Baseball And American Cultural Values Analysis

Improved Essays
The article I chose to read was Baseball and American Cultural Values, which was written by Ronald Briley. This article talks about how the sport of baseball has related to the American culture for a very long time. Split up into three different sub-sections, Briley explains how teachers can use the sport of baseball as an interesting way to the teach about America. The first section talks about how baseball can be used to teach some important aspects of American history. The second second talks about baseball and its connection with racial issues. The final section talks about how baseball relates to capitalism and community in America. Baseball exemplifies many qualities of Americanization. Like Hugh Fullerton says on page 64 of the article, …show more content…
The article talks about how students would be able to learn much about business just by looking at the decisions the owners of the franchises make. Like how the working class of Brooklyn lost their baseball team to the glitter of hollywood (Briley 63). The article also says students could get an understanding of the community identification of the general population compared to the preferences of the owner. This is shown through teams moving to more profitable areas even though their fan base does not want them too. Students could also learn about cultural and class values through baseball. Robert Harris Walker’s quote on page 66 says,” Putting aside the flamboyance and glitter of other cities, Cincinnatians have long shown their willingness to be seen as a place where hard work and family come first but where the threat of dullness is relieved by music and sport, beer, sausage, and frequently recurring festivals. One thread that has linked these attitudes and values has been the game of baseball and the city’s professional team”. This quote shows how students would be able to understand certain values of a city just by looking studying its baseball team. A teacher could make learning about these values of certain citie more interesting for students by using baseball teams as what to study to figure the values

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The setting of this book follows Dayton Moore on his journey from a kid in New York dreaming about baseball to becoming a successful and winning General Manager and coach. There were many conflicts from society that faced Dayton Moore because no one believed that Kansas City baseball would ever accomplish anything. We was told things…

    • 928 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Yet Malamud’s subtle message is hidden behind the veil of America’s number one pastime, baseball. As stated by Jeffrey Saperstein, “What is ostensibly a story about winnings--hitting one out of the park--becomes a tale of apprenticeship and discipline—the much more difficult task of winning over…

    • 1877 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Baseball is a game played with a bat and a ball between two teams of nine players, each on a large field having four bases that mark the course a runner must take to score. It requires teamwork and communication. Subsequent to watching the short documentary, San Quentin’s Giants, I showed some of my neighbors the short film and asked them what they thought the overall message was. Most of them said that they thought the factual program was about how convicts at San Quentin State Prison got permission to play baseball because they were getting bored with the activities available. They also thought that the feature was about how baseball was allowed at San Quentin State Prison to encourage the convicts to be kind to each other and stay out of trouble.…

    • 736 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    With their support of books, Crepeau and Riess in a general sense changed the course of chronicled expounding on baseball. Though Seymour and Voigt connected insightful standard to the composition of baseball history, Crepeau and Riess brought baseball into the scholastic control of history, survey the diversion not as a discrete examination subject, but rather as a method for exploring essential non-sport issues in American culture. In reality, Crepeau determinedly denied composing a "baseball book." "This is not a background marked by baseball," he pronounced. "It is an endeavor to take a gander at one section of American culture as it saw itself and as it mirrored the bigger society."…

    • 263 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The author used a sports term referring to baseball term to signify his focus on things that happened outside of baseball, while relating everything to baseball, which he did throughout the whole book. For some reason it stands out more during this chapter than the whole book. Chapters five through seven are the body of the essay referred to in the intro to this review. The reason being, they contain the climax of the biography. The author could have and probably should have carried the climax through the eighth chapter to declutter and smooth out what he was trying to say.…

    • 878 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. ”(Robinson). The sports world developed in the 1920’s with the explosion of America’s pastime, Major League Baseball. Baseball was formed in 1850’s in the United States but did not really become widely watched until 1920. The majority of those who watched baseball were middle-upper class Americans.…

    • 591 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In American literature, baseball is often used as a symbol of advancement and equality: the objective of the game is to advance to the next base until the player reaches home, and each player is allowed the same amount of strikes. Baseball sounds a lot like the American Dream, which promises the achievement of one’s maximum capability in exchange for hard work and pursuing one’s dreams (Adams). Baseball gives it’s players an equal chance at winning, and the American Dream supposedly does the same thing; in Fences, Wilson has Troy use a baseball related metaphor to articulate that not everyone can reach the American Dream. Troy says that he was born with two strikes (Wilson 960). These strikes against him are because of his race; he has a limited opportunity to advance due to the fact that society is unaccepting of his skin color.…

    • 1377 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    David Letzler, author of “Walking Around the Fences: Troy Maxson and the Ideology of “Going Down Swinging”” argues that many critics celebrate Troy Maxson’s agitated feelings towards the Major League Baseball community not combing both Caucasian and African-American players, when actually he states that we should be disagreeing with Troy’s feelings. Letzler admits he sees why there are so many that agree with Troy, because he claims that his points can be overlooked from time to time again. Letzler states that the readers as a whole need to look at the entire view on what Troy is misdirected from baseball by looking over thirty years of baseball, and why was one of the first most famous African American baseball player, Jackie Robinson was recruited.…

    • 463 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Giannetti defines ideology as, “a body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture” (448). A film’s purpose is often reflected through the ideology it possesses and in this case, the ideology expresses the treatment of minorities in baseball culture. A League of their Own, The Perfect Game, and 42 all contain an explicit sense of ideology with a thematic orientation towards teaching people about treatment of minorities in baseball culture. A League of their Own is a film about the solution to keep baseball alive during WWII and that is to start a women’s baseball league. The Perfect Game is about a group of young boys from Monterrey, Mexico who aspire to be on a baseball team and when given…

    • 935 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The 1920’s were such a booming age of sports that the title “The Golden Age of Sports” was given to it. Baseball in the 1920’s launched a foundation to current baseball, though media popularity and leagues of the roaring twenties and today differ due to more advanced technology and social change, the rules and foundation of baseball have essentially remained the same due to tradition. First, baseball captured attention to America throughout the roaring twenties. “Three strikes,…

    • 1076 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The representation of the University of Tennessee Baseball’s team has been consistent throughout the University’s history. When the Vols baseball team has a successful season the university does not tend to advertise and show them off, but when football or basketball has a successful season it is a completely different story. However, the baseball team likes to represent themselves differently. For example, as a fan walks by the outside of the stadium there are pictures of players that have success in the Major Leagues which represents a theme of “we create great ball players.”…

    • 1498 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Multiple professional baseball players are heroes and role models to fans all around the world. The great atmosphere, high level on competition, and personal investment to the game in what separates professional and college…

    • 1269 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Baseball History Essay

    • 1002 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Baseball has to be one of America’s best pastimes. There are only a hand full of sports that have originated in America, and with that said, baseball has to be one of the most beloved sports we have in today’s time. Baseball has affected young men, men of color, even women and along the way started some club and team rivals. There has been such a love for the sport since it came about. This sport really gives room for competition, family oriented events, and everything in between.…

    • 1002 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Some people’s life revolve around the beautiful American pastime called baseball. People play baseball, coach baseball, watch baseball, and sometimes they even make references to baseball through metaphors. Back in the 1950’s, racial tensions between blacks and whites were high. Baseball legend, Jackie Robison, had recently become the first African American to break the color barrier in the Major Leagues, yet many people still failed to see black athletes as equals to white athletes, regardless if they were more talented. In the play.…

    • 1435 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    American Sports Culture

    • 1478 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Sport has a prominent place in contemporary American society. Mainstream American sport such as Baseball, Basketball, and Football are some of the most widely viewed events. In addition, sport is a highly emotional spectacle, which both unites and divides individuals. On the one hand, sport and physical culture are partially constructed by and used to construct the political and economic backdrop of America. The neoliberal society is reproduced through sport and physical culture.…

    • 1478 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays