Review by Choice Review
In this flawed but important study, White seeks to account for what he sees as the remarkably stable character of organized baseball between 1903 and 1953. He argues that a "national pastime" that was also a "natural" pastime was molded in the pre-WW I era by club owners operating under the influence of the Progressive ethos and that the tenacity of the magnates' unreflective adherence to this ethos explains both baseball's unhealthy reluctance to adjust to change in its environment and its healthy cultivation of links with its own past. This broad theme sometimes recedes from view while White presents a sequence of loosely related, insight-laden sections treating such subjects as the symbolism of ballparks, the reasons for the 1922 Supreme Court decision, and the role of radio, but it never entirely disappears. Two kinds of difficulties mar his exploration. First, and touching on credibility, there are the odd factual lapses: the St. Louis Cardinals, for example, were not one of the successes of the opening decades of the century, and the game that Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker may have conspired to throw occurred before Judge Landis assumed office, not after. Second, and touching on coherence, there is the difficulty that the entity White purports to examine--namely, a peculiarly coherent half-century of organized baseball--seems by his own criteria (and by other plausible ones) not to have existed within the posited time frame. Nevertheless, all serious students of baseball history will want to be familiar with this book. All levels. R. Browning Kenyon College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
It's a bit dangerous venturing into a subject to which so many entertaining and informative books have been devoted (John Helyar's Lords of the Realm or Andrew Zimbalist's Baseball and Billions, are two that come to mind). The best thing one can say about this addition is that White, a University of Virginia law and history professor and author of The Marshall Court and Cultural Change, does not take a dewy-eyed view of the game, as so many out-of-control sports scribes have done. His study on the reasons for baseball's eminence in American sports in the first part of the century, however, is frustrating. So lacking in prose style that calling it "lawyerly" would be high praise, Pastime is riddled with words like "monopsonistic" when "collusive" would do just fine. As an historian, White is objective to the point of being coy, relying way too much on such qualifiers as "may," "might" or "appear to be." After poring over old copies of the Sporting News for most of its 364 pages, White finally observes of baseball's national-pastime status, "It is possible, in short, that that status may have been linked, to an important extent, to baseball's economically and culturally anachronistic features." Back to you, Curt. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
White (law and history, Univ. of Virginia, and author of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, LJ 11/1/93) turns his legal attentions to baseball. How did baseball, an urban sport originally known for its rowdiness and unwholesome image, transform itself into the mythical national pastime? White argues that proponents have always tried to sell a pristine image of the sport that is at great odds to the legal and business reality of how baseball is run. An excellent source for academic and large public libraries. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An astute examination of how baseball emerged as the national pastime by fostering a pastoral mythology that remained unchallenged until the early 1950s. White (Law and History/Univ.. of Virginia; Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1993) argues that ``baseball's past history was far more complex, and far less heroic, than romanticized treatments of the game might suggest.'' Hardly news, but as he so meticulously demonstrates, while baseball promoted its ``anachronistic dimensions'' as a rural, fresh-air sport played by apple-cheeked youths, it was able to do so, in part, by violating anti-trust laws, by implementing such unfair labor practices as the reserve clause, and by restricting its talent pool according to race. The struggle to maintain the myth began to fail in the postwar era. Owners followed the demographic shift westward, thus dashing nostalgic hometown ties for fans of teams like the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants. At about the same time, the weakening of the reserve clause, the ``new labor relations atmosphere,'' and the integration of the game forced baseball to surrender the ``special qualities'' that had allowed it to appear untouched by time. The author's delineation of the business aspects of the game are a bit dry and too involved, but things liven up when he looks at the gambling and cheating that were a part of the game early in the century, and when he examines the growth and economic importance of night baseball and of radio and TV broadcasts. He also surveys the great baseball writers, such as Paul Gallico and Damon Runyan, and the famed announcers, including Bob Prince and Jimmy Dudley. He has some fresh insights into the game's tentative acceptance of ethnic ballplayers such as Joe DiMaggio and Hank Greenberg. Baseball cognoscenti will find plenty to chew on here. (24 halftones, not seen)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
