How Did Baseball Become an American Pastime?

Liam Heffernan: 00:00:18

This week, we take a closer look at one of America's oldest national sports.

billion in the US alone in: 2024

Welcome to America, a history podcast.

I'm Niamh Heffernan, and every week we answer a different question to understand the people, the places, and the events that make the USA what it is today. To discuss this, I'm joined by a professor of us studies at Fitchburg State. His books include we the the 500 year battle over who is american.

And he's just released his own podcast series called the Celestials last Game, which is a super interesting series, and we'll link to it in the show notes. And we're going to talk about it a bit on this episode as well. I'm really delighted to be joined by Ben Railton. Hello, Ben.

Ben Railton: 00:01:37

Hey, Liam. Thank you so much for having me.

I'm really glad to be talking with you on your I phenomenal podcast and about these really interesting sports histories in America.

Liam Heffernan: 00:01:46

Thank you very much. And, yeah, you know, we were just saying before we clicked record that we, we haven't done sport enough on this show, so I'm.

When I saw that you were releasing your whole podcast series about baseball, I thought, yes, like, we got to get Ben on the show to talk about this. And, yeah, I think it's a super interesting topic because, you know, America and sport is just so interlinked. Right.

It feels like you can't be american without being a sports fan, right?

Ben Railton: 00:02:11

Yeah, I think so. And I think even more just the way in which it sort of represents the worst and the best of our history and our communities, our passions, our flaws.

I do think this is probably true all over the world in its own ways. But I know as an american studies guy, it opens up so much.

It opens up so much about who we are, who we've been and, yes, what we care about in the present as well.

So I do think it's a great lens, it's a great focus of its own, but it's a really great lens for all of us who are doing american studies to think about those kinds of questions, for sure.

Liam Heffernan: 00:02:45

Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, for the benefit of, I'm going to say, our international listeners outside the US, but also really for myself as well, could you just give us a bit of a 101 on what basketball is. Sorry, what baseball is. I'm getting my sports mixed up now. And the rules.

Ben Railton: 00:03:02

Yeah, of course.

And one thing I'll say is that I think it's great to be talking about this on a podcast hosted by an english american studier, because baseball really does overlap. There's this huge debate with this sport about kind of how it started and where it started and what its origins were.

And baseball historians continue to debate this up to the present day.

And there's a whole cadre of those historians who are very insistent that it really started with english sports, with rounders in particular, but also cricket and some other more historical english sports.

And then it sort of gradually made its way to the english colonies in the 17 hundreds, and then evolved in the 18 hundreds into this american version that came to be known as baseball.

And there is a lot in common for people who know cricket, in particular, the idea of a batter at the plate who's trying to hit a pitched ball out into a field and then run around bases and score runs by doing that.

's a Princeton student in the: 1760

Um, it's like: 1767

se town sports in the sort of: 1790

But this idea of a batted ball and then running around bases, and thus this phrase baseball, that emerges.

So there's a real debate about what it is, and it definitely has british origins, but it also pretty quickly becomes this really unique american focus that I know we'll talk about. And I really like that contested aspect of it, because a lot of baseball is how we remember it and the stories we tell.

It's a sport that's kind of all about story and history. And so I think it makes sense that there are these multiple stories for what it is and where it comes from.

Liam Heffernan: 00:05:15

It's really interesting, actually, because I kind of. I get the parallels to cricket. But in the UK, particularly at school, we all play a game called rounders, which is. It's basically baseball.

And it's just.

It's weird that we've kind of got cricket, which has inspired a sport like baseball, and then it's kind of re migrated back over to the UK to be what we know as rounders in school, which is essentially baseball. So it's kind of done full circle there. But when did baseball actually really become, like, a major sport in the US?

Ben Railton: 00:05:49

And this is something that I've learned a lot more about for this project, because there are, again, this is a sport that's very much about sort of like the mythologies of it. And at least for a long time, the mythologies around baseball and its evolution, its creation, its popularity, were really inaccurate, it turned out.

So, for example, for a long time, there was this guy, Abder Doubleday, who was called the inventor of baseball, so much so that the Baseball hall of Fame, which is located in Cooperstown, New York, was located there, at least apart, because he was associated with Cooperstown. Doubleday had lived there and been connected to that.

s during the Civil War in the: 1860

really develops first in the: 1830

ts game that's created in the: 1840

And these two have slightly different rules, slightly different ways that they get played, and they even are seen as sort of competitors within the evolving early world of baseball.

And all of that is partly what makes it so popular, is that it's very local, it's very connected to particular communities and the people who begin to play it and kind of create it and codify it in those different communities. But then that helps it become this unfolding national story.

And then the civil war, eventually, is the time when really, you get people from Massachusetts playing against people from New York and Pennsylvania and so on. And even on the confederate side as well, it starts to develop. So it builds on that early and more local popularity.

And then in the civil war, becomes more something that crosses these different boundaries a little bit.

Liam Heffernan: 00:07:55

There's definitely questions around, I think, the time that baseball starts to come to prominence and maybe some of the reasons that it has, the audience that it, that it has, and I'll come back to that later, but I'm keen to know what your thoughts are on, you know, baseball's growth, or maybe lack thereof, internationally. You know, it's because it's really remained a very us centric sport, perhaps in Asia.

You know, I think maybe there's pockets of baseball, but why is it that you think maybe it hasn't seen the sort of growth globally that the likes of american football has?

Ben Railton: 00:08:25

And I do have to just acknowledge and reiterate what you said about Asia. I think it is, it is a real parallel there.

And obviously, today we're talking a little bit about the story of these chinese american players, the celestials that I'm focused on. And I think that's not coincidental. There does seem to be a way that it crosses into Southeast Asia in particular in really interesting ways.

And just last night, the night before, we're recording this, probably the greatest, not only the greatest asian american baseball player, but maybe the greatest baseball player of all time. Shohei Ohtani just sort of did something no one's ever done before. He became a 50 50 player, 50 steals and 50 homers.

So it is important to say that there's a really strong asian and asian american contingent to it. But your larger point is well taken about its american sort of grounding compared to a lot of other sports that have become so global.

And to me, that really does come back to the way in which it is a sport that is so much about the stories, the histories, the, the statistics, the sort of like the long arc, if you're watching any individual game, which, as I'm sure listeners have a sense of, is much slower and much more kind of the pace and the rhythm of it is just not the speed of most of the major sports. It happens in a very slow, a very measured way, a very kind of pastoral way.

And what that allows for is the stories and the histories and the statistics and the, and the knowledge that if you have all of that kind of context, you can really fill out a baseball game with all of those contexts.

But if you don't, I think it's a very slow and often painful thing to try to watch compared to most of the other sports that I know on the international level, the major sport level, which are so fast moving in their own ways. So I do think it's a sport that is as much about what is brought to the game.

Again, the histories, the stories of individual players, of teams, of the history of the sport, of the places where it's being played. And if you bring all those things to it, it becomes this really rich space for kind of story and memory.

And if you don't, it's a very methodical, slow paced thing to be witnessing. So I do think that has kept it a little more grounded in the places that have a long history with it and places that don't.

It's harder, maybe, for it to evolve into those places.

Liam Heffernan: 00:10:42

That's a really interesting take, and I think from a kind of a Brits perspective, I kind of look at all american sports, really like baseball and american football and basketball particularly, and it just feels like they're designed almost as much as a tv show as they are a competitive sport, because, you know, the amount of commercial breaks, the amount that, you know, the whole game seem to be structured around creating those opportunities for these kind of commercial tie ins. And I think it's so disjointed from what we expect from a sports game, certainly in the UK.

Ben Railton: 00:11:19

Yeah, I think that's fair. I would say, for baseball in particular, because it did start so early.

My understanding is that was less about things like, you know, commercials or ads, although, of course, that now became a big. Has become a part of it. And I would say that was more, again, the rhythm of, you know, the local teams changing size. Right.

I think one of the things that makes baseball this kind of pastoral thing is half of the time you're out in the field. Right?

Half of the time you're out in these green spaces, and then half of the time, you are the attackers, half of the time, you are the ones who are trying to achieve the victory, achieve the runs, compared to other sports, where there's the more constant back and forth, which is true of any of the other ones that I can think of.

York game that evolved in the: 1840

So I think for baseball, the breaks had to do with sort of like those times when you get to move out into that field, into that beautiful space, and then the times when you're asked to be more the competitors. And I think that too, is part of the rhythm of baseball in a different way from a lot of the other sports.

Liam Heffernan: 00:12:36

That kind of brings us on nicely to your podcast. And, I mean, it feels more like when listening to it, that it's a whole thesis.

It's so well researched and genuinely really fascinating, and you sort of focus on a team called the celestials. So tell us more about that and why the celestials are so important.

Ben Railton: 00:13:01

Absolutely.

And I'll transition first from all the good conversation we've just been having, because one of the reasons I think that it's an important story is it does reveal things about the early history of baseball that changed, unfortunately, unfortunately, and kind of tragically even changed into the 20th century, but were much more true in the 19th century.

So one of the reasons the celestials are important, this is a semi pro team formed by a group of chinese american young men who are students at a Hartford, Connecticut institution called the chinese educational mission, and circle back to that in a second.

fessional, and it does in the: 1880

It's very local and communal and semi pro still.

players on these teams of the: 1870

native american player in the: 1890

In fact, it's one of the main ways that teams that are part of the negro leagues, the african american leagues in the 20th century, get to play against competitors.

But as the major leagues develop more and more fully, they really become very deeply segregated and very entrenched in white professional baseball and sports. And that's how we often see the early history of baseball. But that's really a second stage.

And the first stage, the: 1870

And so the other thing that makes the celestials so fascinating is that specific starting point that this is this group of 120 teenagers, young chinese individuals, men who come to the United States as part of this school, but then over about a six, seven year period, become really part of their own local communities. They're hosted by families in New England.

They go to high school in New England, they start playing sports in New England, at the high school, and then the collegiate level. And so they start to become really part of these communities in and around places like Hartford and Massachusetts and New England.

And part of that ends up being that they decide to form their own semi pro baseball team, to take part in that communal tradition, those local traditions, and to sort of build on their athletic successes. The group of about ten of the 120 chinese educational mission students are particularly talented, successful athletes.

They realize and begin to learn, and so they decide to build on that by forming one of these semi pro teams and again, kind of barnstorming around New England, playing other semi pro teams. And so I just think it really reminds us of where baseball was in that period.

history, of the diversity of: 1870

They form in: 1878

Liam Heffernan: 00:16:58

Yeah.

And one of the things I sort of learned from the early part of your podcast is that kind of despite this sort of quite integrated and diverse community that was building within sort of local baseball, the celestials were reflective of a much bigger problem. And it almost felt like they were victims of these much broader social issues. That was, I mean, there's no point sort of beating around the bush.

It was racism against the Chinese, wasn't it?

Ben Railton: 00:17:32

It was. And it was.

gnize her so fully with us in: 2024

And it's true that the celestials and the chinese educational mission students were folks who came to the US and had been in the US for half a dozen years or so when they start to form this team. So this is a relatively recent community of arrivals to the United States.

And part of these anti chinese narratives that are developing so potently and so nationally in this period are xenophobic, are focused on arrivals to the US. But the follow up point that is perhaps even more important is that the chinese american community by this time is not at all new.

Chinese Americans on the: 1880

mmunities and families by the: 1870

had been in the US since the: 1840

So this anti chinese movement that develops in this era and becomes so dominant, leading to the first national immigration law, the Chinese Exclusion act, and so fully affecting the celestials as well.

It is xenophobic, and it is, to circle back to the word you used even more than that, it is racist and white supremacist, in that it is trying to define this community as entirely outside of the US, when instead they are in multiple ways very much connected to and part of the US, including its sports histories, and in every other way that we would define our identity.

Liam Heffernan: 00:19:44

I think even more, perhaps depressingly, is that the sort of the xenophobia against the Chinese wasn't even the biggest issue that America had with discrimination in the 18 hundreds, of course, slavery, racism being the big one.

And I just wonder if, you know, all of these things and the fact that baseball emerged during this time when America was dealing with an awful lot of issues within its own sort of self identification. Is that how baseball kind of seemed to become quite a white sport? And I guess the predecessor there in that question is, is baseball white sport?

Ben Railton: 00:20:18

I mean, yes and no. It is. One of the things, one of the phrases I use most consistently in my work is the worst and best of us.

And I think so many of our moments and our stories kind of encapsulate both of those sides. The worst and best of America. And I would put a white supremacy very firmly as a huge part of the worst.

And I would put the possibility of this truly diverse, inclusive place as very much part of the best. And I really do think baseball reflects both of those, even into the 20th century, when the major leagues are so segregated.

You also have the negro leagues, for example, which are just unbelievably inspiring, interesting figures and histories and stories that we still need to so much better remember. So that's an example, certainly. But in the 19th century as well. Yeah, I would say both.

I would say you have examples of these, of these, these athletes and these teams that reflect the true diversity of America in this era, but they themselves then also face racism and prejudice and, you know, taunting and discrimination and.

And various effects of those white supremacist views and forces that do, at times, in very definite ways, limit their own careers or their own opportunities, and then more broadly reflect the way in which the sport again encapsulates that battle.

And part of why the last game for the Celestials, which I'm in this podcast am building to, is so important, I think, is that it can be read as either of those things. And there's no definite way to know.

s are challenged to a game in: 1881

And genuinely, that challenge could come from a place of white supremacy, a place of a, you know, a desire to sort of achieve one more victory over Chinese Americans, or it could come from a place of solidarity and of sportsmanship and of the possibility of sports offering someplace that doesn't have to be so divisive and destructive. We can't know for sure. We don't know what motivated that Oakland team. As far as I know, there's not any historical record of that.

We have to just think about these different possibilities. But, yeah, baseball does evolve more and more to have this fully white centered and white supremacist side.

But what that is, is like it always is a myth. Right?

It's an illusion of that papers over that seeks to ignore and elide and forget the incredible diverse stories and figures and histories that are underneath and alongside and always present. So I do think baseball is both. I think it really develops in both ways. It becomes the worst and best of us in the early 20th century.

And obviously, you could say that about sports histories more broadly, but I think baseball really encapsulates that.

Liam Heffernan: 00:23:16

Yeah.

And I wonder if it's sort of reflective of this kind of potential moral conflict in Americans, particularly at that time and leading into the early 20th century, where, you know, the Caucasians wanted to be really, you know, supportive and diverse and progressive. And, you know, and baseball clearly was quite indicative of that. It was quite a diverse landscape, as you've described.

But once, you know, in this instance, the Chinese Americans or the African Americans start to actually be good at something and. And that success threatens the status of the white man, suddenly it becomes an issue. Right.

Ben Railton: 00:23:54

Yeah.

And just in general, I think I've made the case in a lot of different settings over the years that the turn of the 20th century into the first couple decades are a real retrenchment period of sort of deepening white supremacy. And.

argue happens around sort of: 1900

Right.

It does happen, and it's tragic and frustrating and horrific, and we have to remember it, but it happens as a set of actions and responses, as you're nicely putting it, and they themselves reflect that.

There are also these alternatives, these other histories, these other stories, which certainly suffer in many different ways at the hands of those worst forces, but also continue to be present, continue to be part of the american story, despite the best efforts of those kind of discriminatory forces as well. So it is, it's an arc, and it's an arc that certainly deepens the worst into the 20th century. And baseball reflects that. Sports reflects that.

But even in those periods, again, we can see these other sides, and certainly to circle back for a second to the celestials, I'll talk toward the very end of the podcast about how for many of the players and for many of the students, even though they are technically forced to leave the US, even though the chinese exclusion era is deepening, in many cases they don't. In many other cases, they return. Families return. Second generations return.

The community keeps growing despite these laws that are trying to destroy it so fully, so the diverse America finds a way. It continues to find a way. And.

And I think, again, baseball histories reflect that, particularly if we make sure we don't only focus on the more white centered version of it, which has often been what has been most fully remembered. But it's not the whole story either.

Liam Heffernan: 00:26:00

Yeah. And it's actually fascinating to hear that, because I do think of baseball as quite a white dominated sport.

So to hear that its roots and its origins are actually incredibly local. And because of that, very diverse and far more representative of the diversity in America at that time than I think I expected.

It's amazing, really, to sort of see how society and little pockets of society can be so affected by these big, broader social, you know, actions like the Chinese Exclusion act, where, you know, it felt very much like the celestials were quite welcomed and supported within those circles, but they were forced out for reasons that probably, you know, their communities weren't particularly in agreement with.

Ben Railton: 00:26:47

I think that's absolutely right.

in Hartford for a time in the: 1880

And so he's this americana figure who was an advocate for the educational mission, for the students, for not closing it, for their ability to stay in the US. And then more broadly than that, thinking again about the sort of push and pull of these factors.

One of the other figures who plays a big role in my podcast is the guy who became the kind of face of the anti chinese movement across the nation, who's this irish american immigrant named Dennis Kearney, who was also in San Francisco, the place where the celestials end up playing their final game. And even just his own story, which I won't spoil at great length here, but he's an immigrant himself.

helping stop that massacre in: 1877

And then he becomes a leading voice and figure in this movement to exclude Chinese Americans.

So I think, again, caught up in these stories are the worst and best are the different sides of us and the local and the national and the inclusive and the exclusionary. And this one story really opens up those layers in. In really powerful ways.

Liam Heffernan: 00:28:20

And so when we then think about baseball more broadly and how it's sort of developed in the years since, and obviously, you know, it's kind of fallen seconds to american football, but it's still very much kind of held up as maybe a more historic american pastime. And it's. And I just wondered, what is it about baseball that's still so american to people?

Ben Railton: 00:28:46

Well, in this moment, again, we're recording this not too long after the passing of James Earl Jones, the amazing actor and activist James Earl Jones.

And in the movie Field of Dreams, which remains one of the best baseball movies, and that's a very competitive list, there are a lot of great baseball movies and stories in the movie field of dreams, Jones's character, who's this author who is both a critic of America and a critic of its myths, but also someone who ultimately kind of believes in them in a more inclusive way, I think he gives this really powerful speech about two thirds of the way into the movie about baseball, and it's one of his most famous film speeches. And he makes the case for it as this thing that has existed with us, that has grown with us.

And so, again, that has in it the history and the memory and the communities and the stories.

say, the Black Sox scandal of: 1919

And in that movie, it still, unfortunately, is a frustratingly white one. Right. I really wish some of the players who came back had been, for example, negro leagues players.

I think that would have made a lot of sense for the way that movie works. They're not, and that's a telling choice, both from the original novel and from the film.

But if you broaden that speech of James Earl Jones's and really think about the stuff we've been talking about, yes, baseball is this, this kind of american legacy, and all of our sports have histories, and they're really interesting ones worth thinking about.

his one that goes back to the: 1830

But it's also just not as much a 21st century story as the other sports that they're passionate about. And so it's a question of whether those things might endure, I would say.

But I do think they're worth enduring, whether we love the sport as a game or its rules or its play, because of that idea of the legacy and the legacies that it opens up of the worst and best of the local and national, of the mythic and the, and they're really grounded.

I do think, of all of our sports, it's the one that has that tale, that has that legacy, and I think that allows us to engage with it and America in really different ways than other of our major sports.

Liam Heffernan: 00:31:47

I do wonder that, you know, because you mentioned field of dreams, and I'll try and put a link to that speech in the show notes as well so people can listen to that.

But it almost feels like baseball has more of an inclusivity problem today than it had sort of 200 years ago, which is not something you can say about a lot of things in America, right?

Ben Railton: 00:32:08

Hopefully not, although the battle continues, as we see every day in so many ways here, but the battle for inclusion and against exclusion.

But yeah, Noah, certainly that's true when it comes, for example, to african american players who have almost entirely left the world, at least, of professional baseball over the last couple decades. There is a sizable asian contingent in professional baseball and certainly a sizable contingent from Latin America and the Caribbean.

So I think the international sport has come to the US in some ways, for sure.

But african american players, as an example of, again, this foundational legacy of baseball absolutely seem to no longer feel that there's as much of a place in the sport or that the sport offers those communities the opportunities or the meanings that it might. And I think that is part of the legacy, certainly of the whiteness of the sport in much of the 20th century.

But it also is definitely a reflection of the ways in which the sport can feel, again, kind of maybe mythic and elitist in terms of what stories it remembers and what stories it tells. And I don't have skin in the game of which sport is ultimately the most popular. I think they're all meaningful.

But I do hope we cannot forget these other sides of it, because then we can at least remember the histories that are inclusive and the figures and the teams that are inclusive, which are part of the story of baseball and the story of America, whatever it means in the 21st century.

Liam Heffernan: 00:33:41

Absolutely. And, you know, I think your podcast really goes a long way to kind of helping people to understand that history a lot more.

So, yeah, I can't implore listeners of this show enough to go check that out because it really is a great listen. But just to finish, I'm going to recount my own experience of baseball here, which is incredibly limited, so it won't take long.

And it was when I was staying with a couple of friends in Charleston, South Carolina, and they took me to a minor league baseball game, and I believe they were called the Charleston Sea Dogs. And, you know, having these kind of names for teams is just, it's not something we do much in the UK here.

We just call, you know, it's Manchester United. You know, it's. It's just Chelsea. You name teams after where they're from. Americans get a lot more creative with their sports team names.

So I was curious to know, if you could create a baseball team, or any team for that matter, what would you call them?

Ben Railton: 00:34:33

It's a great question.

And to give a little inside baseball, which is a pun that I'm making on purpose, you had asked me or framed that question prior to our recording, but I purposely didn't think about it because I wanted to try to be fresh with it.

I will say first, even the name the celestials is a really interesting one for that reason, because to their competitors, apparently in the semi pro leagues, they were called the Orientals. But the celestials was the name that they chose for themselves and the name that they wanted for themselves.

And that's why I use it throughout the podcast, for example, it's also just more beautiful and evocative and not nearly as kind of potentially prejudicial as the Orientals. So the names are also, I think, always at least a little bit contested or a little bit fraud.

And we've seen that in every sport, but certainly in baseball. Cleveland Indians are a really good example of a team that changed their name recently for very good reason, and changed their mascot as well.

I think if I was going to go with one, it's a little bit cringe, as my sons might put it, because of its on the noseness. But as I get into this podcast more and more, I'm thinking a lot about the idea of home. Home is the key thing in baseball, right?

You're always trying to get home. That's how you win the game, is you get home more than the other team. And so you're also trying to stop the other team from getting home.

And it's really this contested space. And for the Celestials, home was a hugely important concept, and it meant multiple things.

It certainly still meant the china in which they were born, but increasingly, it meant New England, it meant Hartford, it meant the United States. And so ultimately, what happened to them was at least a little bit that home was stolen from them. And so I think I would go with the homers.

I think you can't get more baseball and in some ways more like the worst and the best than these questions of home. So wherever they might be from. I live in a town called Needham in Massachusetts, so maybe the Needham homers, that would be my local baseball team.

Liam Heffernan: 00:36:31

That sounds nice. I like that. Right. Ben, thank you so much for talking to me on this podcast.

And, you know, I feel like there's so many other issues that we can explore further from this.

Not to mention you just talked about team names, and I think sort of this cultural appropriation, which is so evident in sports, team names is one thing. So, yeah, that's another episode for sure. But we're going to wrap this up for now. Thank you for joining me.

And I'm going to put links to everything we've discussed in the show notes, including to your podcast, Ben. But if anyone wants to connect with you directly, where can they do that?

Ben Railton: 00:37:08

Yeah, please. I really would love folks to keep the conversation going after this great conversation.

My blog is one place that's kind of like a clearinghouse for a lot of other links as well. It's called Americanstudier, and it's just Americanstudier dot blogspot.com.

and I have links there also to things like my columns and my books and the podcast now and just different parts of the work that I do. So that certainly is one place. I also have a link tree which highlights some of those links and which is also under american studio.

I think it's american study or Lake is the link for that. So I try to get this public scholarship out in a lot of different ways, and those are a couple of the places you can find links to a lot of it.

Liam Heffernan: 00:37:49

Anyway, awesome. Thanks, Ben. And you can find me if you care to on X. I'm still there on this is the Hef and on LinkedIn as well, so just search for my name.

And if you enjoy this podcast, please go and leave us a rating and a review. Wherever you're listening to this.

It takes 10 seconds, but it really bumps us up the algorithms and helps other people find us, which is really awesome. So do that and also follow the show so that all future episodes appear in your feed. Thanks again for listening and goodbye.