Conner Bone HIST 362 April 14th, 2024.
Baseball’s Failure as a Meritocratic Institution Many within baseball hold the steadfast belief that the sport as a whole, across its various organizations and systems, has always been a meritocracy. Supposedly, it does not matter who you are or where you came from. As long as you have the skills and athleticism, you can make it big in baseball. And to that end, anyone can be successful in baseball if they work hard enough and persevere. In other words, baseball is reflective of the “American Dream.” However, this simply is not the case, especially in the sports period post-WWII through the 1970s. Baseball was neither meritocratic nor inclusive at this time, and this is clearly visible through its rampant …show more content…
For most of its existence, baseball has been continually dominated by men. Early on in the sports history, it was largely played and organized by men largely through exclusively male clubs. In order to maintain their almost exclusively male environment, they developed and perpetuated social stigmas against women playing baseball. Through personal and mass communication, they bullied and influenced women ball players to push them away from the sport, or at least from the professional side of it. Throughout the early 20th century and into the current one, there have been plenty of female baseball players that have had the skills and athleticism to make it big in baseball if it was truly a meritocratic institution. Players like Jackie Mitchell and Alta Weiss certainly had the pitching skills to make it big. Jackie Mitchell famously even struck out two of the greatest baseball players of all time, Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, in an exhibition match. But these women and others like them were socially pushed out of these male-dominated teams and leagues, with inflammatory articles and poor treatment from other players. This forced them to play in more informal traveling and barnstorming teams
Baseball’s Failure as a Meritocratic Institution Many within baseball hold the steadfast belief that the sport as a whole, across its various organizations and systems, has always been a meritocracy. Supposedly, it does not matter who you are or where you came from. As long as you have the skills and athleticism, you can make it big in baseball. And to that end, anyone can be successful in baseball if they work hard enough and persevere. In other words, baseball is reflective of the “American Dream.” However, this simply is not the case, especially in the sports period post-WWII through the 1970s. Baseball was neither meritocratic nor inclusive at this time, and this is clearly visible through its rampant …show more content…
For most of its existence, baseball has been continually dominated by men. Early on in the sports history, it was largely played and organized by men largely through exclusively male clubs. In order to maintain their almost exclusively male environment, they developed and perpetuated social stigmas against women playing baseball. Through personal and mass communication, they bullied and influenced women ball players to push them away from the sport, or at least from the professional side of it. Throughout the early 20th century and into the current one, there have been plenty of female baseball players that have had the skills and athleticism to make it big in baseball if it was truly a meritocratic institution. Players like Jackie Mitchell and Alta Weiss certainly had the pitching skills to make it big. Jackie Mitchell famously even struck out two of the greatest baseball players of all time, Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, in an exhibition match. But these women and others like them were socially pushed out of these male-dominated teams and leagues, with inflammatory articles and poor treatment from other players. This forced them to play in more informal traveling and barnstorming teams