"CREATING THE NATIONAL PASTIME": HOW THE BUSINESS CALLED BASEBALL WON AMERICA'S HEART CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., April 9 -- How did a marginal 19th century recreational activity with some unsavory associations develop its special status as "America's national pastime"? At a time when baseball's claim to that status is challenged and when many fans may wish for the game to return to a purer past, a University of Virginia historian and legal scholar shows in a newly published book how at least part of the sport's hold on the American imagination has roots in baseball's early 20th century history as a hard-nosed, and not totally pure-minded, business enterprise. In "Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself, 1903-1953," published this month by Princeton University Press, G. Edward White, professor of law and history and a noted legal historian, describes how key business decisions made by early baseball team-owners in the nation's largest eastern and midwestern cities were calculated to establish and then preserve baseball's wholesome "national pastime" image. Before the first years of the 20th century, the sport had been a minor urban activity associated with drinking and gambling. Such decisions as building ornate downtown ballparks, establishing continuity among teams and the players on team rosters, and even, ironically, opposing night baseball and radio broadcasts of games helped establish baseball's almost mythically idyllic status in the American mind, White maintains. Associating with gamblers was swiftly forbidden in the new era. And with help from friendly sportswriters who winked at players' off-the-field shenanigans, the owners were able to create the idea that in the elaborate new downtown stadiums enclosing "pastoral" playing-fields, "here were just a bunch of humble, decent clean-living guys who play ball," says White. One of the owners' first steps was to build grand steel-and- concrete ballparks downtown to replace the flimsy-looking wooden parks of the 19th century. White suggests that the new ballparks were both part of a new urban- and civic-pride movement during the Progressive Era and symbols of the "rural leisure of bygone times," being open-air park-like spaces in cities. Still other business decisions were often unfair to players' financial interests, yet were supported by the legal system, White points out. One of these was limiting franchise territories so that the same 16 major league teams stayed in the same cities in the eastern half of the country for 50 years, despite changing national demographics. Another key business practice that built fan loyalty but hurt players financially was the now-outlawed "reserve clause" in contracts that kept players from being free agents and gave owners virtual control over salaries. While restricting the economic power of players, these aspects of the game kept a familiar roster of players on each team, built home-town love for teams, and helped make going to baseball games a new household ritual that spanned generations. White also shows how some of the owners' decisions, in retrospect, seem irrational from business point of view. Owners vigorously fought for years against such innovations as night baseball and radio broadcasts in their efforts to preserve baseball's idyllic and pastoral feel. When those two innovations finally came, they not only turned out to be money-makers, they spread the game's appeal even more widely. The pre-World War II team-owners' most collusive decision, and short-sighted, of all was the racist exclusion of black players from organized baseball, White emphasizes. Owners and executives completely barred black players even from the lowest minor leagues, even though a large pool of potential talent for major league baseball existed in the long-established Negro Leagues, and even though player development was the major leagues' most pressing concern. And despite this blatant racial segregation, owners and publicists of baseball continued to promote the image of the sport not only as the great American pastime, but as an ethnic "melting pot" where players and fans from many backgrounds came together. Many have speculated and rhapsodized, sometimes almost mystically, about the reasons for Americans' love affair with baseball. But the fact that the game's "uniquely evocative character as an American sport is tied to its early twentieth century history" as a business enterprise can't be denied, White says. A lifelong fan, and at age 55 a pitcher in the U.Va. law school softball league, White wonders whether baseball will adequately cope with such contemporary problems as strikes, rising ticket prices, and a money-driven climate where players and teams now "seem to move around willy-nilly." But, because of the game's connections to the country's past, though it was a dark past in several ways, the "national pastime" shouldn't be written off too easily, White says. "Americans may forgive baseball its current transgressions and restore it to its privileged place among professional sports, because they find it so compelling a link to history." ### April 8, 1996 For review copies of "Creating the National Pastime" please contact Princeton University Press at (609) 258-1885. For interviews G. Edward White may be reached at (804) 924-3455. For assistance in arranging interviews please contact Bob Brickhouse at U.Va. News Services at (804) 924-7116. Television reporters should contact our TV News Office at (804) 924-7550.