University of Mississippi eGrove Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2011 Crashsmith Dope: the Role of Media in the Development of Professional Baseball in New York From 1919-1929 Ryan McGregor Whittington Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd Part of the Journalism Studies Commons Recommended Citation Whittington, Ryan McGregor, "Crashsmith Dope: the Role of Media in the Development of Professional Baseball in New York From 1919-1929" (2011). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 308. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/308 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CRASHSMITH DOPE: THE ROLE OF MEDIA IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL IN NEW YORK FROM 1919-1929 BY RYAN M. WHITTINGTON B.A., University of Mississippi, Oxford, 2009 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The University of Mississippi In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts In the Meek School of Journalism © Copyright by Ryan M. Whittington 2011 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT John McGraw’s New York Giants were the premier team of the Deadball Era, which stretched from 1900-1919. Led by McGraw and his ace pitcher, Christy Mathewson, the Giants epitomized the Deadball Era with their strong pitching and hard-nosed style of play. In 1919 however, The New York Times and The Sporting News chronicled a surge in the number of home runs that would continue through the 1920s until the entire sport embraced a new era of baseball. This thesis details the role played by these two newspapers in the rise of the Live Ball Era, the New York Yankees, and Babe Ruth. The New York Times was a daily newspaper located in New York, the heart of the Live Ball movement, while The Sporting News was the primary publication of choice for baseball enthusiasts throughout the country. The research chronicles the 1919-1929 baseball seasons provided by commentary and game accounts from both publications. It examines the shift in values of the sport of baseball from John McGraw’s Deadball Era to Babe Ruth’s Live Ball Era. In addition to discussing the role of newspapers and baseball following World War I, the research will show the media’s role in the rising popularity of Babe Ruth as John McGraw saw his power wane in the press and on the field with the Giants. As the newspaper accounts will reveal, the sports coverage of The New York Times and The Sporting News reflected the shift in baseball styles as the Deadball Era Giants yielded to the Live Ball Era Yankees from 1919 to 1929. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION . 1 II. 1919-1920: THE EMERGENCE OF THE MAULING MASTODON . 20 III. 1921-1924: THE GIANTS MAKE A STAND . 47 IV. 1925-1929: THE AGE OF RUTH . 97 V. DISCUSSION . 141 iii LIST OF FIGURES 1. FIGURE 1 . 151 iv CHAPTER I Introduction The media and professional baseball have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship for nearly 150 years. As early as 1869, team owners, coaches, and players have welcomed media members, and have given them an all-access pass to report on the daily proceedings of their franchises. In turn, the reporters produced content that accomplished a dual purpose: it sold their own, specialized media product while promoting professional baseball to an audience the franchise could never before have reached. Both ownership groups prospered. In fact, media and baseball franchise owners can draw many of the same comparisons – they both work to improve their respective organizations’ bottom lines. Today, media outlets and the sports’ magnates have capitalized on that relationship by brokering deals with media moguls like the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN). In 2006, Major League Baseball negotiated a seven-year, $3 billion deal with the Fox Broadcasting Company and Turner Broadcasting System to televise both regular season and postseason baseball games.1 In addition to the numerous amounts of television and radio coverage provided by these national outlets, local and national daily, weekly, and monthly publications provide information to individual teams’ markets, thus supplementing their bottom lines by notifying fans of upcoming games and promoting their star players. It leads to an all- important question: if not for the sports media, would baseball have prospered? 1 “Fox, TBS have seven-year, $3 billion TV deal with MLB,” ESPN.com, accessed April 11, 2011, http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2516552. 1 While not easily answered, it is a question that elicits discussion of an earlier time for both the news media and professional baseball. Before the turn the century, the media and baseball were experiencing their own growing pains. Instead of radio or television reporters colorfully describing play-by-play accounts of baseball games, newspapers sent reporters that “showed extreme partiality to the home club’s cause.”2 Media owners, while they may have understood the power of the sport as an entertainment industry, tended to allot more coverage to foreign and domestic news affairs. Only after the formation of the Associated Press in 1900 did sports sections grow to about nine percent of the total paper and fifteen percent of all news coverage.3 The sport was struggling with its own problems. David Quentin Voigt argues that the entire country had embraced baseball as its pastime as early as 1869, but corrupt owners and on- going feuds between leagues soured some members of the American public. Baseball researcher Harold Seymour says the sport catered to the masses and that “among the wealthy and middle class there still lurked a notion that baseball and baseball playing were lowbrow.”4 “The Deadball Era,” (as it is referred to by baseball historians) which encompassed the years of 1900-1919 in organized baseball, was a reflection of the resistant mentality of the sport, its players, and coaches, toward change. The term alluded to a style of the game characterized by dominant pitching performances and hard-nosed play. Following the end of World War I, however, the media and baseball changed. Whether because of the desire of the public to forget the horrors of the Great War, or merely because they had more free time available, America turned to baseball as its savior. 2 Voigt, David Quentin, “Cash and Glory: The Commercialization of Major League Baseball as a Sports Spectacular, 1865-1892” (PhD diss., Syracuse University, 1962), 82. 3 Ibid., 85. 4 Seymour, Harold, Baseball: The Golden Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 5. 2 The sport relied on newspapers to provide their burgeoning audience with an insatiable desire for more information. Of the first five individuals elected to the inaugural Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Walter Johnson made their mark on the game during the 1920s. Ruth, Cobb, and Johnson were exalted as baseball gods and covered as such by the media. From 1919 to 1929, local and national newspapers played a crucial role in the narration of the sport’s evolution. From a World Series scandal to widespread conspiracy theories about the ball, the media reflected the changing nature of the game; the death of the Deadball Era and the rise of the “Live Ball Era,” the style of the modern-day game. Set against this backdrop was the city of New York, the site of the paradigmatic proving ground between the Deadball Era New York Giants and the Live Ball Era New York Yankees. Through the 1920s media coverage of these two teams and their respective players and coaches, it may be evident that both the media and the sport of baseball evolved together during the Roaring Twenties. Research Question Researchers and historians have found it difficult to pinpoint the factors and chain of events that lead to the evolution of the game from the Deadball Era to the Live Ball Era. While author William Curran holds that Ruth changed the sport during a May 1919 performance, historian Robert Weintraub and sportswriters of the time dispute the integrity of the game’s overseers, alleging the introduction of a livelier ball.5 Former catcher and major league manager Al Lopez was the last remaining link to the 1920s. His death in 2005, combined with the death of Phil Caverretta in December 2010, the last person to play against Babe Ruth, erased all first-hand player accounts of the era. Although 5 Weintraub, Robert, The House That Ruth Built (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2011), 36. 3 direct connections no longer exist, newspapers of the period present narrative that is unequaled in quantity and quality of information. Through the lens of their coverage of the contrasting styles of the Giants and Yankees, these outlets should provide distinct evidence that the game of baseball, in direct correlation with the sporting press, evolved during the 1920s. Specifically, does the sports coverage of The New York Times and The Sporting News reflect the shift in baseball styles as the Deadball Era Giants yield to the Live Ball Era Yankees from 1919 to 1929? The Study and Methodology James D. Startt and William David Sloan broadly define communication history to be an integration of subject matter into the general currents of history. Startt and Sloan go on to say that historians must acquire an understanding of the context of the time period being studied in order to write “good history.” 6 The two say, however, that practitioners of sound history subscribe to no single methodology.7 Instead, Startt and Sloan state that all historical research should include a number of standards of which historians should subscribe.