How Baseball Fostered Institutional Racism in American Culture

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How Baseball Fostered Institutional Racism in American Culture A Darkened Diamond: How Baseball Fostered Institutional Racism in American Culture By: Joshua Vadeboncoeur A senior honors thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with honors from the Department of Political Science 1 Baseball’s Cultural Foundation: An Introduction Prior to its modern-day representation as a hierarchically structured business, the game of baseball was exactly that, a game – a game that held American citizens accountable to the preservation of their roots and connected with the overarching national character that is the celebration of the individual spirit (Goldstein 1989, 3-5). In the years that have passed since the inception of the game of baseball into the fabric of American culture, the United States has been tested through economic collapse, social upheaval, and the perils of war, but remaining constant through all of this linear unrest has been the unwavering figment of baseball in the timeless imagination of a country that holds onto the admirable, yet arguably deferred dream of American democratic values and daring ingenuity. But how exactly did the game of baseball rise to the occasion as this embodiment of the American cultural spirit? The answer to that question finds its vantage point in a time that witnessed a rapidly changing industrial and social landscape, that of an American east coast in the 1840s. Following the rapid industrialization and urbanization of this region, the allure of team sports grew to extraordinary heights in the decades that followed due to various social repercussions of the industrial revolution (Helyar 1994, 3-4). Beginning in the 1850s, the game grew in reverence as a gentleman’s sport, as young artisans and clerks throughout some of the larger east coast cities developed an amateur game of leisure, establishing formal social clubs that were oftentimes referred to as “base ball fraternities” (Goldstein 1989, 3). This genteel notion of sportsmanship and Victorian middle-class culture that had defined the game met an intriguing cultural boundary line that would forever relegate the game to a pastime fulfilled by young American men at all levels of the societal spectrum (Goldstein 1989, 16-17). 2 In the advent of the American Civil War, the game of baseball extended its influence from the east cost and entered the lives of rural and small town America, becoming a polarizing fixture across small towns and whistle stops throughout the southeast and far stretching fields of the Midwest (Story 2001, 19-20). Unlike most games of leisure and/or sport, baseball, through its respective design structure, elicited not only a comradely ethos, but also a sense of individual recognition – an intriguing emotion that spoke to young American men of lower skill levels (that is in terms of both societal caste rank and respective level of capability on the playing field), which aided in cementing the conventional wisdom of the time that baseball was a definitive source of social mobility for the lower-class young American male (Story 2001). However, like a deferred dream, this conventional wisdom was in reality an unconventional parable. Beginning in the late-1850s, a semblance of what would later become professional baseball materialized in these larger east coast cities, namely that of New York. For instance, sixteen local base ball fraternities/social clubs collaborated in establishing the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) in 1857, a trend that later spread to surrounding large cities such as Baltimore, Detroit, New Haven, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC within the next four years (Duquette 1999, 2-3). The overarching intent of the NABBP was to bring a definitive organization to the game of baseball, wherein a uniform code of rules and established order were set in place to not only help bring a realized legitimacy to the growing stature of the game, but also foster the fraternal nature that had long since defined the game (Duquette 1999). That fraternal character, as previously noted, was not preserved, as the dynamic of pre- professional shifted from purely leisure to that of determined competition, which gradually steered the game on the course towards realized professional status within the next decade. As the fraternal nature of these clubs was sifted away in favor of this all-encompassing ethos of 3 competition and the focus on the individual spirit, the conventional wisdom suggested the plausibility of social mobility for the lower-classes, but inversely so, such teetered on the zip line that was one of the larger myths of America’s pastime – as previously aforementioned, a dream deferred (Story 2001, 26-28; Riess 1980, 235-50). As pre-professional baseball heightened, so too did interest from all facets of society across the country. Open recruitment to join these respective clubs (and in due time, that of professional baseball clubs) took on an image similar in context to the modern-day notion of an assured equal opportunity, but an ever-atypical equal outcome (Riess 1980). This notion of open recruitment, although meritocratic in nature, was certainly not democratic as the underrepresentation of the lower-classes subjected that class to a severe lack of opportunities (opportunities as in the ability to develop the required skills necessary to pursue a foreseeable profession in the sport of baseball) and as such, promoted this veiled notion of upward social mobility by way of baseball (Riess 1980). While unsuccessful in fulfilling the conventional wisdom of the time, this veiled notion was of key importance in fortifying the American values of individualism, hard work, and a strong belief in democracy, pushing forward the principle that in a rapidly changing and complex society, the functionalism of these American values are tried and true for those who believe in the American dream that celebrates and remunerates the determined individual spirit (Story 2001). This unconventional parable was also key in promoting these values to immigrants, who were captivated by the sport upon arrival and utilized the culture of the game as means to adapt to and participate in the American experience, in turn learning the traditional virtues of what constituted a “good” American citizen (Riess 1980). Nevertheless, while the lower-classes and immigrants remained captivated by the culture of the game, the game remained what it had been 4 since its initial inception into American culture in the 1840s, a means through which well- educated, middle to upper-class native American white males (as well as some Irishmen and Germans) could maintain their respective social status and help proliferate this social dynamic under the veil of traditional American values and our national pastime (Riess 1980). But let’s take a step back for a quick glance. Upon closer examination, one may argue that my brief assessment of the history of baseball’s origins as a leading embodiment of the American spirit and the typically accepted conventional wisdom of the late-nineteenth and early- twentieth centuries is rather shortsighted and blatantly ignorant of the often overlooked social landscape that defined much of the United States throughout this time period, a period that witnessed the growth of baseball as much more than a sport of competitive determination, but rather as a purveyor of the prescribed American notion of traditional values. Although my assessment presents the glaring social dynamic that existed between the middle to upper-classes and the lower classes, such an assertion was premised on the notion that the classes involved are comprised of not only native American white males, but also that of immigrants of eastern and southern European descent. As such, I am ignoring the veil placed upon the sector of society comprising the many minority groups that have been negatively influenced by this respective social dynamic. At least in this particular conversation, the two groups that I will be focusing on are African Americans and American Indians, two groups that have served on the receiving end of the institutional racism that has ravaged American society for the entirety of baseball’s existence as the preeminent national pastime. The game of baseball (and by the term baseball, I’m particularly evoking that of professional baseball) has long since remained a crucible of American democratic values and daring ingenuity, but a darkened veil has long since hidden such values and the truth behind the 5 assertion that professional baseball was at one point an unabashed crucible of cultural and racial prejudices for both African Americans and American Indians, a realized beacon of the discriminatory sentiment that was fostered in American traditional values and façade behind which our modern-day conception of institutional racism was given proper sustenance to cultivate and affix itself to the fabric of American cultural sentiment (Elias 2010, 20-22). With that being said, one must examine the impact and nature of institutional racism within the context of American culture, from which a better understanding of the backdrop of this larger issue involving professional baseball can be found. Upon examining institutional racism as it exists within our respective society, the historical trajectory of professional baseball as a façade behind which the exploits of institutional racism could be fostered and metastasize can be traced with a greater understanding of the manner by which this issue affecting our social landscape persists still to this day. An Inside Look
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