Making the World Safe for Baseball :: Sports History Athletics Essays

Making the World Safe for BaseballThe national pastime, nonionized baseballs self-proclaimed moniker, represented an important the Statesn institution as the Great fight began to enmesh Europe. The wagers association with state bred a poignant sense of patriotism among the players, fans, and other baseball aficionados as the conflict slowly ensnared the United States. Around the country, reporters emphasized baseballs important role in the impending European conflict in the New York Times, Benjamin DeCasseres wrote, the world ought to be made safe for baseball, since, as long as baseball embodied American democracy, the Kaisers and the Trotskys would strike out.1 Accordingly, notes Richard Crepeau, the game took its role in the First World War quite seriously, identifying itself as the game of democracy.2 In his analysis, Crepeau stresses the sports willingness to accept the Great War and the regimes mobilization efforts as both good for Americaand good for baseball.3 Haro ld Seymour, on the other hand, claims organized baseball demanded special favors and considerations from the government while maintaining an air of allegiance and patriotism.4 An examination of Baseball Magazine, a atomic number 61 baseball publication during this period, validates the latter argument, revealing the sports coinciding claims of support for and exemption from the contend effort. Up until professorship Woodrow Wilsons settlement of war, organized baseball remained rather detached from the European situation. Despite the wars emerging influence on the affairs of the country, the World series of 1915, columnist F.C. Lane reported, represented a week in which the coupled American people could forget the warand talk and eat and woolgather of baseball and who will win the all important series.5 As the baseball season reopened the following April, the sport possessed an aloofness not fantastic throughout the rest of American society. An interview wit h Detroit Tigers star Ty Cobb demonstrates this position. Refusing to take sides in the European conflict while placing blame for belligerency on the undefileds imperial heritage, Cobb states, No, I havent any discrete notions in favor of either side. I believe the conflict was inevitable, gibe to the system followed by both parties in Europe.6 The editors of the publication seemed to agree with such detachment by proclaiming a moral supremacy reminiscent of President Wilsons own rhetoric. While Europe impeded civilizations progress, according to one columnist, Americas growing acceptance of sunshine baseball represented a most telling and hopeful foretoken of that progress.