Culture and Ethnicity of Nineteenth Century Baseball
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The emergence of baseball as the ""national pastime"" established the dynamics of spectator sports. Evolving in an urban landscape, the game attracted a dedicated fan base and enshrined the sports hero as a national celebrity.
The game's allure was colored by the ethnic ambitions of the players and their supporters. Ethnic tensions were magnified when players began to see the game as a vehicle for individual rather than group achievement. The effect Irish-American players had on how the game was played and their support of Jim Crow culture shaped baseball into the next century.
Players' salaries and off-season occupations were not overlooked by the public, who questioned their entitlement to the fruits of notoriety and derided their gratifying lifestyles. This book examines the development of baseball as 19th-century popular culture and as an institution that reinforced ideas about race, masculinity and American exceptionalism.
The game's allure was colored by the ethnic ambitions of the players and their supporters. Ethnic tensions were magnified when players began to see the game as a vehicle for individual rather than group achievement. The effect Irish-American players had on how the game was played and their support of Jim Crow culture shaped baseball into the next century.
Players' salaries and off-season occupations were not overlooked by the public, who questioned their entitlement to the fruits of notoriety and derided their gratifying lifestyles. This book examines the development of baseball as 19th-century popular culture and as an institution that reinforced ideas about race, masculinity and American exceptionalism.
Jerrrold I. Casway is a Dean and Professor Emeriti at Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland, USA. The author of two acclaimed books, he has published more than sixty articles covering seventeenth-century Irish History and nineteenth-century baseball topics. He has spoken on both sides of the Atlantic and recently was the featured keynote speaker at the baseball Hall of Fame.