|
|
|
Book Review
| George B. Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Grey: the National Pastime During the Civil War, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2003. pp. xviii + 145. US $19.95 cloth.
|
| The American Civil War — 1861 to 1865 — resulted in the death of more than 600,000 Americans. It ensured that the United States of America remained 'united' and brought about an end to the slavery of Africans, and their descendants, brought to America. George B. Kirsch is interested in examining the path of baseball, a sport known as America's national pastime, during this period of political and military turmoil. |
1
|
|
Kirsch's approach is to provide information on the development and playing of baseball prior to, during, and after the Civil War. Baseball, in the years examined by Kirsch, was not an organised sport; a statement which would apply to virtually all sports at this time. The game developed like topsy with different versions being played in different parts of the country. There were no organised leagues or 'governing body' with authority over the burgeoning sport. We have to wait until 1876 for the formation of the National League. Baseball was a spontaneous activity played, watched and enjoyed by an increasing number of Americans. Clubs were formed by persons with a common occupational or other socio-economic background. There developed the practice of intermittent exhibitions, or contests, between rival nines within a city, and then across cities or states. Baseball was an activity which generated such interest that newspaper proprietors allocated journalists to report on games between both leading and lesser clubs. |
2
|
|
Baseball became increasingly popular both as an activity for participants and as a source of entertainment, for spectators and for newspaper readers, in the years immediately prior to the Civil War. The war resulted in some initial disruption to the playing of games as the North and the South assembled their respective armies. Kirsch provides information on baseball on both the battle front and the home front during these years of turmoil. |
3
|
|
With respect to the former, baseball was played by both armies to help wile away the time, and ease tension, between battles. Officers on both sides saw in baseball a means to help build morale for the struggles that lay ahead. Kirsch is unable to find any examples of impromptu games between soldiers of rival armies in breaks between hostilities. The playing of baseball was allowed in prison camps. After 1862, however, it was played less often as camps became increasingly overcrowded and conditions, and the treatment of prisoners, declined. |
4
|
|
After an initial lull, baseball was increasingly played on the home front, especially in the north-east. Its playing or, more correctly, its growing popularity, is linked by Kirsch to the growth in incomes generated by a war-time economy, particularly in northern cities, and a need for distraction from the daily reports of carnage and rising death tolls. Kirsch devotes a chapter to leading players and the wide range of different clubs which operated during the Civil War years. |
5
|
|
After hostilities ceased baseball continued to increase in popularity. Kirsch provides a lively narrative on the tentative beginnings and problems of the sport's commercial age. Baseball spread across the nation to the south and the west. In doing so it is portrayed as a vehicle to help heal the wounds of the conflagration of 1861 to 1865. In saying this, however, African-Americans, those persons who had previously been slaves, and whose setting free had been such an important ingredient of the battles just finished, were denied the ability to participate with whites in baseball. Like other parts of American political, economic and social life, a policy of segregation against African-Americans was applied and enforced. |
6
|
|
Baseball in Blue and Grey assembles a wealth of material on baseball during the middle decades of the nineteenth century in America. Kirsch is to be congratulated for his assiduous examination of both primary and secondary sources. On the basis of the evidence provided, it is difficult to discern what role the Civil War played in the process of baseball's development. Baseball had already become a popular, spontaneous activity prior to the Civil War. It had already been linked and associated with American nationalism. In the absence of a Civil War it is difficult to discern how the game's upward trajectory would have been halted. With or without a Civil War America and Americans would have adopted baseball as its national pastime. |
7
|
| | | | |
| University of New South Wales |
BRAHAM DABSCHECK | |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|