![]() ![]() The game has preoccupied writers from Mark Twain and Walt Whitman to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Tom Clancy, and featured entertainers such as Jimmy Stewart, Jose Feliciano, and Tim Robbins, industrialists such as Henry Ford, and media moguls such as Hearst, Turner and Murdoch. ![]() It’s the story of foreign leaders, such as Sun Yat Sen, the Emperor Hirohito, the King of England, and Hugo Chavez, and politicians, from Jesse Helms and Rudy Giuliani to J. It involves generals, from Washington to MacArthur to Eisenhower to Powell, and presidents from Lincoln to Nixon to Bush to the Roosevelts. What, exactly, has been baseball’s relationship to American foreign and military policies? It’s a baseball history that reveals a colorful, and often startling, cast of characters. empire or can it convey a different America to the world? Major Characters and QuestionsĦTo understand the present, we must revisit the past. foreign policy on steroids? Should baseball remain wedded to the U.S. And, as MLB has become its own empire, some wonder whether it any longer represents the game’s best interests.ĥWith more Americans, in the last three decades, identifying football as their favorite sport, can baseball still sustain its claim as the national game? To beat back the challenge, must baseball re-double its flag-waving patriotism or instead pursue a new role in American society? What can we learn, for example, from baseball’s recent response to the September 11 attacks and to America’s get-tough military policies, including the wars on terrorism, Afghanistan, and Iraq-which some view, ironically, as U.S. ![]() Likewise, baseball has parroted America’s approach to globalization in its own business dealings abroad. At stake is far more than a symbolic designation substantial owner profits are potentially on the line, as well as the sport’s independence. foreign and military policies? Baseball has long engaged in a “national pastime tradeoff,” whereby it must religiously toe the official government or military line, in return for being able to maintain its claim as the national game. In exchange for its good standing as the national pastime, has baseball trapped itself into a blind adherence to U.S. Routinely, patriotism has been conceptualized not as support for the nation’s ideals, but rather as loyalty to official policies. In America’s foreign diplomacy, baseball was often regarded as the nation’s “moral equivalent of war.” And at home, baseball was used to promote patriotism and nationalism.ĤAffiliating itself with true blue Americanism has had its benefits, but perhaps some negative repercussions as well. It took its place in the globalization of the world, even if Americanization was more so the objective. “civilizing missions” launched abroad, either militarily or economically, and sometimes bolstered by the forces of “muscular Christianity.” Baseball was used to sell and export the American way. Baseball was enlisted in America’s imperial quests and it helped colonize other lands, from the Caribbean to Asia to the Pacific. ![]() The National Pastime TradeoffģIn America’s efforts to expand its frontiers, it soon looked overseas. military endeavors, in particular, especially the nation’s wars and interventions. It has also sought to equate itself with American masculinity and patriotism, and with U.S. To do so, baseball-and especially major league baseball (MLB)-has tried to associate itself with the values of the American dream. Since then, the sport has worked hard to maintain that status. While baseball was played in America as far back as the Revolutionary War, it was first designated the “national pastime” in the 1850s. foreign policy has affected baseball, as well.ĢFor more than two centuries, baseball has shown up in surprising ways as America has emerged in the world, and then built itself into an empire. domestic life, our national pastime has also figured prominently in how America has projected itself abroad-in its foreign, military, diplomatic and globalization policies. 1While many have observed baseball’s longstanding resonance with U.S. ![]()
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