The Culture and Ethnicity of Nineteenth Century Baseball

Evolving in an urban landscape, professional baseball attracted a dedicated fan base among the inhabitants of major cities, including ethnic and racial minorities, for whom the game was a vehicle for assimilation. But to what extent were these groups welcomed within the world of baseball, and what effect did their integration—or, as in the case of African Americans, their ultimate inability to integrate—have on the culture of a pastime that had recently become a national obsession? How did their mutual striving for acceptance affect relations between these minorities? (In deep and long-lasting ways, as it turns out.) This book provides a carefully considered portrait of baseball as both a sporting profession—one with quick-changing rules and roles—and as an institution that reinforced popular ideas about cultural identity, masculinity and American exceptionalism.