Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, baseball was the most played sport in the United States. It became the first established professional sport in America in 1869. The game was played by virtually everyone in the United States regardless of skin color, nationality, religion, or any other characterizing trait. This led to the popularity of the game increasing, in turn, making baseball a part of America’s identity similar to bald eagles or deep-fried food. Baseball holds a strong connection to American culture and represents many problems faced by Americans. Examples of such parallels are racism (the Civil Rights Movement), urbanization, labor problems, the growth of big businesses, and many more. A combination of rich history and instilling American culture, values, and struggles is ultimately what lead to baseball being coined America’s “National Pastime” in the 1850s. The popularity of baseball has continued to be very large across the United States helping maintain the term "America's Pastime." The photos above show a jam packed Yankee Stadium in the 1930s and the right shows Dodger Stadium on opening day in 2019.
(Courtesy of Getty Images)
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The game of baseball was invented in Cooperstown, New York in the year 1839 by a man named Abner Doubleday. The only similar game to baseball in the Northeastern United States was cricket, a game that had made it to America from Europe due to the mass migration to the United States. Even with this competition between baseball and cricket, baseball almost instantly became a hit in the United States as it was played by almost every group of people and quickly became more popular than cricket. Baseball was used as a way for immigrants to become familiar with American culture. The game was played by Native American children at boarding schools, it was played in Japanese internment camps because those living in the camps used the game to help find a sense of normalcy, and pickup games could be found in almost every neighborhood in America at the time. A rise in popularity of baseball in Latin America also led to a new group of immigrants flocking to the United States not only for a better life, but for the game of baseball as well. After the first stages of baseball in America, the sport became more organized as two separate leagues were formed. The Major League Baseball (MLB) organization was founded in 1869. Consistent with all the racism, segregation, and bigotry targeted towards Black people in the United States during this time, Black baseball players were banned from joining MLB teams. This prompted the Negro League to be founded in 1920, 51 years after the first white baseball organization was formed. These leagues coexisted until 1947 when Jackie Robinson became the first Black baseball player to play in the Major Leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers. After this milestone for not only Robinson but the Black community as a whole, more and more Black baseball players began playing in the MLB. This helped act as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement, the movement for equality between Blacks and Whites that was getting more and more serious as the years went by. Once the color barrier had been broken by Robinson, the sport began to see more and more players from other countries join MLB teams, eventually evolving to today, where 251 players (28.5% of all MLB players) from 20 different countries play in the MLB. The game of baseball has come a long way since its origins in 1839 as it continues to grow and become a much more diverse sport. |
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