> From: Dennis Perrin <dperrin at comcast.net>
>
>
>
> To All --
>
> I've been approached to write a sweeping history of American sports, from
> the Colonial period onward, focusing on the various cultural and political
> elements that made and continue to make up the games -- from race to sex to
> capital vs. labor, advertising, and so on -- as well as dealing with the athletes
> and owners themselvess. Anyone with any suggested sources or reading material
> may contact me on - or off-list.
>
Charles: I'd like to read the book when you write it.
One cultural, race, capital , labor theme I noticed in the history of baseball is that originally the teams didn't have owners in the late 1800's. They were free associations of producer-players. Then came counter revolution and the reserve clause by which players were sort of metaphorically slaves in that they could be traded by owners. The reserve clause was broken only after Black players were let in, well 25 years after Jackie Robinson ,by Curt Flood, a Black player, who took it to the Supreme Court.
The game itself may be some sort of symbolic reference to workers, the batter has a tool, and peasants, who are in the field. The pitcher -batter interaction, division of labor, is perhaps a sort of machine scheme that produces runs through antagonism.
On the other hand, the long term dominant success of the Yankees in the twentieth century is obviously connected to its ties to Wall Street , probably material ties somehow , reflected in one of their icons being a top hat, their uniforms famous as "pinstripes", and just "Yankees".
I think of baseball as associated with "free market" capitalism, and then football comes in associated with the imperialist phase, and trench warfare of WWI. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20030531/58b5f2e5/attachment.htm>