Transcript Baseball America’s Game? - Lapeer Community Schools

American Sports:
The Early Years
1600’s-1880’s Colonial
America and early United
States culture was mixed in its
view of sports.
*Puritan’s in northern colonies
frowned upon sports.
*Games and sports were part of
excessive worldly joys. Human
nature was untrustworthy and too
much leisure was dangerous. “Idle
hands are the devil’s workshop”.
English heritage of games endured
with some. A Leisure ethic vs.
Work ethic endured in many
colonies.
Eventually in the South a more
Aristocratic form of life emerged
with slaves and servants doing the
work and the (Gentry) ruling class
doing the playing , with high
wagers to show off their wealth.
Horse racing, cockfighting,
boating, wrestling, fencing and
hunting were popular amusements.
The Puritan view was not the only
view in the North and as a gentry
class emerged in big cities like
Boston and Philadelphia, so did
games. (Urbanization) Rural areas
had forms of simple ball or folk
games.
Games were outlawed during the
revolution as a waste of precious
time.
John Cox Stevens started to
develop commercialization of
sports. In 1835 he offered $1000 to
the first man to run ten miles in
under an hour 30,000 showed up to
watch this display of
Pedestrianism. Average
income=$200 a year. Many
athletes sought the money. Crowds
started to watch, eventually 50,000
people watched athletes compete
for $4000. Also, founded the New
York Yacht Club in 1844.
America’s cup race 1851 Stevens
boat beat British contenders.
QOD 11/28
Is baseball
America’s game?
Who invented
Baseball?
British folk games of Rounders, Cricket,
Stoolball, Tip-cat, Trap-ball, and Cat and
Dog
The Abner Doubleday myth
• Veteran of Civil War, Mexican
War and the Indian wars
The myth was created by Al Spalding, to end the
years of controversy on the creation of the sport.
Claimed Doubleday invented the game in rural
Cooperstown, NY
The Truth?
• The game probably was developed with
influence from the English folk games.
• Alexander Cartwright gets the credit for
being the first person to formally introduce
the game of baseball
Knickerbocker Nine
• Club of elitist that wanted to practice
playing the game called the national
pastime. 1845 Beat in their first
competition to the New York Nine (23-1)
Knickerbocker Rules
• Used as a guide for baseball in the New York area.
• Become the basis for the rules of the modern game.
• Revised in 1857 by the National Association of Base Ball
Players (NABBP)
• By 1862 The NABBP was offering games in enclosed
stadiums for an admission price
• Knickerbocker Baseball Rules
The Civil War’s influence
• The movements of soldiers and exchanges
of prisoners helped spread the game.
• 1865 Teams emerged as far west as Kansas
and as far south as Tennessee
• 1869 the first openly professional team
forms: The Cincinnati Red Stockings
•
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/21509.html
African Americans in Baseball
• Few AA’s played baseball in the early
years.
• The first major league AA baseball player is
Moses Fleetwood Walker who played for
the Toledo Blue Stockings which joined the
Major league American Association in 1884
African Americans in Baseball
Cont.
• Shortly after Walker’s debut a
“Gentlemen’s Agreement”/ Color Line was
made that did not allow blacks in the major
leagues until Jackie Robinson in 1947.
• Players such as Cap Anson refused to take
the field if a black player was on it.
Today’s leagues form
• The National Association fields 9 teams in 1871
and grows to 13 in 1875.
• Gambling, liquor sales, and other corruption
drives away crowds.
• 1875 National League forms with businessmen
owning the teams instead of the players.
• 1882 American Association competes with lower
ticket prices.
• An agreement is made that makes the major
league owners gain control of player contracts.
Today’s leagues form
• Players revolted and tried to start their own league
(The Players League) in both 1884 and 1890 both
failed by going bankrupt.
• The American League formed in 1901 and raided
many of the best National League players.
• The National League reaction forced the leagues
to select a 3 man panel to run the leagues as they
coexisted peacefully.
Progress and controversy
• Up to this point is referred to as the dead-ball era.
• Strategy, bunting, base/place hitting, and base
running was the way to generate offense.
• The ball was used for a long time maybe even 100
pitches before being replaced.
• 1914 the Federal League sued claiming the major
leagues were a monopoly. The supreme court
responded by saying that baseball was exempt
from anti-monopoly legislation.
The stage is set for what is to
come!!!!!!!!!
Is this America’s game?
Boxing: Is it too violent?
Your attention is “requested”!
How did such a violent sport
start?
Is it no longer
violent enough?
Some questions to consider:
Answer the following boxing
questions in your groups
• Why does someone want to watch/do this?
• What can we learn about the society that
supports it?
The beginnings
• Ancient Olympic games
Fight to the death!
• Rome- banned the practice
• England-Prize fighting
• Early America outlawed
Prize fighting
Prizefighting- illegal, yet it happened
Rise of prizefighting was integral
part of American social and
economic development
Working class activity - workingclass sensibility
For the upper and middle classes
boxing symbolized urban
depravity
Blood and Wages
Industrialization
Working class as “wage slaves”
of modern capitalism
Ideal of working-class
prizefighters vs ideal of the
“model” worker
Partially as a reaction to the
wage system, workers
revitalized blood sports
Another Round?
Saloons - the heart of working-class life
- prizefights
Working-class culture deprived men of
freedom, self-governance, and thus
“masculinity”
Day-labor undermined masculinity by
making it nearly impossible for a man
to prove his manhood by being a
good breadwinner
A Man Among Men
Boxing as a rejection of the “cult
of domesticity”
Maleness and masculinity
confirmed not in the company
of women but in the company
of other men
Boxing as a means of bestowing
male honor
Sweet
Science?
Boxing shaped violence into art, gave it
order and meaning
The pit rendered mayhem rule-bound
instead of anarchic, voluntary rather
than random
A properly carried out fight was a
performance, a pageant, a ritual, that
momentarily imposed meaning on the
savage irrationalities of life
The ring offered a form of cultural
opposition or resistance
John L. Sullivan (1881-1892)
• Irish
• Boston Strong Boy
“Yankee”
• Challenged anyone to
fight him for $500
• Symbol of selfdetermination
• Last bare-knuckle
champion/1st gloved
champion
James J. Corbett
(1892-1897)
• “Gentleman Jim”
• Father of Modern
Boxing
• Knocked out Sullivan
in 21 rounds in 1892
• Boxing instructor in
the manly art of selfdefense
James J Jeffries (1899-1905)
“Boilermaker”
6’ 3” 225 (100 Yards in
about 10 seconds)
The Champions of the time
would not fight black
challengers but they
claimed white supremacy.
When Jeffries retired in
1905 as heavyweight
champ there was a lack of
good fighters to fill the
gap.
Boxing: Has it passed it’s prime?
• The biggest gains in
boxing popularity have
been in women’s
participation!
• Lack of bad guy we love
to hate or hate to love
• Lack of identification with
a “barbaric” sport
• Other ways to fill the
thirst for blood
• Decline of industrial
America
• Pay-Per-View
Football
• Nov. 6, 1869
Rutgers beat
Princeton 6-4 in the
“first” football
game. (Rugby
style)
• 25 men on each
side
• Columbia joined
the game in 1870
Walter Camp “Father of
American Football”
• Played at Yale from 1876-1880 and
coached them from 1888-1891 and then
Stanford from 1892-1895 (81-5-3 record)
• Served on every rule committee in
collegiate football from 1878-1925.
• Responsible for changing the game from a
rugby (kicking game) to modern football.
Camp cont.
• Contributed the
following rule
changes: snap-back
from center, safety,
the system of
downs, and the
points system
(touchdowns vs.
kicking , and the 7
man offensive line
formation. =
Michigan Football
• 1879 first season
• 1887 taught Notre
Dame the game
• “Hail to the
Victors” 1898 after
last minute victory
over the University
of Chicago
• Champions of the
West?
NCAA is Born
• Football was a
bloody sport in its
beginning and
many people called
for it to be
outlawed.
• TR called together
the major colleges
to discuss the
matter in 1905 out
of this meeting the
NCAA is born