Baseball and Cultural Heritage


Book Description

Baseball's past has been lauded, romanticized, and idealized, and much has been written about both the sport and its history. This volume explores the understudied side of baseball - how its heritage is understood, interpreted, commodified, and performed for various purposes today.




Baseball and Cultural Heritage


Book Description

The influence of baseball heritage in society and culture Baseball’s past has been lauded, romanticized, and idealized, and much has been written about both the sport and its history. This is the first volume to explore the understudied side of baseball—how its heritage is understood, interpreted, commodified, and performed for various purposes today. These essays reveal how baseball’s heritage can be a source of great enjoyment and inspiration, tracing its influence on constructed environments, such as stadiums and monuments, and food and popular culture. The contributors discuss how its heritage can be used to address social, political, and economic aims and agendas and can reveal tensions about whose past is remembered and whose is laid aside. Contributors address race and racism in the sport, representations of women in baseball, ballparks as repositories for baseball’s heritage, and the role of museums in generating the game’s heritage narrative. Providing perspectives on the social impact and influence of baseball in the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, the Caribbean, and the United Kingdom, Baseball and Cultural Heritage shows how the performance of baseball heritage can reflect the culture and heritage of a nation. A volume in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel




Baseball Americana


Book Description

Baseball, the sport that helped reunify the country in the years after the Civil War, remains the national pastime. The Library of Congress houses the world's largest baseball collection, documenting the history of the game and providing a unique look at America since the late 1700s. Now Baseball Americana presents the best of the best from that treasure trove. From baseball's biggest stars to its street urchins, from its most newsworthy stories to sandlot and Little League games, the book examines baseball's hardscrabble origins, rich cultural heritage, and uniquely American character. The more than three hundred and fifty fabulous illustrations feature first-generation photographic and chromolithographic baseball cards; photographs of famous players and ballparks; and newspaper clippings, cartoons, New Deal photographs, and baseball advertisements. Packed with images that will surprise and thrill even the most expert collector, Baseball Americana is a gift for every baseball fan.




The Comic Book Story of Baseball


Book Description

A graphic novel-style history of baseball, providing an illustrated look at the major games, players, and rule changes that shaped the sport. This graphic novel steps up to the plate and covers all the bases in illustrating the origin of America's national pastime, presenting a complete look at the beginnings (both real and legendary), developments, triumphs, and tragedies of baseball. It also breaks down the cultural impact and significance of the sport both in America and overseas (including Japan, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic), from the early days of America to the flying W outside Wrigley Field in 2016. Featuring members of Baseball's Hall of Fame and modern day stand-outs—including Cy Young, Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, the 1930s New York Yankees, the 2004 Boston Red Sox, the 2016 Chicago Cubs, and more—The Comic Book Story of Baseball spotlights the players, teams, games, and moments that built the sport's legacy and ensured its popularity.




Mexican American Baseball in the Inland Empire


Book Description

Mexican American Baseball in the Inland Empire celebrates the thriving culture of former teams from Pomona, Ontario, Cucamonga, Chino, Claremont, San Bernardino, Colton, Riverside, Corona, Beaumont, and the Coachella Valley. From the early 20th century through the 1950s, baseball diamonds in the Inland Empire provided unique opportunities for nurturing athletic and educational skills, ethnic identity, and political self-determination for Mexican Americans during an era of segregation. Legendary men's and women's teams--such as the Corona Athletics, San Bernardino's Mitla Café, the Colton Mercuries, and Las Debs de Corona--served as an important means for Mexican American communities to examine civil and educational rights and offer valuable insight on social, cultural, and gender roles. These evocative photographs recall the often-neglected history of Mexican American barrio baseball clubs of the Inland Empire.




Sport Heritage


Book Description

Sport has become an important avenue in how we interpret, remember, and maintain our heritage. Whether it is being applied in tourism marketing and development, employed as a vehicle for social cohesion, or utilized as a way of articulating personal and collective identities, sport heritage is a vital topic in understanding what we value about the sporting past now what we wish to pass on to future generations. This edited collection brings together many new and exciting international approaches to sport heritage. Each of the chapters in this collection provides a thought-provoking sport heritage case study that would be of interest to students and researchers in history, geography, anthropology, and marketing, as well as industry practitioners working at sporting events, at sports-based heritage attractions such as museums and halls of fame, and at sports stadia and sports facilities. In addition, this collection would also be of interest to those readers with a more general interest in sport heritage and the sporting past. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Heritage Tourism.




The Story of Baseball


Book Description

A New York Times Bestseller Through 100 Evocative, often stunning photographs, as well as the stories that accompany them, Sports Illustrated visits the great arc of baseball, America’s past time. From the dawn of the professional era, through the days of Babe Ruth, the westward expansion and the thrilling championships of today, baseball’s rich and remarkable history is here. Inspiring events such as Jackie Robinson’s breaking the color barrier, Lou Gehrig’s Luckiest Man speech and one-handed pitcher Jim Abbott’s 1993 no-hitter live in a continuum with stirring photos of the game’s most beloved and largest personalities such as Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Cal Ripken Jr., Bryce Harper and many more. SPORTS ILLUSTRATED’s unmatched storytelling is in high form in a book that renders exquisite anecdotes, and explores baseball’s cultural heritage and uniquely American character, all in unforgettable style.




Baseball/Literature/Culture


Book Description

The Conference on Baseball in Literature and American Culture has consistently produced a strong body of scholarship since its inception in 1995. Essays presented at the 2008 and 2009 conferences are published in the present work. Topics covered include religion; class and racial dichotomies in the literature of cricket and baseball; re-reading The Natural in the 21st century; the feminist movement; Don DeLillo's Game 6; baseball in Seinfeld; Robert B. Parker; Harry Stein's Hoopla; Negro league owner Tom Wilson's impact on Nashville; Major League Baseball's postwar boom; and overwrought baseball editorials, among others.




Ball, Bat and Bitumen


Book Description

They emerged from the mines, shook off the coal dust, and stepped onto the diamond. From the early 1900s to the 1950s, baseball games between mine workers were a small-town phenomenon, each team attracting avid and intensely loyal fans. Talented part-time athletes competed at the amateur, semi-pro and professional levels. Equally competitive were the coal company officials, who often brought in ringers, or players of exceptional ability, giving them easier jobs above ground or a padded pay packet. Based on interviews with surviving players, families of deceased players, and contemporary sources, this thoroughgoing history covers not only teams and leagues but their function within the mining communities of Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia. The book features a special section on African-American mining teams, a coalfield map and many photographs.




The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2011-2012


Book Description

The 2011-2012 volume in the Cooperstown Symposium series is a collection of new scholarly essays that use baseball to examine topics whose import extends beyond the ballpark. The essays represent 16 of the leading presentations from the two most recent proceedings of the annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, held on June 1-4, 2011, and May 30-June 1, 2012. The essays are divided into six parts. "Baseball History, Myth, and the American Past" considers the distinction between reality and remembrance. "Decade of Transition: The 1960s in Baseball and America" explores a critical passage in the evolution of the nation and the game. "Baseball Economics: Owners, Profits, and the Public" provides perspectives on sports as business. "Out of the Bleachers: Women Umpiring and Playing" links the game to those who participate and care about it despite the expectations of atavistic gender roles. "Casting the Game: Stage and Screen" examines theatrical and cinematic treatments of baseball. Part 6, "Game of Numbers: Statistical Baseball," examines the sport and its artifacts quantitatively.