Wiley Blackwell Companions: Companion To American Sports History

Baseball. Most Americans know this word, most know what a bat and a mitt looks like, and chances are most have played or watched baseball. With the names Babe Ruth, Derek Jeter, Yogi Berra, it is likely that most have heard at least one of these famous former New York Yankee’s names and associate them with baseball. Baseball is a sport with unknown origins that is largely chalked up to be America’s “Nation Pastime”, but why is that? How did baseball turn into the household sport and children’s game that we know it as today? Most American’s know the sport or the players, but do not know the history, nor do they understand the role that capitalism played in its development. By using historian and sports expert Steven A. Riess’s book, Wiley Blackwell Companions to American History: Companion to American Sports History we can look at sports history. Specifically, capitalism as the core of the market in America and the undeniably entwined role baseball shares. We begin to look at baseball and its capitalistic implications with the New York Yankees in the 1950s. There is an undeniable relationship between baseball and the marketplace,

New York City is home to Wall Street, big banks and a large majority of the trade in America, all happening during what many consider the golden age of American capitalism. J. Andrew Ross describes these ideas of capitalism and their involvement with American sports in detail in his piece Explaining Exceptionalism: Approaches to the Study of American Sports Business History. Studies have shown that the prowess and importance of the New York Yankees allowed them to get better recruitment. This has happened in the past with other teams pushing social boundaries with the power of capitalism, particularly Jackie