literaturex.
The purpose of this thesis is to thoroughly document the connections between the society and culture of the American west and baseball between the years 1900 and 1935.
Chapter two of this thesis outlines the methodology used to conduct her research including an explanation of her research design, operational definitions, limitations, and delimitations.
Chapter three is the results section of this thesis wherein the primary sources reveal the story of
American west baseball. The author organized her results in two ways. First, the author organized the topics along a time line from 1900 to 1935. Then, she organized the results within each topic in chronological order. The topics in chapter three are 19th century westward expansion, transportation, investments, progressivism, Americanism, and the Great Depression. The end of chapter three includes a summary conclusion of the results laid out in the chapter. Chapter four of this thesis includes the author's conclusions and discussion. 16 CHAPTER TWO
Methodology
Research Design
This research is an ethnographic narrative inquiry. This thesis will contribute to the research that continues to weave the past together by using primary sources from the American west to investigate the ways baseball acted as a microcosm of the changes in society and cultural, and how they were influenced by the progressive reform movements in the American west between 1900 and 1935. The author utilized qualitative content analysis and developed the arguments of this thesis as well as painted a picture of the west as a unique baseball environment. The need for such an exploration was illustrated in the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) collection of primary and secondary writings. SABR publishes two separate journals, Baseball Research
Journal and The National Pastime, both of which are dedicated to the history of baseball.
Additionally, SABR grants online access to archival issues of primary source publications like the
Sporting News and Baseball Magazine. All SABR documents are search-able by keyword, date, and author.
In addition to the SABR resources, this author used the meticulously scanned and chronicled newspaper collection presented by the Library of Congressxi (LOC) that ranges between
1900 and 1922. All LOC digital newspapers are search-able by keyword, date, and author. This thesis included several other primary sources gathered from the Humboldt State University Library in Arcata, California, which has all the original archives of the The San Francisco Chronicle on microform. The author also used online digital collections like the California Archives and Time
Magazine archives. She searched historical newspapers made available by online archives such as 17 digital archives of the Covina Public Library in Covina, California, the digital archives of the Casa
Grande Public Library in Casa Grande, Arizona, Google Newspaper Archives, the Las Vegas Age,
Historic Oregon Newspapers, the Wyoming Newspaper Project, the Colorado Historic
Newspaper Collection, and the Utah Digital Newspaper collection. The primary search term the author used when searching the digital collections was, “baseball.” The primary search term was only a starting point, and then the author coupled “baseball” with topic and period sensitive phrases.
Examples of phrases include but were are not limited to, “new league,” “railroad,” “automobile,”
“transportation,” “progressives,” “alcohol,” “betting,” “anti-Sunday,” “American Legion,” and
“night games.” After the author collected more background information on western teams, managers, players, etc., she expanded her secondary search terms. In addition to primary sources, embedded secondary sources that fortified her arguments.
Operational Definitions
American west – the region of land bordered in the west by the Pacific ocean, in the east by the Rocky Mountain Range, in the south by the Mexican/United States border, and in the north by the Canada/United States border.
Baseball – A bat and ball game played by men of white European descent wherein two teams of nine take turns at the bat (offense) while the other team plays in the field
(defense). The field is made up of a 90 foot squared diamond of three bases and one
(pentagonal) home plate and constrained by two foul lines. Each foul line originates at the back apex of home plate and runs exactly parallel and adjacent to the right side of 18 first and the left side of third base and continues past them in an infinite continuance. A pitcher’s plate is located on a mound in the center of the diamond measuring 60 feet by 6 inches from the back corner of home plate.
Limitations
The following limitations may have an effect on the findings of this historical research.
1) The volume of online digitized American west newspapers from the time period
was limited.
2) Some online digital newspaper collections were not free to view and therefore the
author was unable to use their articles.
Delimitations
The following delimitations may have an effect on the findings of this historical research.
1) Apart from the San Francisco Chronicle microforms, only search able online
digital newspaper archives were used as primary sources.
2) Only teams, fans, and grounds within the operationally defined region of the
American west were researched.
3) Research was only conducted for the time period 1900 to 1935, and no newspaper
articles outside of that time period were included.
4) Only railroads and automobiles were analyzed as components of western
transportation.
5) Only three components of the progressive reform movement (e.g., alcohol, Sunday 19 baseball, and gambling) were researched. 20 CHAPTER THREE
Results
Between the late 19th and 20th centuries, the American west's economic developments created a distinct western society and culture, famous to the rest of the
United States for its roughneck individualism. Natural resource wealth helped solidify the west as an essential and distinct economic region of the United States. By the turn of the
20th Century, wealthy investors had created large-scale industries and developed essential transportation systems and routes. As the American west continued to develop throughout the beginning of the 20th Century, western society assimilated into mainstream American society, and the west's uniqueness faded. Since baseball arrived in the west in 1858, western baseball culture can be seen as a microcosm of American west society's industrial developments, transportation systems and routes, and changing western mentalities and attitudes. Indeed, as baseball moved westward, it would help unify the west and connect the rapidly-growing western population with the rest of the nation.
19th Century Western Expansion
The first period of 19th-Century mining saw the maturation of the rugged individual who lived by the “code of the westxii.” Prior to 1900, the west underwent rapid industrialization due to discoveries of several abundant natural resourcesxiii. Initially, wealth-seekers rushed to mineral strikes - like the 1849 California gold rush and the
1858 Comstock, Nevada silver lode - to stake their claims. The draw and allure of instant wealth forced those who sought their fortunes in mining to become entrepreneurs of risk 21 and sacrifice. The miners employed primitive placer mining techniques that encouraged the growth of a very individualistic culture in which men emigrated from the east and struck out as individuals in search of riches. “The restless region was full of migrants seeking an angle in their quest for fortune” (Findlay, p.82). The work was tiresome, monotonous, and usually frustratingly unsuccessful. Saloons emerged as the primary watering holes for the 19th Century miner to cope with his disappointments. These saloons usually doubled as brothels and gambling rooms. The mining men settled within close proximity to the mines, worked the day away, and then they placed bets at the local saloons at night. Once a mining camp proved fruitful, more men fled to it, and it eventually became a rugged and urban settlement in the West's mining country.
California placer mining was exhausted by 1855 (Bryans, 1988; Vance, 1972).
Investors with large amounts of capital took over, and interest in large-scale mining technology increased. Mechanized mining techniques quickly turned disorganized mining camps with little infrastructure into the population centers of the west. These townships were often owned and incorporated by the stockholders of mining companies and worked by the wage earners who lived under corporate rule.
As the California gold vanished, men turned to other prospective gold claims, and miners brought their experience from California to influence the development of mining towns all over the west (Smith, 1998/1999). Once apparent that a region lacked gold veins, silver, or base metals, timber and oil became the new fortunes. These large-scale industries shared the form and structure associated with the earlier camps of the mining west. Prior to reliable forms of transportation, these towns remained isolated (West, 22 1995). The camps were in an urban-like stage of development and home to large male populations who garnered a reputation for all forms of lawlessness (Smith, 1970). As more isolated pockets of exploitable natural resources were discovered in the late half of the 19th Century, Americans spread across the continent, and the United States government realized it needed to maintain power and control over the vastness of its territories. One of the primary avenues for such control was to provide a transportation network that would encourage eastern entrepreneurs to invest in the west, thereby contributing to the economic growth of the nation as a whole. And with the new transportation network came many traditional American institutions – including baseball.
Transportation, Investments, and Baseball
The Federal government officially sanctioned support for a transcontinental railroad and a transcontinental telegraph by passing The Railroad Act of 1862. The Act created the Union Pacific Railroad Company, outlined the route of the rail and telegraph lines through public lands, designated the use of resources found on public lands for construction materials, and specified the additional railroad companies which were to aid in the construction project. On May 10, 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad, built westbound by the Union Pacific, officially joined the California-based Central Pacific, that built eastbound, on the arid earth of Promontory Summit, Utah. The moment Leland
Stanford linked the final ties by driving a golden spike into the sun baked earth of Utah, the nation became united from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Transcontinental Railroad brought an explosion of investment opportunities for eastern investors with huge amounts 23 of capital.
By the beginning of the 20th century, these investors quickly modernized the west and encouraged widespread western immigration. As stockholders invested large amounts of capital, many hopeful easterners bought cheap Transcontinental Railroad tickets to work as western wage laborers. Company townsxiv sprouted near mines, oil towns, and timber regions. Soon whole families were moving westward to new beginnings in the west. Early in the 20th Century, townships and cities in the west appeared to be much like those found in the east, but the prevailing roughneck attitudes that originated during the male-dominated mid-nineteenth century boom and bust frontier remained an intimate part of western culture. Rowdy activities such as drinking alcohol, gambling, and ignoring the Sabbath had been etched in the western mindset and existed in stark contrast to newly-arrived settlers' Victorian ideals of temperance, sexual prudery, and strict religious morality (Bryans, 1988; Moore, 1984; Nugent, 1999; Sutter, 2010; &
Vance, 1972).
The financial powers in the American west – especially railroad, oil, copper, and timber barons – quickly invested in the expansion of transportation systems that linked the developing west with the older industrial regions in the rest of the United States. The west's extractive economic system placed resource-rich regions in a colonial relationship with the monied interests in the east. Rail lines sprang up to bring workers and goods from the east and unprocessed ores, timber, agricultural products, and oil to the east
(Walker, 2001). In the west, railroads sowed the seeds of population growth. Towns took form at the end of rail lines or at stops along the way. 24 As the territories of the American west made population gains, the eastern transplants ardently embraced public institutions – churches, saloons, and fraternal lodges
– that helped instill a sense of community (West, 1988). Sensing a need for increased
American culture in the west, some entrepreneurs invested in unifying and recreational activities including sports like baseball (Johnson & Wolff, 2007; and Rosebrook, 1998).
Like so many other industries of the west, teams and leagues boomed and busted with frequency from season to season1. “Minor leagues appeared and disappeared at a dizzying pace. Some lasted for years, most lasted only one or two seasons, while others collapsed before they completed even one season” (Scott, p.62). Despite the economic risks, boosters continued to invest in baseball teams, leagues, and grounds2. The baseball played in many mining camps, logging camps, oil towns, and cattle ranches in many western states reflected the individualistic pioneer character (Scott, 1997, Sutter 2010).
Gradually, the 20th Century witnessed the shift in baseball from town teams to more
1 Pullman Herald, March 9, 1901, “Untitled,” p. 3; San Francisco Call, May 28, 1901, “Amateur nines will contest for trophy,” p.4; Los Angeles Herald, June 20, 1905, “Pacific National Baseball League is disbanded, p.5; The Salt Lake Tribune, September 15, 1906, “Utah State League is disbanded,” p.7; The Arizona Sentinal, February 3, 1910, “Brief news notes,” p.4; Los Angeles Herald, November 15, 1910, “Managerial protests before arbitrators,” p.12; The Coconino Sun, March 20, 1914, “They want northern Arizona ball league,” pg. 1; Fort Collins Courier, January 15, 1920, “Aggies enter baseball conference; good schedule,” p.3; The Coconino Sun, May 12, 1922, “Arizona teams to form a baseball league,” p.6; Wray Rattler, July 19, 1923, “Y-W ball league reorganizes as teams drop out,” p.7.
2 Sporting Life, February 13, 1904, “Northwest league money,” p.4; Weekly Arizona Journal-Miner, Feb. 24, 1904, “Iron King news'” p 4; The Age-Sentinel, July 4, 1907, The 4th in Boulder, p.1; Weekly Arizona Journal-Miner, “Prescott has new baseball team.” May 23, 1906, p.2; Ouray Herald, May 28, 1908, “Large donations have been raised for baseball fund,” pg.1; Spokane Press, June 12, 1908, “Factory and mill game,” p.2; San Francisco Call, July 09,1908, p.6; Bisbee Daily Review, December 18, 1908, “Paper stands for the fans,” p.4; Los Angeles Herald, September 26, 1909, “Amateur baseball,” p.15; Albuquerque Evening Herald, July 31, 1920, “Double header,” p.5; The Ogden Standard-Examiner, March 13, 1922, “Binford Heads Baseball Club,” p.10; Casper Tribune-Herald, February 6, 1927, “Texas plant rated among major factors in prosperity; capacity runs are made,” p.7; Casper Tribune-Herald, February 6, 1927, “Building boom strikes Kemmerer, future is bright,” p.11; Cody Enterprise, March 30, 1927, “$17,000,000 worth of Nash stock is owned by Nash employees,” p.8; and Johnson & Wolff, 2007. 25 organized professional and semi-professional leagues.
Baseball thus helped unify the west and connect its rapidly growing populace with the rest of the country. Such unification was aided by the fact that western baseball investors and fans had greater opportunity for advantageous placement of playing fields than their counterparts in the east. Investors could develop towns, cities, and counties, with things like baseball in mind. A January 6th 1900 article in the San Francisco Call discusses the securing of the “Sixteenth Street Grounds” by a D.R. McNeill as well as the adjusting of rail transfer system so as to accommodate patrons of the grounds. “This makes them readily accessible to all persons in the Western Addition and also from the center of the city” (San Francisco Call, January 6, 1900, “Baseball promoted on two fields,” p.4). When constructing new western cities, railroad and trolley investors saw the lucrative advantage of building the end of rail lines in walking proximity to ballparks.
Additionally, railroad men who had a stake in the success of a local ball club influenced city planning. For instance, a January 6th 1910 article in the Los Angeles Herald discussed the difficulties the Pacific Coast League encountered when attendance at their
Sacramento ballpark was too limited. “…Because of the inaccessibility of the present grounds $10,000 has been lost in the last two years” (Los Angeles Herald, January 6,
1910, “Senators may lose franchise,” p.12). The local baseball advocates argued that a new park needed to be constructed where patrons of the national game could have greater approach. New ballparks, like the 1913 Oakland Oaks, could be constructed just a stone’s throw from available public transportation (San Francisco Call, February 16,
1913 p.57). 26 In the first half of the 20th Century, many towns were large enough to field a baseball team, but then they encountered the high costs of finding regular inter-town competition. Railroads maintained their standing as the safest and cheapest way for larger numbers of team members and spectators to travel. Baseball players and fans regularly climbed aboard the rattling rail cars to visit neighboring towns in the hopes of a spirited match. Before commencing new seasons, news articles sometimes appeared to discuss the expenses of the prior year's baseball season, including immense amount of money spent on rail travel by teams and spectators alike (Bisbee Daily Review, “Great Cost of
Baseball,” January 19, 1907, p.5; Ogden Standard-Examiner, January 11, 1922, “Big cost here,” p.10).
In many towns, the train schedules and routes were even altered to accommodate baseball teams and spectators (Bisbee Daily Review, May 7, 1904, “Baseball excursion,” p.5; Bisbee Daily Review, September 28, 1907, “Parade and Baseball,” p.7; Imperial
Valley Press, February 6, 1909, “Special Train to Calexico,” p.4; The Evening Herald,
August 17, 1916, “Baseball Train to Leave Depot 8 O'Clock Sunday,'” p.1). In some cases, a town's team may only have been chosen to join a new league because of its proximity to a railway junction or station. In 1915, the budding Rio Grande League included New Mexico's Las Cruces “Farmers” in their new association over other hopeful baseball ninesxv because the town of Las Cruces was located on a Southern Pacific railway station (Sporting News, May 1, 1915, “The Rio Grande league,” p.65). Ensured by their baseball investments, railroad companies continued carrying baseball fans and players until the major decline in passenger rail travel after World War II, and at first, the 27 prevalence of western rail transportation decreased the need to create a suitable automobile road system. As automobiles became available and then affordable, however, baseball patrons who were wealthy enough did not need to utilize public transportation to go to a game. The automobile soon became the most preferred and posh form of transportation.
An early example of the automobile’s influence on baseball occurred on the opening day of the 1903 Pacific Coast League opening day. The league hosted parades through the home-teams' cities, and fans witnessed the first automobile cavalcades of baseball players in the west (San Francisco Call, March 26, 1903, “Pennant race begins today,” p.8; San Francisco Call, March 27, 1903, “Baseball season opens with pomp and clean victory for home team,” p.8). The automobile parade remained a celebratory event until car travel started to supplant rail travel by baseball teams and spectators alike (San
Francisco Call, April 4, 1907, “Baseball fans soon to hear cry of 'batter up,'” p.7; The
Tacoma Times, April 9, 1913, “Ad club promises to make opening day of ball season notable,” p.2). As automobile companies began manufacturing lower-cost cars, automobiles became an acceptable, inexpensive, and safe mode of travel. Just as railroad entrepreneurs had invested in western baseball, as automobiles appeared in the west, automobile companies and dealers also invested in baseball3.
Automobile availability gave baseball teams and spectators the freedom to seek competition outside of rail maps. In search of baseball competition in 1908, the Bisbee,
3 San Francisco Call, April 4, 1907, [line above] “Baseball fans soon to hear cry of 'batter up,'” p.7; San Francisco Call, November 13, 1910, “Baseball artists enjoy an outing through the park in big Velie car,” p.54; San Francisco Call, March 30, 1913, “Auto builders see big year on coast,” p.45; Ogden Standard-Examiner, March 13, 1922, “Binford heads baseball club,” p.10. 28 Arizona baseball team embarked on an automobile expedition to Cananea, Mexico. Sadly for the Bisbee team, their automobile broke down four miles from their destination. The team walked the remainder of the journey, and then, subsequently, lost 12 to 4 (Daily
Arizona Silver Belt May 23, 1908, “Automobile breaks down and baseball club walks,” p.6). Unsuitable roads still posed a barrier to easy automobile transportation across much of the west for the first ten years of the 20th Century, but westerners soon took measures to make the automobile rule western transportation (The Logan Republican, June 8, 1912,
“Auto parade to Logan,” p.4).
By 1913, Henry Ford's assembly line produced cars so quickly and cheaply that one year later, even western baseball patrons piled into cars and followed their teams on road games. The Mohave County Miner printed an article on August 1, 1914 describing the jubilant fans who caravanned from Kingman to Oatman, Arizona for a game between the local clubs (Mohave County Miner, August 1, 1914, “Mines of the county,” p.3). In
1920, an Ogden Standard-Examiner article discussed that a projected 75 automobiles, filled with baseball fans, would drive from Ogden to Logan, Utah to show support for a new baseball league (Ogden Standard-Examiner, September 22, 1920, “Baseball fans to make trip,” p.6). As western car-ownership increased over time, more accounts emerged placing automobiles and baseball together. Automobiles became so popular that sometimes, the automobiles did not actually belong to the ball fans driving them. In 1914,
Tacoma, Washington Mayor Fawcett passed an ordinance forbidding city officials, under the threat of jail time, from using city automobiles for personal use. Unfortunately for the
Mayor, it was reportedly the police commissioner who ignored the ordinance when he 29 took a car load of women to the baseball grounds (Tacoma Times, July 31, 1914, “To probe city auto joy rides,” p.1). By 1925, enough Scobey, Montana baseball fans drove automobiles to the games that they could be used, like a fence, to enclose the outfield
(Lucht, 1970). Automobiles gave western Americans the freedom to go beyond the rigid scope of the railroads, and that freedom made baseball a benefactor. Transportation expansion exposed the west to nationwide ideological exchanges. Along with western transportation growth, ideological exchanges also began affecting baseball. Foremost among these were the thoughts and actions of reformers who shaped the Progressive Era.
Progressivism
In the late 19th Century, intensely rapid American growth and urban development encouraged the rise of a new movement known as the Progressive Era. Progressives were largely members of the upper and middle classes who campaigned against vices like drinking, gambling, and even playing baseball on Sundays. As western cities and population grew and became more based in permanent industries as well as farming and closed-range ranching, similar problems related to rapid urban growth that cropped up in the east also arose in the west.
Thus, growing progressive influences began to focus on the incidence of vice in western cities and towns.
Because baseball was not exempt from vice accusations, 20th Century western progressive influences tried modifying baseball from rowdy town teams to more organized professional and semi-professional city and region leagues. (Rosebrook, 1998;
Johnson & Wolff, 2007; New York Times, November 9, 1909, “Outlaw league to come 30 into the fold,” p.11). In urban areas, the presidents of baseball organizations began showing greater efforts to work with local government and law enforcements to stop vice activities like drinking, playing baseball on Sundays, and game-related gambling4.
Institutions and establishments that had simply ignored unwholesome activities prior to
1900 began attempting to curtail and regulate them. However, for many western communities - especially those that still relied on mining as a major industry - attempts continued to fall short (Scott, 1997).
Across the United States, progressive activists campaigned against consuming alcohol, not just in saloons, but also at baseball games. Saloons had always been an important part of western culture. In 1901 an article in the San Francisco Call gave a glowing review of the spirit and novelty of the Haight Street Recreation Grounds' Beer
Cagexvi calling it “distinctly original” (San Francisco Call, September 1, 1901, “Fanatics found on car and street,” p.9). Grandstands at western baseball games were consistently wet as evidenced by the Jackson, California Board of Supervisors June 1, 1903 when they granted a license to sell liquor at the Jackson baseball grounds (The Amador Ledger, June
5, 1903, “Board of Supervisors,” p.3). In 1909, Sacramento city supervisors were willing to grant Ed Kripp a liquor license to install a bar near the grandstands at Sacramento's new ball grounds (San Francisco Call, December, 26, 1909, “Ed Kripp to invest
4 Salt Lake Herald, August 21, 1905, “No more baseball bets,” p.7; Salt Lake Herald, October 27, 1906, “Influence of reform,” p.2; Deseret Evening News, August 6, 1908, “Down with bets at the diamond,” p. 9; Salt Lake Herald-Republican, August 7, 1910, “California ball fans liable to arrest if they bet on game,” p.7; San Francisco Call, August 7, 1910, “Fourteen fans arrested for gambling,” p.46; San Francisco Call, November 18, 1911, “Cal Ewing may save coast league's plan,” p.20; Tacoma Times, April 23, 1912, “Gamble on games,” p.2; San Francisco Call, April 23, 1912, “Portland expects to fan all gambling on baseball games,” p.12; Tacoma Times, April 9, 1914, “Baseball gambling,” p.4; Sporting Life Vol. 65, No. 16, June 19, 1915, “President Allan T. Baum,” p.16; Washington County News, July 27, 1916, “Inland northwest,” p.8; Oak Creek Times, June 15, 1917, “Forbids gambling on ball games,” p.3. 31 $25,000,” p.37). In Douglas, Arizona in 1910, the citizens reportedly invented a slogan to show their distaste toward progressive temperance forces: “no saloons, no baseball” they claimed (Coconino Sun, January 28, 1910, “Untitled,” p.6). Despite the Douglas baseball fans, popular western opinion on alcohol soon shifted. Only two years later, an article appeared in Utah's Evening Standard asserting, “There is no room in the leagues for the saloon boys.” The article later went on to say, “Baseball and booze are not good friends”
(The Evening Standard, June 8, 1912, “Day of roughneck ball player has gone,” p.7). A
January 19, 1913 article in the San Francisco Call gave a strongly negative opinion of
Los Angeles' Vernon baseball team, “To cap a series of disadvantages, liquor is sold during games, and the attendance is too largely made up of the roughneck overflow of a neighboring saloon” (San Francisco Call, January 19, 1913, “Unhappy happy,” p.47).
By November 1914, fourteen states had adopted dry legislation including
Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington (Graham Guardian, November 6, 1914,
“Fourteen states dry,” p.1), and by 1915, western newspapers already had advertisements for the availability of Anheuser Busch's non-alcoholic beer, “Bevo,” at ballparks
(Coconino Sun, February 1, 1915, “Bevo Advertisement,” p.2). During their meeting in
1917, to show support for Prohibition efforts, baseball magnates drank only water (The
Tacoma Times, February 3, 1917, “Peter's piffle,” p.6). In 1920 when the Federal
Prohibition Amendment passed, alcohol's relationship with baseball became a non-issue to Progressives. However, Prohibition era bootlegging kept many places easily saturated with alcohol. By 1925, players for the Scobey, Montana baseball team were described as living for “… 'baseball and booze...' It has been said that most of the team members had 32 permanent rings over their noses from drinking moonshine from quart fruit jars” (Lucht, p.92). Though progressives and Prohibition had succeeded in closing the beer cages and bars at baseball parks, by December 1933, Americans voted to repeal Prohibition.
The war on intemperance was just one of the many attempts by progressives to enforce a Christian morality. Western progressives also pushed legislation that carried stipulations to ban Sunday activitiesxvii. By 1907 Sunday laws had even been proposed as a California state constitutional amendment (Amador Ledger, January 4, 1907, “Proposed
Sunday law,” p.2). Often these laws existed to keep stores, especially saloons, closed on
Sundays. However, sometimes the Sunday laws were passed specifically to prohibit amusements like theatre and baseball (Medford Mail Tribune, February 7, 1913, “Blue
Sunday laws die in legislature,” p.1; Salt Lake Tribune, March 5, 1914, “Asks Sunday baseball,” p.4). Some “blue law” supporters even worked as anti-Sunday baseball forces.
The 1908 Pasadena baseball club learned just how much impact anti-Sunday baseball people could have. The Pasadena club had hoped to build new ball grounds near Ipswich
Street, but the residents, opposed to Sunday baseball, protested so ardently, that the team lost the ability to build there (Los Angeles Herald, December 1, 1908, “Pasadena team loses ball park,” p.10.) Despite what happened to the Pasadena baseball club, the movement against Sunday baseball had most of its popular support in Midwestern states like South Dakota, Kansas, and Nebraska, and never truly managed to gain a strong foothold in the west. In 1913, a reverend in Wyoming wrote a letter in which he blamed
Sunday baseball for low church attendance, but he decided to use the baseball diamond's proximity to his church as an advantage. “The diamond is right opposite the Church and 33 so I conceived the idea of having a service immediately after the game.” After the Sunday
Snake River baseball game on June 8, 1913, the reverend reveled in the overflowing attendance as, “Those ball players sang hymns just as lustily as they played ball and my heart was just about as full as it could be,” (Randall,1913). Without the support of Church clergy, perhaps anti-Sunday baseball advocates lost progressive supporters to larger battles - like the battle against betting - in the greater war against immorality.
Gambling had been an essential element to westward expansion's mining frontier, but as the 20th century advanced, changing western political values battled with
19th Century western stereotypes. Even as citizens began viewing gambling as unsavory, western populations continued to reject progressive reformers' attempts to enforce a stricter Christian morality. A newspaper from Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1900 discussed baseball betting as, “unusually heavy on the game yesterday,” (Wyoming Tribune, July
22, 1900, “Notes from the bleachers,” p.4). In mining-driven Bisbee, Arizona in 1903, one reporter seemed to have no problem with gambling, as long as it was done out of sight of women or children (Bisbee Daily Review, March 19, 1903, “Untitled,” p.2).
Another 1903 article in Colorado's Aspen Daily Times also elucidates western baseball gambling attitudes by what it did not mention. “A large crowd went over to Ouray to see the high school baseball teams play. On the return Nate Born, a miner, became involved in a quarrel with a gambler named Anderson” (Aspen Daily Times, May 5, 1903, “Fight,” p.1). The newspaper did not claim baseball gamblers or baseball gambling as evil, it simply reported the stabbing suspect's occupation the same way it described the victim's occupation. Nor was the stabbing claimed as a result of a gambling disagreement; it was 34 simply reported as a quarrel between two men.
Some western baseball cities, often pressured by the press, more vigorously enforced anti-gambling laws. In 1904, one newspaper editor in Salem, Oregon seemed explicitly clear when he published this letter from an outraged Oregonian about suppressing public gambling in Portland, “All of the officials, state county and city, know where these [private gambling] ‘clubs’ are… Even gambling becomes a private trust under protection… of the officers of the law” (Daily Capital Journal, October 4, 1904,
“Gambling in private,” p.6). As western popular opinion shifted, so did newspaper reports. In 1905, The Salt Lake Herald reported on the baseball gambling ban in San
Francisco. “Gambling and baseball cannot be reconciled,… betting at Recreation park was finally and positively prohibited yesterday.” Yet, the article continued to say that gambling had already crept back into the grounds only a day later (Salt Lake Herald,
August 21,1905, “No more baseball bets,” p.7). A 1906 article in the Los Angeles Herald described gambling as, “At death’s door… pool rooms were abolished… public betting was prohibited and state legislatures were induced to pass laws prohibiting baseball pool rooms in all large cities” (Los Angeles Herald, June 03, 1906, “Expert asserts that baseball develops mental faculties,” p.6). Though several leagues and municipalities made clear attempts to ban gambling in more urban areas, many of the articles about gambling prohibition simply pertained to MLB and the professional baseball in the east.
Between 1900 and 1911 western newspapers consistently commented on the sweeps made by law enforcement officials trying to wipe out eastern baseball betting.
These article titles were quite specific: “Quakersxviii to cut gambling out,”and “Police 35 stop gambling on eastern baseball,” or “Ban Johnson against gambling” (Los Angeles
Herald, June 30, 1907, “Quakers to cut gambling out,” p.8; Los Angeles Herald, August
05, 1909, “Police stop gambling on eastern baseball,” p.4; & The Salt Lake Herald,
August 06, 1908, “Ban Johnsonxix against betting,” p.8). Article titles like these, appearing in western newspapers well into the 20th Century, speak to the fact that many westerners saw baseball gambling as normal, and that eastern gambling busts were interesting news. In 1908, Winslow, Arizona residents apparently had no qualms with gambling when their Weekly Arizona Journal- Miner published a story that discussed the newspaper as the book-maker for a game between the Winslow and Prescott baseball teams. The article claimed one Winslow fan would bet $500 that his team would win
(Weekly Arizona Journal-Miner, July 29, 1908, “Winslow baseball fans ready to bet thousands,” p.3).
Although many western regions resisted gambling reforms, as early as 1903
Aspen, Colorado's Judge Shumate issued orders prohibiting gambling in all forms (Routt
County, May 10, 1903, “City briefs,” p.3). San Francisco and Portland drafted legislation banning gambling on baseball games as early as 1905, 1909, and 1912 (The Salt Lake
Herald, August 21, 1905, “No more baseball bets,” p.7; City of San Francisco Board of
Supervisors' Meeting, January 4, 1909, Resolution no. 3187; The San Francisco Call,
April 23, 1912, “Portland expects to fan gambling on baseball games,” p.12). In 1909, the
President of Colorado's State University threatened expulsion to any student found gambling on University athletics (Weekly Courier, May 26, 1909, “Untitled,” p.2).
Legislation often went unenforced, but as progressive influences grew stronger, 36 enforcement did too. On August 6, 1910, fourteen fans were arrested in Los Angeles for baseball gambling (San Francisco Call, August 7, 1910, “Fourteen fans arrested for gambling,” p.46). By 1913, Seattle enforcement gained momentum as well (The Tacoma
Times, July 16,1913, “Baseball,” p.4). Butte, Montana enforcement followed suit when in
1916, the state's first two arrests for baseball gambling took place (Washington County
News, July 27, 1916, “Inland Northwest,” p.3). Despite concerted efforts by baseball magnates and law enforcement, a real reduction in open baseball gambling did not occur until after 1920 when a baseball gambling scandal shocked the American public and forced a change.
With the disclosure of a gambling conspiracy in which players intentionally lost the 1919 World Series, Americans had their first experience with a terrible sporting outrage that played out in a very public way. The heavily favored Chicago White Soxxx had lost the World Series of 1919 and eight players on the Chicago team were discovered to have either known about, or been in on, the fixxxi. The Black Sox, as the ill-fated 1919
Chicago team became known, smeared the American pastime on the front pages of newspapers nationwide. The participating athletes had disgraced MLB, and gambling on
American sport would forever change. When the news of the gambling scandal spread, the American west's 1919 Pacific Coast League magnates were already busy investigating their own playoff fixing casexxii, and California-native ballplayer Hal Chase had been implicated in both fixing scandals. The west's inclusion in mainstream
Americanism became strikingly clear, and the era of the west’s anti-gambling enforcement became serious (The Evening Herald, May 20, 1921, “Baseball gambling 37 law very stringent,” p.2).
By 1925, all the players associated with the Black Sox Scandal had been banned from MLB, and three of them were playing for the Mines of Douglas, Arizona. A
September Time Magazine article, “In Douglas,” discussed the mining careers of Buck
Weaver, Chick Gandil, and Hal Chase. “In Douglas,” characterized eastern American popular opinion on gambling ballplayers. The article seemingly criticized western towns, like Douglas, Arizona, for forgiving and then welcoming gambling ballplayers to play for their teams (In Douglas, 1925, p.33). Later, in October, 1925, Time Magazine's editor printed a letter from L.A. Herring, a secretary of the Douglas Chamber of Commerce, in response to the “In Douglas” article. The secretary expressed that Douglas, Arizona was happily different from the east because it was, “a community where a man is rated, not by... what he may have done yesterday, but... for what he is today” (Herring, 1925, p.4).
Westerners took pride in living in a place of second chances. As the wounds of baseball gambling became scars in the pages of history books, many disgraced gambling ballplayers sought sanctuary in western towns, like Douglas, that prided themselves on having short memories.
Although the consumption of alcohol and betting on games had tarnished western baseball's reputation, some civic leaders gave the sport a much needed boast. As progressive reforms ensured wholesome changes to western baseball, these leaders argued the importance of sports in helping youths adopt patriotic feelings about the
United States and promoted baseball as a new path to Americanizing young people.
Further, baseball's popularity increased during the Great Depression as the sport 38 responded to new and innovative ways to keep the American pastime alive.
Americanism and the Great Depression
Throughout the 1920s, American mass culture and consumerism spread into the
American west with the help of the changing newspaper industry. As newspaper chains began to dominate the entire newspaper industry, circulation increased while the number of newspapers actually decreased (Neiva, 1996). Journalists began to exercise their power to sculpt public opinion through their articles, and with the popularity of the “sports” section in papers, sportswriters spread and popularized the United States' modern era of sport (Jacobs, 2009; McChesney, 1989). For the first time, women and children began to take a much greater interest in sporting pastimes that earlier generations had seen as exclusively male (Lewis, 1992; McChesney, 1989).
As changes to American popular culture exposed baseball to the masses, changing attitudes were already transforming western communities – especially in regard to childhood sports. The cultural climate surrounding World War I lead many Americans to perceive a threat to traditional American values. During and after the War, many groups believed youthful recreational activities would encourage American patriotic values like democracy and fair play (Las Vegas Age, November 18, 1922, “Community playground is very valuable asset,” p.1; Bachin, 2003; Krause, 1998). As the War continued and nativist sentiments grew more serious, proponents of recreation emphasized that athletic activity should begin in childhood. Civic leaders believed that sport could teach youths
Americanism at an early age, and the American pastime was a prime example. 39 Although the 1920s was a prosperous era for MLB, in 1926, the American
Legionxxiii, recognized a nationwide decline in amateur and youth baseball participation.
In order to remedy the apparent decline in popularity, the American Legion created a
Junior Baseball program to foster young boys' patriotism, discipline, work ethic, and masculinity (Casa Grande The Bulletin, April 24, 1926, “Boy's baseball o.k.'d by
Federation,” p.3; Bustad, 2009; & Krause, 1998). Youth baseball expanded throughout the 1920s as social groups like the American Legion pushed toward a, “100 per cent
American,” mentality (Las Vegas Age, November 18, 1922, “Community playground is very valuable asset,” p.1; Casa Grande The Bulletin, April 24, 1926, Boy's baseball o.k.'d by the Federation,” p.3; Covina Argus, May 14, 1926, “Legion baseball team wins from
Whiting-mead,” p.8; Casa Grande Dispatch, June 20, 1929, “A call for volunteers,” p.1).
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, western youths embraced a renewed craze for playing the American pastime and competed for the America Legion as well as their school teams
(Covina Argus, September 26, 1930, “Chamberlain to pitch for Baldwin Park,” p.1.
Bustad, 2009; & Krause, 1998). The success of youth baseball programs standardized the
American pastime across the nation (Nehls, 2007).
Western baseball in the 1930s, however, had to adjust to the economic and social traumas of the Great Depression. As the Depression’s economic woes spread across the
United States, baseball, like other American industries, struggled financially. Between
1929 and 1931, over half of the nation’s minor league teams folded (Mountain, 2010).
Baseball owners had to use ingenuity in order to survive. In many western towns, baseball teams began holding exhibitions like “Donkey Games”xxiv to attract larger 40 attendance numbers (Covina Argus, July 13, 1934, “Donkey baseball new attraction at
Glendora,” p.7; & Casa Grande Dispatch, May 10, 1935, “Baseball game on burros played at Cottonwood May 19,” p.1; Casa Grande Dispatch, May 17, 1935, “Bronco busters best on burros,” p.1).
In addition to exhibitions, many Western baseball teams began playing night games in the hopes of increasing their audiences (Covina Argus, June 6, 1930, “Night baseball league opening comes on June 16,” p.1). During the Depression, job scarcity meant that skipping work or leaving early to see a baseball game had become much more difficult. Attendance at afternoon baseball games dwindled so owners invested in lighting systems in order to play games at night. Night baseball afforded fans the chance to work a full day and still see a game. An August 22, 1930 article written by Nelson Paul in the
Covina Argus discussed the increased attendance teams were experiencing at night games. “Baseball at night is proving two and three times more profitable than afternoon contests.” The author claimed the increased profits were because, “There are hundreds of additional fans to draw from in the evening after working hours” (Nelson Paul, Covina
Argus, August 22, 1930, “Night baseball grows in favor in all sections,” p.10).
Conclusion
In 1900, the American West had been a U.S. region with a distinctly unique perspective on baseball as a pastime. Throughout the first thirty-five years of the 20th
Century, those distinctly western socio-cultural qualities developed and changed. The effects of those changes were evident in the evolution of Western baseball into the 41 unified baseball of the American pastime.
The California Gold Rush kick started the American westward movement in
1858, and because western frontier populations swelled much faster than the American government could organize and control them, the 19th century pioneer miners developed a reputation for rowdy lawlessness. These early westerners were predominantly male and individualistic, and their characters became synonymous with the risk and sacrifice they showed while seeking their fortunes. The California gold rush shortly gave way to other gold strikes throughout the west, and individualistic miners traveled far and wide searching for riches in the ground. As simpler forms of gold mining evolved into expensive and highly mechanized techniques, investors incorporated mines and the archetypal western miners became wage-workers in corporately-controlled mines.
Western populations increased and gold became less abundant which lead gold miners to exploit other natural resources like silver, base metals, timber, and oil. By the end of the
19th Century, the west's boom and bust economy was based almost entirely on extractive industries, and railroad entrepreneurs made large transportation investments to bring valuable raw materials to eastern markets and carry new waves of settlers into the western frontier. Not only did transcontinental transportation deliver tangible goods in and out of the west, but it also transported emerging trends and ideologies. Western settlements and settlers were so heavily reliant upon all that the railroads provided that town and cities were mainly constructed adjacent to rail lines or at stations.
Toward the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, eastern entrepreneurs invested in the developing American west and modernized western 42 communities. Despite the prevailing roughneck attitudes that epitomized western frontier culture, the traditionally male-dominated and individualistic western settlements soon developed into company towns that struggled to remain suitable for entire families. One of the ways that corporations and their new settlers worked against the rowdy frontier lifestyle was to invest in popular American institutions and recreation such as baseball.
Public institutions like baseball helped build a sense of American community and stability in the constantly booming and busting west. Although early 20th century western baseball teams and leagues also boomed and busted with frequency, for transplanted settlers from the east, baseball facilitated continuity.
By 1900 baseball had become such an important part of the budding American west that towns and cities were designing their transportation infrastructure around ballparks. The two were, commonly, financially intertwined so railroad and trolley companies invested in building baseball parks and baseball teams. Railroad played such an important role in western baseball that a team's admission into a new baseball league sometimes hinged on their town's proximity to suitable rail lines. In cities, there were special trolley cars that ran just to take fans to ball games, and in the more rural areas, railroads had special trains and timetables that ran specifically to carry teams and fans between towns for baseball games. The economic advantages to public transportation and baseball were the same: fans used rail lines to get to baseball games thereby spending money on both. Until automobiles took over, western railroads dominated baseball- related transportation for the first 15 years of the 20th century.
Western baseball changed as automobiles became affordable and western 43 communities invested in road infrastructure. Prior to their affordability, automobiles were used for showmanship and as an example of western baseball prosperity. Between 1903 and 1913 western baseball magnates went to great expense for automobile parades to kick off opening day of the baseball season. Just as the railroads had done before, the automobile industry invested in American west baseball, and baseball invested in the auto industry. Investments paid off and by 1915, teams and fans were no longer restricted to the immovable confines of railroad travel. Automobiles afforded western fans so much transportation liberty, that they would even park their cars at the edge of the outfield, like a fence, in order to enclose the ballpark. As more roads and automobiles spread across the west, baseball leagues and teams gained more freedom in their travel schedules.
Roads could be built to more rural ballparks, and automobiles allowed teams that had been excluded from leagues in the past because they were too far from railroad lines, to finally be included. Teams could travel whenever and wherever they wanted. Thus, the widespread ownership of automobiles helped unify western baseball.
As western transportation expanded through railroads and automobiles, western populations increased rapidly, and the west's demographics changed. The western economy evolved to rely more on permanent industries, farming, and closed-range ranching, and western cities and towns grew quickly due to immigration from the eastern
United States. American west populations increased, and progressivism spread westward.
The American progressive reform movement began as a result of the social woes that accompanied industrialization and urban growth. Progressives aimed to fortify American life with Victorian morals by ridding America of evil vices like drinking, ignoring the 44 sabbath, and gambling. As a result, progressive ideology permeated American institutions like baseball, especially western baseball, that had acquired a reputation like the rest of the western frontier – lawless, laden with vice, and rarely suitable for women and children.
In the early 20th century, progressives took aim at the alcohol-related vice prevalent in western baseball. At first, western baseball fans, the majority of whom were male, resisted progressive influences trying to push temperance at the ballpark.
Progressive Prohibition proponents wanted to outlaw alcohol nationwide, but they were in for an uphill battle in the west. In the early 20th century, many western baseball teams had a bar or a saloon in their grandstands. In many western communities, the male- dominated fan community of baseball considered the saloon and baseball inseparable.
Saloon owners sponsored town teams, and alcohol-related rowdiness went ignored by officers of the law. However, by 1912 progressive reform forces had gained much more popular support in western communities, and they put pressure on local governments and law enforcement to clean up baseball. By 1914, the tide had truly turned when several western states passed dry legislation banning alcohol's sale and transportation. The culminating blow to western baseball's booze battle happened when the progressive reform movement unified the nation against alcohol under the Federal Prohibition
Amendment that went into affect in 1920. The legislative anti-alcohol success closed all legal western ballpark liquor sales, but the success was short-lived. Prohibition era bootlegging kept alcohol flowing throughout western baseball as well as the rest of the
United States. Americans eventually realized the consequences of outlawing alcohol, and 45 progressive dreams of a dry America ended in 1933 when Prohibition was repealed.
While progressives sought to reform the rowdy western populous, some of their movements garnered less support than others. One such unsuccessful effort was against playing baseball on Sundays. By 1915, blue laws had become popular throughout the west. Progressives worked to impose a more Christian morality by forcing businesses and recreation to observe the Christian Sabbath. However, despite a number of blue Sunday laws that were proposed and voted on in western legislatures, communities typically rejected restrictions on Sunday baseball. Contrary to the support they found in
Midwestern states, anti-Sunday baseball proponents failed to unify themselves in the west. Thus, the movement never garnered enough popular support to make a real impact.
Progressives may not have made baseball fans observe the Sabbath, but they were instrumental in changing the westerners' perceptions of gambling on baseball games.
Gambling had been a normal part of the developing western frontier, and it was prevalent in western baseball. By 1910, most large western cities and many smaller western communities had outlawed gambling on baseball games, and despite laws to the contrary, westerners resented the notion that baseball and gambling could ever be separated. As progressive ideology spread into the American west, western popular opinion on gambling eventually evolved. Progressive gambling reformers continued to strengthen their following and soon had great influence over law enforcement, government officials, and the press. By the mid nineteen teens, enforcement efforts had been strengthened and baseball gamblers arrested and prosecuted.
Although western anti-gambling had come under fire by progressive reformers, 46 gambling continued to creep into ballparks nationwide and threaten the sanctity of the
American pastime. In 1919, two major playoff gambling scandals altered the fate of baseball gambling for the United States. Pacific Coast League officials discovered gambling influenced the outcome of their 1919 pennant, but the incident that turned the tides of the nationwide anti-gambling crusade was the 1919 Black Sox MLB World
Series fixing scandal. By 1920, National and American League owners decided to appoint the first ever MLB commissionerxxv. Tasked with addressing the fixing scandal, the commissioner changed the repercussions for ballplayers associated with baseball gambling; he banned them from professional baseball for life. The drastic change to the severity in consequences sent baseball gambling into the shadows, and the period of openness that western gambling had experienced in the past ended forever.
While severe consequences had forced baseball gambling into darkness, the
American west had always taken gambling as a part of life. After the Black Sox scandal, western communities embraced stringent enforcement efforts, but they still had a more liberal opinion of gamblers than their eastern brethren. Westerners believed in second chances. As a result, many disgraced gambling ballplayers fled westward for sanctuary and new beginnings. The west offered gamblers a chance to reinvent themselves the way frontier pioneers had done in the 19th century.
The progressive movement had succeeded in reforming the American west. By
1920, progressives had helped wipe out booze and gambling at western baseball parks which made western baseball appropriate for all ages and genders. Civic leaders recognized that the unifying power of the American pastime, coupled with the 47 Americanism created by World War I, would make baseball a positive way for
Americans to teach younger generations how to be American. Thus, recreation and sport activists made efforts to use baseball to bolster American patriotic values. Children began playing sports from a young age, thus being exposed to American values like democracy and fair play. Despite community efforts, by 1926 there had been a nationwide decline in baseball participation amongst amateur and youths. Fearful that the decline would threaten Americanism, the American Legion created a Junior Baseball program to foster young boys' patriotism, discipline, work ethic, and masculinity.
Postwar Americanism had promoted baseball to youths all over the United States.
Americans were unified under the imagery of the American pastime and its strong association with American values. However, when the Great Depression lead to such dire financial times that minor and amateur baseball clubs began to fold, owners and investors were forced to try and change the American pastime's image. Some teams played strange exhibition games to draw larger crowds. Other teams built lights over their ball fields so they could play night games. Before the Depression, owners and investors had dismissed exhibitions and night games as simple gimmicks, but the economic troubles teams suffered drove them to change their opinions. Baseball magnates knew they risked destroying the relationship between baseball and the American people, but exhibitions and night games drew crowds to the grandstands. Although exhibitions like donkey games helped some teams through financial hardships, they did not transform the image of the American pastime. However, the overwhelming popularity of night games made them a success nationwide, and night games became a permanent change to baseball. 48 During the first 35 years of the 20th century, American west baseball underwent monumental changes. This research reinforces the microcosm concept by elucidating, through baseball, the significance of early 20th century inventions and the changing ideologies that contributed to the development of the American west. As the microcosm of American west baseball became integrated into the American pastime, so too did the society of the American west become integrated into greater American society. 49 CHAPTER FOUR
Conclusions and Discussion
In 1889 Walt Whitman said, “America's game: has the snap, go, fling, of the
American atmosphere - belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life”(Traubel, p.508). Whitman's perspective was neither new nor unique.
Baseball historians have also argued that baseball is historically significant to the United
States and as such, baseball is an appropriate lens for viewing and interpreting historical developments in the United States.
In 1801, British author Joseph Strutt knew how important sports were to understanding the people who play them when he argued the necessity of studying sporting pastimes. Forefathers of American sport history, like Charles Peverelly,
Frederick L. Paxson, Robert Boyle, John Lucas, Ronald Smith, and Benjamin Rader all researched the history of the American pastime in order to gain a greater understanding
American history. These historians expanded on Strutt's theory and thus contributed to the development of the microcosm concept paradigm, which allows baseball historians to research and analyze complex cultural phenomena by narrowing the scope and focus of their research to relate to the baseball micro-culture within American society.
Baseball historians have since built on the microcosm concept paradigm. Prior to the 1980s, two influential historians - Harold Seymour in 1960 and 1971, and David Q.
Voigt in 1976 - published the first definitive and comprehensive baseball histories 50 utilizing the microcosm concept paradigm. By the 1980s, baseball history became a widely popular research topic. Since then, historians have researched a variety of baseball topics that relate to American development such as woman's baseball, Negro league baseball, youth and early collegiate baseball, Nissei and military-related baseball.
Historical baseball research is continuously evolving in the 21st century, but historians have achieved consensus on how and when baseball originated.
Baseball emerged in the mid-19th century in the eastern United States. As industrialization transformed American working lives, men sought ways to bond through healthful fitness, but before baseball, the popular perception of bat and ball games was that they were for children. In 1845, the New York Knickerbockers published a set of rules that made their bat and ball game appropriate for adults. Shortly after, men across the United States embraced the game, called base ball, with the Knickerbockers' changes.
Men like Henry Chadwick spread and popularized amateur baseball as they moved to the far corners of the American nation. As baseball grew more and more popular, entrepreneurs saw the financial opportunities in making baseball a business. Investors put money into baseball and presented financial compensation to ball players – professionalism emerged.
With the advent of professionalism, two professional leagues ascended to great success. In 1901, the American League (AL) and National league (NL) merged and formed Major League Baseball (MLB). Further, in 1903, MLB solidified their supremacy in professional baseball when they codified the AL and NL merger under the National
Agreement. The National Agreement became a powerful litigious document that changed 51 the face of professional baseball all the way to present day. Although there were other professional leagues located throughout the United States, after 1903, leagues that did not join the National Agreement were considered “outlaw” leagues that refused to conform to
MLB rules and regulations, and players who took money from outlaw leagues risked never having careers in MLB. The power and popularity of early 20th century MLB, continues to draw research attention from baseball historians in the 21st century. Less attention has been given to the significance of early 20th century non-MLB leagues, games, and fans. Prior to this thesis, sport historians had not explored the microcosm of baseball as it related to the early 20th century American west.
In the late 19th Century, baseball was at the forefront of American sporting activities, as well as being on the front line of American westward expansion. The
American west and baseball came of age in the same era. In 1917, American west historian Frederick L. Paxson recognized the chronological link between the end of the western frontier period and the rise of baseball. Drawing from Frederick Jackson Turner's
1893 theory that the American west frontier period had ended, Paxson theorized that
American interest in baseball was a safety valve for American psyches upon the closing the the western frontier. Paxson thought that baseball had become so popular because
Americans needed to replace the feeling of freedom that they lost when the frontier closed. In the 1940s and '50s, in their efforts to show the Americanizing power of sport,
Foster Rhea Dulles, and John R. Tunis built upon Paxson's theory when they also explained the emergent sport culture of the early 20th century by linking it to the closing of the American west frontier period. Unfortunately, Paxson, Dulles, and Tunis stopped 52 short of researching the historical significance of the baseball being played in the
American west.
Frederick Jackson Turner, created the branch of American history that focused on
American west history. He used the 1890 U.S. Census to theorize the American west as a process, which fostered a unique American mentality that was responsible for the rugged individual western caricature. Turner argued that the frontier process ended because the
“frontier line” that had appeared on every previous U.S. Census, did not appear on the
1890 census. Turner disciples like Paxson, Ray Allen Billington, and Frederick Merk followed in his footsteps writing about the west as a process. However, in researching the
American west as only a process, the American west moved through time along with the frontier line. Turner's fluidity, made historical research relate more to the frontier and less to the American west.
The first western historian to research the American west as a definite place was
Walter Prescott Webb. Working in the early 1930s, Webb built upon the concepts of individualism and lawlessness that had been borne in the Turner theory, but Webb's influence was most important to American west research because he defined the west as a place instead of a process. By the 1950s and 1960s, more historians like Henry Nash
Smith and Richard Hofstadter also defined the American west as a place. Smith and
Hofstadter kicked off a debate among western historians about how future historical scholarship would define the American west.
The debate continued until the late 20th century when Patricia Limerick and her school of American west historians began to dominate the published literature. Limerick, 53 Donald Worster, David Wrobel, Robert Hine, and Jack Faragher defined the American west as a place and set in place the recognized controlling paradigm for American west historical research. These revisionist western historians recognized the American west using geographical boundaries, and by defining the American west as a place, they could research the changes that occurred in the west over time.
In this thesis, the author defined the borders of the west as the Rocky Mountain
Range in the east, the Pacific Ocean to the west, Canada to the North, and Mexico to the south. Defining the west as a geographical place, this author could then conduct chronologically based research to investigate the changes that occurred in the American west over a period of time. In this case, the author used the historiography as a guide to defining the time period. By 1900, the American west had lost its status as a frontier, but because of the unique frontier development of the 19th century, the west also had yet to become fully culturally integrated into the United States. The turn-of-the 20th century marked a turning point in the development of the American west. Similarly, the turn-of- the 20th century marked a turning point in the development of baseball.
Although it was not until 1901 that the AL merged with the NL to form MLB, by
1900, baseball had become an incredibly popular nationwide sport. As such, the baseball society in the 1900 American west, can be used as a microcosm of the development of the greater American west society, and thus, the author defined the time period for this historical research to begin in 1900.
By 1900, baseball had spread throughout the west, helped by the west's extractive industries – mining, timber, oil, and later, farming – and newly expanded transportation 54 routes – first railroads and then by 1915, auto roads. The west's unique regional development made western baseball unique as well. Not only were teams and fans forced to travel within the confines of the budding western transportation system, but recognizing the money to be made, railroad and automobile companies invested in teams, leagues, and ballparks - in some cases making sure ballparks were built alongside transportation systems to ensure money would be spent on both transportation and baseball. As transportation industries infiltrated the vast American west territories, they linked the west with the political and social influences prominent in the rest of the United
States. In short, west's transportation industries were the foundation on which American west baseball was built.
As populations swelled and changed, the building influences changed. In the early
20th Century, Western baseball was built under the influences of the progressive reform movements – Temperance, anti-Sunday baseball, and anti-gambling. Progressive influences had gained political and social influence all over the nation. Progressivism, rooted in strict morality, stood in stark contrast with the lawlessness inherent in early
Western pioneer culture – drunkenness, ignoring the Sabbath, and gambling. As popular opinion swayed toward progressivism, reformers transformed western baseball players, fans, and grounds. Western Temperance forces worked toward national Prohibition, and progressive influences pressured western ball clubs to do away with selling alcohol at ballparks. Progressives succeeded in national Prohibition in 1920, but after 1920, this author struggled to find primary sources related linking baseball to illegal alcohol activities. However, she did manage to find a secondary source article related to 55 bootlegging and illicit alcohol in Scobey, Montana, but she would have liked to tell the story of the time period from 1920-1935. In one case, the author was unable to find any sources, but perhaps it was because they simply did not exist. Despite the heavy influence progressivism had in the American west, some progressive initiatives did not amount to anything. Anti-Sunday baseball, for instance, could not garner enough popular support to make a significant impact, and progressives failed to convince the western public to give up baseball as their Sunday leisure activity. Although progressives failed to change popular western opinions on Sunday baseball, progressives successfully lobbied against the problem of western baseball gambling. The author found such a great volume of sources related to the topic of baseball gambling that there is great potential for future historical research into western baseball gambling reform in the early 20th century.
During the height of their reform movement, progressives brought much greater awareness to western baseball gambling and the way it infiltrated the stands, players, and even umpires. In order to drive reform, progressives required authorities to put pressure on baseball magnates, players, and gamblers. Baseball leagues and local authorities came under obligation to enforce anti-gambling rules in ballparks as well as anti-gambling laws, and by 1920, the overpowering popular opinion on gambling in the ballpark was that it was no longer acceptable because it threatened the sanctity of the American pastime.
Early 20th century western culture had been a clash of the pioneering frontier culture and the controlling industrialized American culture. Western society had been unique and distinctly defined by its region. The first decades of the 20th century saw 56 progressivism reforming this unique western culture, but beyond 1925, youth baseball began to foster a dominant Americanism. Researching the time period beyond 1925, this author found only articles relating to youth and university amateur western baseball. An increase in newspaper reporting on western American Legion Junior Baseball as well as high school and university baseball, demonstrated a change in American west society. By relating Americanism to the national pastime, proponents could easily instill American ideals in younger western generations. Baseball had long been used as a unifying tool, but the American Legion actually made it a specific mission. Youth baseball thrived in the
1920s due to Junior Legion baseball. However, by the 1930s, financial struggles became paramount to western baseball.
The Great Depression threw America into economic turmoil and put strain on the business of baseball. As the decade wore on, the Great Depression worsened, and the game was forced to evolve; baseball incorporated exhibitions and night games.
Exhibitions and night games helped western baseball owners and investors survive the financial turmoil brought on by the Depression. Though the author was able to find several sources about western baseball in this period, the sources are only from two newspapers in the west. Therefore, she believes that the affects of the Depression on
American west baseball is, potentially, a new research avenue. Some historians might argue that the hardships brought on by the Depression lead baseball fans to seek escape in any form of available entertainment, and as a result, baseball would have gained viewership simply because it existed. However, this author believes that exhibitions and night games only worked to increase viewership because, prior to the Depression, 57 baseball had already been cemented as the American pastime. In fact, many of the 1930s baseball exhibitions did not become a regular addition to the American pastime.
However, western baseball night games had been proven so financially viable that in
1935 MLB finally adopted the use of lights to play its first night game. Perhaps future baseball historians will have more success than this author in finding primary source evidence and solve the puzzle of western baseball exhibitions in the 1930s.
Presented in this thesis is evidence of the changes in western baseball between
1900 and 1935. The primary source evidence supports this authors argument that throughout the first 35 years of the 20th century, the west's baseball experience was transformed. As the author had predicted in Chapter one, the regional differences that had set American west baseball apart from the baseball in the American east had faded throughout time. By 1935, American west baseball had been molded, reformed, and popularized to achieve integration into the homogenized American pastime. The
American west society in 1900 had still been attached to the ideals of the rowdy western frontier. However, as years passed, American west society, viewed through the perspective of baseball, shed its frontier mentality to become integrated and assimilated into the rest of mainstream American society. As a result, the American pastime thrived in the newest parts of the nation. 58 REFERNCES
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from http://casagrandepl.newspaperarchive.com/ i The New York Knickerbockers are the first documented baseball club to codify two specific rules. The first was a rule instituting foul lines, and the second was a rule outlawing “sack” outs. ii The Beadle Baseball Player was the first baseball guide. iii To read a copy of the National Agreement see: Reach's official base ball guide (vol. 1904-1905). (1983). Philadelphia, PA: A.J. Reach. iv Lanctot, N. (2004). Negro league baseball: the rise and ruin of a Black institution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvanie Press; Staples, B. (2011). Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American baseball pioneer. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers; and Heaphy, L. A. & May, M. A. (2006). Encyclopedia of women and baseball. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. v Social history is an area of historical study, considered by some to be a social science, which attempts to view historical evidence from the point of view of developing social trends. vi Baseball is defined here as a ball game played with a bat and ball between two teams of nine players; teams take turns at bat trying to score runs. For the purposes of this investigation, baseball shall only pertain to the game played by men wherein the bases are laid in a diamond shape each set 90 ft. from the next with the pitcher’s mound in the middle measuring 60ft. 6in from home plate. vii Seymore went on to author two more volumes: "Baseball: The Golden Age" (1971) and "Baseball: The People's Game" (1991). viii Eig, J. (2005). Luckiest man: the life and death of Lou Gehrig. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc.; Hampton, W. (2009). Babe ruth: a twentieth-century life. New York: Penguin Books Ltd.; Rhodes, D. (2008). Ty Cobb: safe at home. Guilford, CT: The Globe Pequot Press.; Engelberg, M., & Schneider, M. (2003). Dimaggio: setting the record straight. St. Paul, MN: MBI Publishing Co.; Leavy, J. (2010). The last boy: Mickey Mantle and the end of America’s childhood. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.; Hirsch, J. S. (2010). Willie Mays: the life, the legend. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc. ix Historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of orthodox views on evidence, motivations, and decision-making processes surrounding an historical event. Though revisionism is considered to have arrived on the scene, historiographically, around the 1970s, all historians contribute to the revision of the histories that were written before them. x Historians have written articles about early 20th century baseball teams in many of the regions within this thesis’ definition of the American west. However, the delimitation of the socio-culturally relatedness of the American west in this thesis is unique. xi The Library of Congress (LOC) has numerous historical newspapers in their “Chronicling America” database dating from 1860 to 1922. There are several newspapers from Arizona, California, Montana, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. xii The Code of the West was first written about by author, Zane Grey. Zane described the men and women who came to this part of the country during the westward expansion of the United States as being bound by an unwritten code of conduct. (Grey, 1951) xiii Natural resources of the American west include gold, silver, copper, timber, and oil. Cattle ranching and large-scale agricultural investments also took part in the peopling of the American west. xiv A company town is a town where all the buildings within the property boundaries are established and owned by one company. That company typically employs everyone who lives in the town. xv Baseball teams are often referred to as “nines” because a baseball team has nine defensive positions: Pitcher, catcher, first base, second base, third base, shortstop, left field, center field, and right field. xvi The Beer Cage at the Haight Street Recreation Grounds in San Francisco xvii Blue Laws are laws that restrict activity on Sunday. xviii “Quakers” was used to describe the Philadelphia American League club. xix Ban Johnson was the founder and president to the American League from 1900-1927. xx For a complete account of the 1919 White Sox gambling scandal see: Asinof, E. (1963). Eight men out; the black sox and the world series. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ; White, G.E. (1996). Creating the national pastime: baseball transforms itself, 1903-1953. Princeton: Princeton University Press. xxi Arnold “Chick” Gandil, Claude “Lefty” Williams, Oscar “Happy” Felsch, Charles “Swede” Risberg, George “Buck” Weaver, Fred McMullin, and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson. Hal Chase was also implicated as a middle-man between players and gamblers, but was not a member of the White Sox team. xxii August 4, 1920 The Ogden Standard-Examiner, and The Evening Herald (out of New Mexico) broke the news that Pacific Coast League ball players, first baseman for Vernon, W. Baker, “Babe,” Borton, and outfielder for Salt Lake City Harl Maggert, were suspected of gambling $300 on league games in 1919. The President of the PCL, W.H. McCarthy indefinitely suspended Borton and unconditionally released Maggert as he initiated an investigation. By August 10, 1920 pressure from McCarthy and Borton's manager lead Borton to allege that the Vernon baseball club had raised a $2000 pool to pay both Salt Lake City and Portland ball players to lose games during the 1919 PCL season. In a telegram, published in an August 11, 1920 in The Ogden Standard-Examiner, to the Seattle club's president, W.H. Klepper, McCarthy barred Seattle player Nate Raymond from all PCL parks. In the same August 11, 1920 Wednesday evening edition of The Ogden Standard-Examiner, Klepper was reported to tell McCarthy that he believed at least another five or six individuals involved with the Seattle club would be suspended for involvement in the bribery by the end of the week, but McCarthy told the paper that his investigations had led him to conclude that “Borton invented his story...[and] Those players mentioned in his confession are completely exonerated...” Nonetheless, the damage had been done and speculation by PCL fans continued to sully the league's reputation for the next few years. xxiii In 1919, World War I veterans founded the American Legion. xxiv Donkey games occurred when all the fielders on a baseball team (except for the pitcher and catcher) sat on a donkey at their position. The batter, who was not on a donkey, would then try to hit the ball as normal. If he hit the ball, he then had to mount a donkey and attempt to ride safely around the bases. The fielders could dismount their donkeys to retrieve the ball, but then had to mount again before throwing to another fielder or running the ball to a base. xxv Kenesaw Mountain Landis was the first MLB commissioner from 1920 to 1944.