Crafting Your Father's Idol
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CRAFTING ―YOUR FATHER‘S IDOL‖: THE SPORTING PRESS AND THE PROMOTION OF BASEBALL‘S STARS, 1900-1928 by LORI AMBER ROESSNER (Under the Direction of Janice Hume) ABSTRACT Heralded as America‘s national pastime, baseball was one of the country‘s preeminent cultural activities referenced in popular fiction, vaudeville shows, black-and-white films, sheet music, radio, and the press in the early twentieth century. Sports journalists touted its cast of stars on the covers of newspapers and magazines. Historians have argued that these mythmakers of the Golden Age of Sports Writing (1920-1930) manufactured mass heroes from white ball players for mainstream media; however, they have neglected to fully examine the practice of herocrafting. This dissertation seeks to further explore the production of cultural sports heroes by investigating the journalistic conventions and working associations involved in the process through a combination of textual and archival analysis. Doing so not only reveals insights into the practices of early twentieth-century sports journalists, it also provides a unique lens into the cultural implications of hero construction. It affords a prism through which to explore the interaction between sports journalism and mainstream American culture. Press and archival sources surrounding the lives of baseball icons Ty Cobb and Christy Mathewson and well-known sports journalists Grantland Rice, F.C. Lane, and John N. Wheeler were culled and analyzed. Following the cue of cultural studies theorists Raymond Williams and James Carey, this manuscript treats the study of communication as the examination of historic ritual. Overall, it involved analysis of 297 articles and columns from more than thirty general and specialty, mass- circulating newspapers and magazines and four memoirs, as well as archival documents from the University of Georgia‘s Richard B. Russell Library in Athens, Ga., the Ty Cobb Museum in Royston, Ga., the National Baseball Hall of Fame‘s A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Library in Cooperstown, N.Y., Vanderbilt University‘s Jean and Alexander Heard Library‘s Special Collections in Nashville, Tenn., and Columbia University‘s Rare Book and Manuscript Library in New York, N.Y. INDEX WORDS: Journalism History, Public Relations History, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, American Culture, Baseball, Heroes, F.C. Lane, Grantland Rice, John N. Wheeler, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, James Carey, Raymond Williams. CRAFTING ―YOUR FATHER‘S IDOL‖: THE SPORTING PRESS AND THE PROMOTION OF BASEBALL‘S STARS, 1900-1928 by LORI AMBER ROESSNER B.S.ED., The University of Georgia, 2003 M.A., The University of Georgia, 2006 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Athens, Georgia 2010 © 2010 Lori Amber Roessner All Rights Reserved CRAFTING ―YOUR FATHER‘S IDOL‖: THE SPORTING PRESS AND THE PROMOTION OF BASEBALL‘S STARS, 1900-1928 by LORI AMBER ROESSNER Major Professor: Janice Hume Committee: Kathleen Clark Jay Hamilton Horace Newcomb Karen Russell Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia July 2010 DEDICATION I dedicate my dissertation to the women, who paved the way for this Southern gal to write about baseball, American culture, and communication, especially to my great grandmother, my grandmother, and my mother, who taught me that I could accomplish anything with a measure of tenacity and hard work. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project began as a paper in Janice Hume‘s special topics seminar during my second year of graduate school at the University of Georgia‘s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. The study about the role of journalism in hero construction morphed into a conference presentation, a journal article, a dissertation topic, and a full-fledged research agenda thanks to her guidance. After countless hours of advice and reading every word of numerous incarnations of my dissertation, she demonstrated unceasing faith in this work and in me. Thank you for your continual support—for knowing exactly what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it. I would also like to thank Kathleen Clark, Jay Hamilton, Horace Newcomb, and Karen Russell for their assistance with this study. From the outset, these sage scholars kept me reigned in, providing rigorous and insightful feedback. Thanks to Jay Hamilton for his brilliant theoretical guidance; thanks to Horace Newcomb for advocating for strong, concise arguments; thanks to Karen Russell for her assistance with archival research and her unceasing practicality; and thanks to Kathleen Clark for her counsel in gender history. In addition, I would be remiss not to include my heartfelt appreciation to Carolina Acosta-Alzuru for guiding the oral history that serves as the foundation for the dissertation‘s prologue and epilogue. I am also grateful for the invaluable professors that I encountered along my academic journey from my dear professional mentor Leara Rhodes to Dean Krugman, who fostered my love of communication theorist James Carey, and to Laura Mason and John Inscoe, who facilitated my knowledge of cultural history. Furthermore, I would like to thank the warm v support team who supported me throughout this challenging academic path. Thanks to my fellow graduate students at Grady College, especially Kristin English, Kim Davis, Brett Robinson, Curt Wanner, Noah Arceneaux, Paul Hillier, Karen Sichler, Kristen Heflin, Matt Corn, Geoffrey Graybeal, and Mark Lashley. My extended Grady College family always supplied fresh insights, encouraging words, and more than a few laughs during a daunting period of my life. Thanks also to the kind scholars, with whom I interacted with at national conferences like the American Journalism Historians Association and the Association for Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication. I am also indebted to the Society of American Baseball Research and the University of Georgia‘s Grady College of Journalism for their generous support through the Yoseloff-SABR Research Grant and the Broun Student Support Fund. These two grants financed an extended visit to New York‘s National Baseball Hall of Fame Research Library and Columbia University in autumn 2009. I am also grateful for the knowledgeable librarians, archivist, and curators at the University of Georgia‘s Richard B. Russell Library in Athens, Ga., the Ty Cobb Museum in Royston, Ga., the National Baseball Hall of Fame‘s A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Library in Cooperstown, N.Y., Vanderbilt University‘s Jean and Alexander Heard Library‘s Special Collections in Nashville, Tenn., and Columbia University‘s Rare Book and Manuscript Library in New York, N.Y., whom I encountered along the way. Ultimately, though, I owe my utmost thanks to my family for their unwavering support and boundless love, especially to the most important women in my life—my mother Gina, my grandmother Laura Jean, my dear great grandmother Nellie, and my spiritual mother Nancy, who taught me that perseverance, prayer, and hard work make success tangible. I also am eternally grateful to my husband David, who provided unconditional love and encouragement, as well as vi for his assistance during our time at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Finally, thank you Daddy for inspiring my passion for the national pastime on those countless afternoons that we played catch in the backyard. vii PREFACE As a young girl, I spent hours playing catch with my daddy in the backyard. On those early summer evenings before lightening bugs came out to play, my goal was simple: to hit a home run over the rickety shed near the forest. Doing so would not only earn the pride of victory but the spoils: a Dairy Queen ice-cream sundae. Like any of life‘s goals, however, connecting with the perfect pitch was elusive. Still, each evening, as dusk settled on the foothills of Northeast Georgia, I begged for just one more pitch—one more chance to meet my destiny. In that instant, I joined children across the nation in imagining a mythic scenario, one that sportswriters crafted generations earlier. ―Amber Shaw strides to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and the bases loaded,‖ typed my imaginary sports scribe. With my favorite cap pulled down low over my eyes, I gritted my teeth and squinted as the ball soared past. Strike one. Some days, like ―mighty Casey,‖ I merely struck out, but on those rare occasions when the stars aligned perfectly, I earned my tasty treat. It was during those less fortunate times that I remembered an old saying that my father taught me: ―For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, He writes—not that you won or lost—but how you played the Game.‖ After being hit by three consecutive pitches in my first Little League practice, I gave up playing baseball for a more graceful, feminine pursuit—slow-pitch softball; still, my curiosity about the national pastime lingered long after I hung up my cleats for journalistic and academic pursuits. So, I return once more to an examination of my childhood passion. viii PROLOGUE In spring 1958, Saturday Evening Post correspondent Furman Bisher traveled to Cornelia, Ga., for a three-day interview with ailing baseball legend Ty Cobb. ―I knew him pretty well,‖ the 90-year-old sports columnist recalled, smiling as he leaned back in a swivel chair in my Athens office on a warm autumn afternoon shortly before announcing his retirement from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in October 2009. ―So, I went up to see him. Each morning, I would knock on his door … and each morning, he would say, ‗Now, what is it that you are here for?‘ And we would have to start over again …. We had three wonderful days.‖ During Bisher‘s visit with Cobb, they drove up to Chenocetah Mountain, the site of his future home.