Play Ball! The Rise of Baseball as America’s Pastime

199 Pages·2019·8.612 MB·English

by  Bruce Markusen

Topic Subtopic
Change the way you think about baseball as a guide from the National Baseball Hall
of Fame and Museum covers the fascinating evolution of America’s national pastime. History American History
P Play Ball!
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—The Los Angeles Times o
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“A serious force in American education.” a
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—The Wall Street Journal b
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Bruce Markusen is the Manager of Digital and Outreach t
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Learning in the education department at the National m
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Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. He has extensive media
experience as both a broadcaster and writer, and he served
as a consultant for the Smithsonian Institution’s online and
traveling exhibits on Roberto Clemente. As a historian of
baseball, Mr. Markusen has written several books about the
sport, including the award-winning A Baseball Dynasty:
Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s.
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Course No. 8629 © 2019 The Teaching Company. PB8629A k
Published by
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Bruce Markusen
Bruce Markusen is the Manager of
Digital and Outreach Learning in the
education department at the National
Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, where
he teaches students through virtual field trip
technology. He has also worked in the Hall of
Fame’s research and programming departments,
and he was formerly a teacher at The Farmers’
Museum and the Fenimore Art Museum. Mr.
Markusen has extensive media experience as both a
broadcaster and writer, and in addition to his educational role,
he narrates many of the Hall of Fame’s video productions, including biographies
of numerous Hall of Fame members.
Prior to working at the Hall of Fame, Mr. Markusen hosted a nightly sports talk
show for more than eight years in Utica, New York. He took calls from listeners,
interviewed athletes and coaches, and contributed to prerecorded programs.
Additionally, Mr. Markusen has served as a consultant for the Smithsonian
Institution’s online and traveling exhibits on Roberto Clemente.
As a historian of baseball, Mr. Markusen has written several books about the
sport, including A Baseball Dynasty: Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s, which earned
the Seymour Medal from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) as
1998’s best book of baseball history. He has also written biographies of Roberto
Clemente, Ted Williams, and Orlando Cepeda as well as a compilation of short
stories about the New York Mets.
Mr. Markusen has received the Cliff Kachline Award, given out by the SABR
to an individual for career achievements as a writer and researcher. He has also
INSTRUCTOR BIOGRAPHY | i
received the McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award for his article “The
First All-Black Lineup” about the historic lineup employed by the Pittsburgh
Pirates on September 1, 1971.
Mr. Markusen lives in Cooperstown, New York, with his wife, Sue, and their
daughter, Madeline. 
ii | PLAY BALL! THE RISE OF BASEBALL AS AMERICA’S PASTIME
About Our Partner
The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New
York, is an independent nonprofit educational institution. It is dedicated
to fostering an appreciation of the historical development of baseball and
its impact on our culture by collecting, preserving, exhibiting, and interpreting
its collections for a global audience, as well as honoring those who have made
outstanding contributions to America’s national pastime. Since opening its doors
for the first time on June 12, 1939, the Hall of Fame has stood as the definitive
repository of the game’s treasures and as a symbol of the most profound
individual honor bestowed on an athlete. It is every fan’s “field of dreams,” with
its stories, legends, and magic shared from generation to generation.
This course, Play Ball! The Rise of Baseball as America’s Pastime, serves as a
retrospective of the game’s early days, leading up to the year 1920. The course
is presented by broadcaster, writer, educator, and Hall of Fame staffer Bruce
Markusen, and the lead writer for the course is baseball historian Peter Morris,
with contributions from author Scott Pitoniak.
This course’s 24 lectures survey the roots of baseball and the American public’s
shift from viewing it as a child’s game to a worthwhile pursuit for adults. As that
perception changed, so did the game’s status transform—from a strictly amateur
sport to one in which players could make a living as professionals. The course
sifts through the myriad leagues and associations that formed during this time,
as well as developments like new ballparks, new statistics, protective equipment
for players, and the shifting relationship between baseball and the press.
During these years, baseball became deeply intertwined with American culture
and society. To reflect that, the course also covers the intersections of baseball
with race, gender, business, and labor issues as well as the monumental event
ABOUT OUR PARTNER | iii
of World War I. The course tells these stories in much the same way that the
National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum does: through the use of artifacts,
photographs, and tales that bring the game to life and memorialize its towering
figures. 
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Instructor Biography..............................................................i
About Our Partner ...............................................................iii

Lectures
01 Ground Rules: Baseball before Babe Ruth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 01
02 Early Bat and Ball Games. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .08
03 The Era of Amateur Baseball Clubs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
04 The Dawn of Professional Baseball. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
05 Baseball’s Many Leagues and Associations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
06 How Baseball Created the World Series. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
07 Baseball Grows by Hitting the Road. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
08 Sacred Ground: Baseball’s Early Ballparks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
09 The Development of Baseball’s Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64
10 The Evolution of Protective Equipment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
11 The Role of Women in Baseball’s Early Days. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80
TABLE OF CONTENTS | v
12 Black Baseball before the Negro Leagues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
13 Prejudice and Diversity in Early Baseball. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96
14 Baseball Grows through the Press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
15 Baseball Becomes a Game of Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
16 Baseball: A Game for the Fans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .118
17 Baseball and Our Common Culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
18 The Business behind the National Pastime. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
19 Players, Owners, and the Reserve Clause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .141
20 American Politics and Early Baseball. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
21 Baseball’s Rituals and Traditions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
22 The Impact of War on Baseball. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
23 Scandals and Deception on the Diamond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .171
24 How Changing Baseballs Changed the Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

Supplementary Material
Bibliography...................................................................188
Image Credits ..................................................................191
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Lecture
01
Ground Rules: Baseball
before Babe Ruth
This course focuses on baseball in the years before 1920. To kick the course
off, this opening lecture focuses on why 1920 serves as such a good
dividing line.
The Year 1920
● The year 1920 is a useful line of demarcation. Within a year or
two of that date, an enormous number of changes took place that
transformed the role of baseball in American life.
● There were major national and global developments around this time
that have had a lasting impact on American culture. World War I
had only recently ended, and America had emerged from its previous
isolation as one of the leading players on the world stage. The war
years also witnessed a migration of more than half a million African
Americans, who left the South to pursue the prospect of good-paying
jobs in northern factories.
● Additionally, the role of women was rapidly evolving—a fact
dramatically illustrated on August 18, 1920, by the ratification of the
Nineteenth Amendment, which finally gave women the right to vote.
The 1920s also ushered in Prohibition, the first commercial radio
station, and a seemingly endless succession of short-lived fads.
● As the world outside baseball was spinning in unexpected and
unpredictable ways, the baseball world was, if anything, in an even
greater state of flux. Consider just a few of the events that make the
years around 1920 so pivotal for baseball:
ƒ First, the 1919 World Series was fixed. Eight White Sox
players—the so-called Black Sox—attended meetings to discuss
a plot by which they would intentionally lose the World Series.
News of the scandal broke the following September, with the
White Sox locked in a tight pennant race.
ƒ Second, in response to the Black Sox scandal, the game’s
governing body was scrapped and replaced with a single
commissioner: Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who was given far-
reaching powers to act in the best interests of the game.
ƒ Third, the northward migration of African Americans
contributed to the founding of the Negro National League in
1920. This was the first of the leagues that became collectively
known as the Negro leagues.
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