the history of baseball essay

ARTS & CULTURE

A brief history of the baseball.

The development of the baseball, from shoe rubber and lemon peels to today’s minimalist, modernist object

Jimmy Stamp

From the fields and stadiums, to the uniforms, to the statistics, baseball is good design. There’s no better evidence of that than the iconic white and red ball. With its pristine white surface and high contrast red stitching, today’s baseball is a beautiful union of form and function, an almost ideal Modernist object. But it didn’t start out that way. The baseball didn’t emerge fully formed when the first batter stepped up to the first plate. Like the football , it’s hard to attribute its invention to one person, especially considering that in those heady, mustachioed, pre-professional days of baseball, balls were made by cobblers from the rubber remnants of old shoes, with rubber cores wrapped in yarn and a leather cover – if you were lucky. In some regions, sturgeon eyes were used instead of melted shoe rubber. In the 1840s and ’50s, it was anything but an exact science and pitchers often just made their own balls. Obviously, there was some variety in size and weight that resulted just from the nature of the handmade process and separate regional developments.

The differences extended from the center of the core to the surface of the leather wrapping. One of the more prominent cover designs wrapped the wound core in a single piece of leather tied off with four distinct lines of stitching, earning it the apt nickname “lemon peel.” These balls were smaller –about six inches in circumference compared to today’s nine- and they were lighter (in weight), darker (in color) and softer (in softness) than those used today. And the game was a little different too. In the earliest games, runners could be thrown out by getting “soaked,” or hit directly with a ball by a fielder – a rule still occasionally practiced on playgrounds and sandlots. These light, compact balls with rubber (or fish-eye) cores were much “livelier” than today’s balls – that is to say, the could be hit further and bounce higher. The result was a scoreboard that looked like something from a basketball game.

In the mid 1850s, ball clubs in the New York area elected to standardize the ball’s weight at 5.5-6 ounces and its circumference at somewhere between 8 and 11 inches, resulting in a larger, heavier, less lively ball. There was obviously some room for variety, but it was the first step toward regulation.

Throughout the 1850s and ’60s, the ball (and the rules) continued to evolve but there was still plenty of room for variation – more rubber in the core and a tighter winding resulted in a “live” ball while less rubber and a loose wind yielded a “dead” ball. Of course, home teams made the balls best suited to their own strengths and style of play. Ball selection was a key strategy and a critical benefit of home-field advantage. Visiting teams with big hitters would, more often than not, find themselves playing with a “dead” ball.

There is some debate about the origin of the 2-part “figure 8” cover that we we know today. Some baseball historians say it was first developed by a shoemaker’s son named Ellis Drake, who supposedly put the design together with some of his father’s scrap leather in an effort to create a more resilient cover. If this is true, Drake failed to patent his idea and others started producing similar designs. Others give credit to Colonel William A. Cutler, who may have invented the familiar stitching in 1858 and sold it to one of the first baseball manufacturers, William Harwood. Regardless of who created it, the figure 8 became the dominant ball thanks to Harwood & Sons, who built the first factory dedicated to baseball production in Natick, Massachusetts, and was the first to mass-produce the figure 8 design.

In the 1870s, the fluctuating size and weight of the fluctuating was stabilized to something very similar to the one we know and love today, which is officially,and rather vaguely, mandated by the MLB by rule 1.09:

The ball shall be a sphere formed by yarn wound around a small core of cork, rubber or similar material, covered with two strips of white horsehide or cowhide, tightly stitched together. It shall weigh not less than five nor more than 5.25 ounces avoirdupois and measure not less than nine nor more than 9.25 inches in circumference.

The year 1876 welcomed the first game in the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs and a standardization of rules and regulations – including a standard ball. That same year a Boston Red Sox pitcher by the name of  A.G. Spalding  retired after winning 241 of 301 games in just a four-year career. He pitched every game with balls he made himself. When he convinced the National League to adopt his ball as its standard, an empire was born. Spalding’s company would continue to produce the official baseball of the National League for 100 years.

Early professional baseball was marked by incredibly low-scoring games – thanks in large part to the ball. Balls were were soft and became softer during the course of a game and were used until they unraveled, resulting in fewer big hits and lower scores. This was the original “dead-ball” era of baseball.

In 1910 the cork-core ball was introduced into Major League play. As  Popular Mechanics  explained at the time, “the cork makes possible a more rigid structure and more uniform resiliency. It is said to outlast the rubber center balls many times over, because it will not soften or break in spots under the most severe usage.” More importantly though, it could be  hit . With the introduction of the livelier cork ball, league-wide batting averages jumped almost immediately. After a few years, however, pitchers began to adapt (and develop a few tricks) and numbers began to level out – until Babe Ruth started hitting balls out of the park; dead-ball era came to a final, stunning end. Ruth started something and baseball enjoyed a live-ball renaissance that actually had nothing to do with the ball, despite popular conspiracy theories that a new, more lively “rabbit” ball was secretly introduced into play in 1920 to increase hitting.

The next big innovation came in 1925 when Milton B. Reach patented the “cushion cork” center, in which a a sphere of cork is surrounded by a black semi-vulcanized rubber, which is then surrounded by  another  layer of red rubber. In 1934, the American League, which favored live balls and big hitters, and the National League, known to use thicker, looser balls that favored pitchers, agreed on a standard ball. As noted in a  great article on the baseball’s history  from  Bleacher Report , the composition of this new “medium ball” was revealed for the first time in  The New York Times :

Major league baseballs start with a core of cork mixed with a small amount of rubber. This is covered by a layer of black rubber, then by a layer of red rubber. It is then ready for the winding process, where yarn is added to the core. This is done on a revolving machine…in a humidity- and temperature-controlled room. Yarn windings consist first of 121 yards of rough gray wool, forty-five yards of white wool then 53 yards of fine gray wool and finally 150 yards of fine white cotton. After these layers have been added to the sphere, it is coated with rubber cement. Then two pieces of horsehide in the shape of the figure ’8′ are hand-stitched with red thread to cover the ball. ….Each ball has 108 hand-stitched double stitches in its cover. A finished ball weighs from 5 to 5 1/4 ounces and measures not less than 9, nor more than 9 1/4 inches.

With a few exceptions, the baseball really hasn’t changed that much since then.

Surprisingly, the process hasn’t changed much either. All 108 red stitches on Major League baseballs are all still  stitched by hand , although ball consistency has improved with new technology – materials are now stored in temperature controlled facilities and balls are wound under constant tension to eliminate “soft spots” and guarantee a uniform surface. Also similar to years past: every season is different from the last.  Some seasons see a lot of home runs while others see pitchers locked in battle.  So far this year, teams have  scored the fewest runs per game (4.22)  since 1992, when it was 4.12. Granted, the hot summer months where the balls soar through the humid air have yet to come, but it looks like the men on the mound have the upper hand.

“Evolution of the Ball,”  Baseball Digest  (July 1963); Peter Morris,  A Game of Inches: The Stories Behind The Innovations that Shaped Baseball  (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); Josh Chetwynd,  The Secret History of Balls  (Penguin, 2011); Zack Hample,  The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches  (Random House, 2011); Zachary D. Rymer,  “The Evoution of the Baseball from the Dead ball Era Through Today,”   Bleacher Report  (June 18, 2013);  19th Century Baseball

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Jimmy Stamp | | READ MORE

Jimmy Stamp is a writer/researcher and recovering architect who writes for Smithsonian.com as a contributing writer for design.

History of Baseball and Its Impact on American History Essay

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Introduction

Works cited.

Baseball is regarded as the national sport representing American identity and spirit. Therefore, it has an exceptional cultural significance in American history. The peculiar detail is that baseball was initially the game that rural populations played, and it became popular in cities after a while. There are two ways baseball, with its rural roots, influenced the American character: the rivalry of equals and the cultivation of team play and personal strength.

First, the contest between clubs representing small cities or universities shows the division of American society into smaller autonomous units. This rivalry reflects the pro-active position that Americans value and their desire to win in the equal fight. Second, baseball emphasizes the physical strength and ability of the players to unite as a team, and these qualities are essential in the formation of the American identity. It is possible to hypothesize that the regional roots of baseball emphasize the special place of the rural culture in the construction of the contemporary American identity and promote the traits that the rural population values.

Many Americans associate baseball with its rural origins, which creates a particular pastoral image of this game. It appeared at the beginning of the 19th century after the Civil War, and children and young men played it in the villages. Baseball originated from various stick-and-ball games that appeared in rural England and then migrated to the United States (Vaught 1). Therefore, the myth that baseball is the game of urban men might create a false perception of this topic. It is possible to assume that baseball was the nostalgia of city-dwellers life in the village and the reminiscence of their cultural roots. Therefore, baseball was initially the game of farmers who played it on vast territories, and it is critical to emphasize these regional roots in the cultural context.

It is possible to regard baseball as the tradition that unites different generations of Americans. The game represents the character traits that Americans from rural areas valued for centuries, including the desire to produce and overcome frustration, anxiety, and hardship. It is reflected in the sudden action that the baseball players take, their swift movements, and their team play, which is represented in the strict order of the players and their functions during the game (Vaught 8). Therefore, baseball represents the essential qualities of character that the American man should have to survive. The game is the metaphor for life with its challenges and hardship in its essence.

The peculiar detail is that baseball is a typically American game, even though it originates from English rural games. Its rules formed over a long period because people adapted various types of ball-and-stick games, adapting to the surrounding reality. The standard rules for all teams appeared officially only in 1858, and baseball was called the American game by journalists (Rossi 36). This example shows that the American culture appeared gradually, and baseball has become an essential part of the image of the typical American lifestyle. It foregrounds the claim that the history of baseball dates back to the 19th century and the history of the United States and American culture are interconnected.

Baseball gained national popularity in the 19th century due to gambling, which motivated many Americans to watch sports games (Davies 1). Most men knew the rules of this game because they played it in their childhood, which made the process more interesting for spectators. Media coverage and the rising popularity of baseball led to its development and improvement and finally made baseball iconic to the American culture (Davies 1). In other words, most people played baseball when they were children because this game was popular in the rural areas where most people in the 19th century lived determined its popularity and active development. It was impossible to divide baseball from the American culture, and this tendency became more evident when the game received national popularity.

Baseball reflected the political and social division of the 20th century United States, which showed that the game’s history and the nation’s history were interconnected. Competition between the teams of the workers’ unions, political parties, universities, and players of different races reflected the rivalry in society (Dreier 1). In all cases, baseball allows people to compete during the game, making the tension between social groups less severe. It was the competition between equals, and this process was essential in American culture.

To conclude, it is impossible to divide the history of baseball from the history of American culture. Its rural roots emphasize the importance of the regional culture informing the American identity and spirit. Among the qualities that baseball develops are the individual’s dynamic character, strength, team spirit, and competition of equals. American society consists of different groups that rival each other, but at the same time, they are united by common goals. Moreover, baseball represented the competition between equals essential in American society. Therefore, baseball emphasized the critical place of rural culture in the American discourse and contributed to developing the spirit of competition among equals.

Davies, Dave. “The ‘Secret History’ of Baseball’s Earliest Days.” NPR , 2011, Web.

Dreier, Peter. “Baseball Has Always Been Political.” Talking Points Memo, 2021, Web.

Rossi, John P. “Baseball and American History.” Pennsylvania Legacies, vol. 7, no. 1, 2007, pp. 36–37.

Vaught, David. “Abner Doubleday, Marc Bloch, and the Cultural Significance of Baseball in Rural America.” Agricultural History, vol. 85, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1–20.

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baseball , game played with a bat, a ball, and gloves between two teams of nine players each on a field with four white bases laid out in a diamond (i.e., a square oriented so that its diagonal line is vertical). Teams alternate positions as batters (offense) and fielders (defense), exchanging places when three members of the batting team are “put out.” As batters, players try to hit the ball out of the reach of the fielding team and make a complete circuit around the bases for a “run.” The team that scores the most runs in nine innings (times at bat) wins the game.

The United States is credited with developing several popular sports , including some (such as baseball, gridiron football , and basketball ) that have large fan bases and, to varying degrees, have been adopted internationally. But baseball, despite the spread of the game throughout the globe and the growing influence of Asian and Latin American leagues and players, is the sport that Americans still recognize as their “national pastime.” The game has long been woven into the fabric of American life and identity. “It’s our game,” exclaimed the poet Walt Whitman more than a century ago, “that’s the chief fact in connection with it: America’s game.” He went on to explain that baseball

has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere—it belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life. It is the place where memory gathers.

Perhaps Whitman exaggerated baseball’s importance to and its congruency with life in the United States, but few would argue the contrary, that baseball has been merely a simple or an occasional diversion.

It was nationalistic sentiment that helped to make baseball “America’s game.” In the quest to obtain greater cultural autonomy , Americans yearned for a sport they could claim as exclusively their own. Just as the English had cricket and the Germans their turnverein s (gymnastic clubs), a sporting newspaper declared as early as 1857 that Americans should have a “game that could be termed a ‘Native American Sport.’ ” A powerful confirmation of baseball as the sport to fill that need came in 1907 when a special commission appointed by A.G. Spalding , a sporting goods magnate who had formerly been a star pitcher and an executive with a baseball team, reported that baseball owed absolutely nothing to England and the children’s game of rounders . Instead, the commission claimed that, to the best of its knowledge (a knowledge based on flimsy research and self-serving logic), baseball had been invented by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown , New York , in 1839. This origin myth was perpetuated for decades.

In a country comprising a multiplicity of ethnic and religious groups, one without a monarchy, an aristocracy , or a long and mythic past, the experience of playing, watching, and talking about baseball games became one of the nation’s great common denominators. It provided, in the perceptive words of British novelist Virginia Woolf , “a centre, a meeting place for the divers activities of a people whom a vast continent isolates [and] whom no tradition controls.” No matter where one lived, the “hit-and-run,” the “double play,” and the “sacrifice bunt” were carried out the same way. The unifying power of baseball in the United States was evident in the Depression-ravaged 1930s, when a group of Cooperstown’s businessmen along with officials from the major leagues established the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum . The Hall of Fame became a quasi-religious shrine for many Americans, and, since its founding, millions of fans have made “pilgrimages” to Cooperstown, where they have observed the “relics”—old bats, balls, and uniforms—of bygone heroes.

Baseball also reshaped the nation’s calendar. With the rise of industrialization, the standardized clock time of the office or factory robbed people of the earlier experience of time in its rich associations with the daylight hours, the natural rhythms of the seasons, and the traditional church calendar. Yet , for Americans, the opening of the baseball training season signaled the arrival of spring, regular-season play meant summer, and the World Series marked the arrival of fall. In the winter, baseball fans participated in “hot stove leagues,” reminiscing about past games and greats and speculating about what the next season had to offer.

The World Series , inaugurated in 1903 and pitting the champions of the American and National Leagues in a postseason play-off, quickly took its place alongside the Fourth of July and Christmas as one of the most popular annual rites. The series was, said Everybody’s Magazine in 1911, “the very quintessence and consummation of the Most Perfect Thing in America.” Each fall it absorbed the entire nation.

Baseball terms and phrases, such as “He threw me a curve,” “Her presentation covered all the bases,” and “He’s really out in left field,” soon became part of the national vocabulary, so entrenched is baseball in the ordinary conversation of Americans. During the administration of President George H.W. Bush , a baseball player during his years at Yale University , the foreign press struggled to translate the president’s routine use of baseball metaphors . As early as the 1850s, baseball images began to appear in periodicals, and, in the 20th century, popular illustrator Norman Rockwell often used baseball as the subject for his The Saturday Evening Post covers. “ Casey at the Bat ” and “ Take Me Out to the Ballgame ” remain among the best-known poems and songs, respectively, among Americans. Novelists and filmmakers frequently have turned to baseball motifs. After the mid-20th century, at the very time baseball at the grassroots level had begun a perceptible descent, baseball fiction proliferated. American colleges and universities even began to offer courses on baseball literature, and baseball films likewise proliferated. In 1994 the Public Broadcasting System released Ken Burns’s nostalgic Baseball , arguably the most monumental historical television documentary ever made.

While baseball possessed enormous integrative powers, the game’s history also has been interwoven with and reflective of major social and cultural cleavages. Until the first decades of the 20th century, middle-class Evangelical Protestants viewed the sport with profound suspicion. They associated baseball, or at least the professional version of the game, with ne’er-do-wells, immigrants, the working class, drinking, gambling, and general rowdiness. Conversely, these very qualities provided a foothold for the upward ascent of ethnic groups from the nation’s ghettos. Usually encountering less discrimination in baseball (as well as in other venues of commercial entertainment) than they did in the more “respectable” occupations, in the 19th century Irish and German Americans were so conspicuous in professional baseball that some observers wondered if they had a special capacity for playing the game.

For a brief time in the 1880s, before racial segregation became the norm in the United States, Black players competed with whites in professional baseball. After that period, however, Blacks had to carve out a separate world of baseball. Dozens of Black teams faced local semiprofessional teams while barnstorming throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Despite playing a high quality of baseball, the players frequently engaged in various forms of clowning that perpetuated prevailing stereotypes of Blacks to appeal to spectators. From the 1920s until the ’50s, separate Black professional leagues—the Negro league s—existed as well, but in 1947 Jackie Robinson crossed the long-standing colour bar in major league baseball . Because baseball was the national game, its racial integration was of enormous symbolic importance in the United States; indeed, it preceded the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision ending racial segregation in the schools (in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ) and helped to usher in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. Moreover, in the 1980s and ’90s a huge influx of Hispanics into professional baseball reflected the country’s changing ethnic composition .

Baseball likewise contributed to the shaping of American conceptions of gender roles. Although women were playing baseball as early as the 1860s, their involvement in the sport was confined for the most part to the role of spectator. To counter the game’s reputation for rowdiness, baseball promoters took pains to encourage women to attend. “The presence of an assemblage of ladies purifies the moral atmosphere of a baseball gathering,” reported the Baseball Chronicle , “repressing as it does, all the out-burst of intemperate language which the excitement of a contest so frequently induces.” When women played on barnstorming teams in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, the press routinely referred to them as “Amazons,” “freaks,” or “frauds.” In 1943, during World War II , when it was feared that professional baseball might be forced to close down, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League made its debut. After having provided more than 600 women an opportunity to play baseball and to entertain several million fans, the league folded in 1954.

But, even if unable to heal conflicts arising from fundamental social divisions, baseball exhibited an extraordinary capacity for fostering ties. In the 1850s, young artisans and clerks, frequently displaced in the city and finding their way of life changing rapidly in the midst of the Industrial Revolution , conceived of themselves as members of what was known as the “base ball fraternity.” Like the volunteer fire departments and militia units of the day, they donned special uniforms, developed their own rituals, and, in playing baseball, shared powerful common experiences. Playing and watching baseball contests also strengthened occupational, ethnic, and racial identities. Butchers, typesetters, draymen, bricklayers, and even clergymen organized baseball clubs. So did Irish Americans, German Americans, and African Americans.

Professional baseball nourished and deepened urban identities. “If we are ahead of the big city [New York] in nothing else,” crowed the Brooklyn Eagle as early as 1862, “we can beat her in baseball.” Fans invested their emotions in their professional representative nines. “A deep gloom settled over the city,” reported a Chicago newspaper in 1875 after the local White Stockings had been defeated by the St. Louis (Missouri) Brown Stockings. “Friends refused to recognize friends, lovers became estranged, and business was suspended.” Even in the late 20th century, in an age more given to cynicism , the successes and failures of professional teams continued to evoke strong feelings among local residents. For example, during the 1990s, after having experienced urban decay and demoralization in the previous two decades, Cleveland experienced a great civic revival fueled in part by the success of the Indians baseball team.

The significance of specific baseball teams and individual players extended beyond the localities that they represented. The New York Yankees , who in the first half of the 20th century were the quintessential representatives of the big city, of the East, of urban America with its sophistication, and of ethnic and religious heterogeneity, became synonymous with supernal success, while the St. Louis Cardinals emerged as the quintessential champions of the Midwest, of small towns and the farms, of rural America with its simplicity, rusticity, and old-stock Protestant homogeneity . In the 1920s Babe Ruth became the diamond’s colossal demigod. To those toiling on assembly lines or sitting at their desks in corporate bureaucracies , Ruth embodied America’s continuing faith in upward social mobility . His mighty home runs furnished vivid proof that men remained masters of their own destinies and that they could still rise from mean, vulgar beginnings to fame and fortune. For African Americans, Black stars such as Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson furnished equally compelling models of individual inspiration and success.

Baseball parks became important local civic monuments and repositories of collective memories. The first parks had been jerry-built, flimsy wooden structures, but between 1909 and 1923 some 15 major league clubs constructed new, more permanent parks of steel and concrete. These edifices were akin to the great public buildings, skyscrapers, and railway terminals of the day; local residents proudly pointed to them as evidence of their city’s size and its achievements.

Seeing them as retreats from the noise, dirt, and squalor of the industrial city, the owners gave the first parks pastoral names—Ebbets Field, Sportsman’s Park, and the Polo Grounds—but, with the construction of symmetrical, multisports facilities in the 1960s and ’70s, urban and futuristic names such as Astrodome and Kingdome predominated. In a new park-building era in the 1990s, designers sought to recapture the ambience of earlier times by designing “retro parks,” a term that was something of an oxymoron in that, while the new parks offered the fan the intimacy of the old-time parks, they simultaneously provided modern conveniences such as escalators, climate-controlled lounges, high-tech audiovisual systems, Disneyesque play areas for children, and space for numerous retail outlets. The increasing corporate influence on the game was reflected in park names such as Network Associates Stadium and Bank One Ballpark.

After about the mid-20th century, baseball’s claim to being America’s game rested on more precarious foundations than in the past. The sport faced potent competition, not only from other professional sports (especially gridiron football) but even more from a massive conversion of Americans from public to private, at-home diversions. Attendance as a percentage of population fell at all levels of baseball, the minor leagues became a shell of their former selves, and hundreds of semipro and amateur teams folded. In the 1990s, player strikes, free agency, disparities in competition, and the rising cost of attending games added to the woes of major league baseball. Yet, baseball continued to exhibit a remarkable resiliency; attendance at professional games improved, and attendance at minor league games was close to World War II records by the end of the century. As the 21st century opened, baseball still faced serious problems, but the sport was gaining in popularity around the world, and a strong case could still be made for baseball holding a special place in the hearts and minds of the American people.

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Baseball History, American History and You

Our national pastime.

We play it as kids, we watch it and listen to it as adults, and we pass down our love of the Game through generations. Baseball is an American family tradition.

It is in Cooperstown where we learn so much about the bond that baseball has with American culture.

Looking back, time and time again, baseball has been there, through the good times and the bad, often bringing us together. Those moments transcend the action on the diamond.

From the Civil War to Civil Rights and all points in between and beyond, the game of baseball reflects American life, from culture to economics and technological advances. It inspires movements, instills pride and even heals cities.

These stories are preserved and shared at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

These are just a few of the times where the history of our National Pastime and American history have crossed...

THE CIVIL WAR

The first professional baseball games were played in the wake of a young nation's darkest days. The amateur version, however, has roots that reach back decades before the war began. Reporters described baseball as a mania back in the 1840s; the sport was already established as a popular pastime when Civil War soldiers on both sides played it as a diversion. Many veterans took the game home after the war and it became a great unifier in the years that followed the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history. Though since disproved, the invention of the sport was originally believed to have occurred in Cooperstown, N.Y. and was credited to Civil War hero Abner Doubleday. Doubleday was at Fort Sumter in South Carolina when the first shots were fired in defense of the Union. He went on to rise to the rank of Major General and served with distinction during the Battle of Gettysburg.

WORLD WAR I

During World War I, 227 major leaguers served in various branches of the military. Among them were several future Hall of Famers, including Christy Mathewson , Branch Rickey , George Sisler and Ty Cobb , who all served in the Chemical Warfare Service, commonly referred to as “The Gas and Flame Division.” These baseball icons were instructors, training U.S. troops and conducting drills. One of these drills sent soldiers into an airtight chamber into which actual poison gas was released. During one of these training exercises an accident occurred, causing Cobb and Mathewson to be exposed to the gas. Cobb recovered, but Mathewson was exposed to a much larger dose of poison, which damaged his lungs and contributed to his death from tuberculosis eight years later at the age of 45.

With our Country fighting WW I, Game 1 of the 1918 World Series between the Cubs and the Red Sox, which featured Babe Ruth on the mound for the Sox, was highlighted by a performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” that stole the show.

The song would not become our official National Anthem until 1931, but when Red Sox third baseman Fred Thomas, an active-duty sailor on leave from Naval Station Great Lakes, heard the band strike up the song during the seventh inning stretch, he turned to face the flag, snapped to attention and offered a military salute. The other players seeing Thomas, turned to face the flag and put their hands over their hearts.

The fans, seeing what was happening on the field, roared to life, cheering and singing along, in a spontaneous show of patriotism. The “Star-Spangled Banner” has been performed at every World Series game since, and the tradition of playing the song before every big league game started 24 years later during World War II.

WORLD WAR II

In World War II, more than 500 major leaguers – and 37 Hall of Famers – served in the armed forces, with many of them sacrificing prime years of their careers.

In January 1942, with the United States fighting in World War II, the Commissioner of Baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis , wrote to President Roosevelt asking if professional baseball should continue or be suspended during the War. 

In response, Roosevelt sent the “ Green Light Letter ” clearing the way for baseball to continue throughout the war. The President’s response to Landis read in part:

“I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going. There will be fewer people unemployed and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before. And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before.”

This historic letter from FDR to Landis is part of the collection in Cooperstown.

The War years also saw the founding of the  All-American Girls Professional Baseball League , established in part to compensate for the loss of many of the best major league players to the war effort. 

CIVIL RIGHTS

African-Americans played baseball on Southern plantations during the 1850s. A century later, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier and reintegrated the game. There were numerous strides and setbacks in between. An unwritten agreement barred Black players from professional leagues from the late 1800s and into the 20th century. Before that, the professional game had bucked the trend, as  Bud Fowler  – a native Central New Yorker – played in the 1870s and '80s despite the proliferation of Jim Crow laws.

Within the African-American community, baseball was a great source of pride as dozens of  barnstorming teams  traveled from town to town to entertain crowds. The Negro Leagues fielded outstanding players, many of whom have been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Baseball led the way on integration, as  Jackie Robinson  became a key symbol of equality during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s. 

“Jackie Robinson made my success possible,” said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Without him, I would never have been able to do what I did.”

The magnitude of those words cannot be overstated. Dr. King’s lasting work as a Civil Rights pioneer touched all areas of the American experience, yet he credited a baseball player with making his dream viable.

King's words speak to the breadth and depth of baseball’s presence in America. The game represents the American ideal at its root: That hard work and fair play are the keys to success.

Once Robinson was allowed to demonstrate his ability in the big leagues, the doors appeared open to everyone. It was a message that only baseball – with its power to cut across cultures – could deliver.

On  Sept. 1, 1971 , the Pirates became the first AL or NL team to field an all-black, or all-minority lineup.  Roberto Clemente  was part of the lineup that day, a fitting inclusion for a player who willingly spoke up about issues affecting Latino players of his era.

On April 8, 1974,  Hank Aaron  hit his 715th home run in front of a crowd of more than 53,000 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, passing Babe Ruth’s record of 714. The Dodgers’ legendary broadcaster Vin Scully summed up the moment with his call: 

"It’s a high drive into deep left center field. (Bill) Buckner goes back to the fence… It is gone. What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol.”

Aaron’s uniform from this historic moment is on display in the  Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream exhibit  on the Museum’s third floor.

Exactly one year later, on  April 8, 1975 ,  Frank Robinson  broke new ground in baseball's quest to truly become the National Pastime. Robinson, hitting second for the Cleveland Indians as their new player-manager, he was the first Black man to be a full-time manager in the AL/NL.

THE LAST 50 YEARS

Every baseball fan who is old enough to remember our Nation’s Bicentennial Celebration recalls April 25, 1976. 

On that day, Rick Monday of the Chicago Cubs saved the American flag from being burned by protestors on the field during the fourth inning of a game at Dodger Stadium. When Monday came up to bat in the fifth inning, the Los Angeles Dodgers fans gave him a standing ovation and the scoreboard displayed the message, “RICK MONDAY…YOU MADE A GREAT PLAY.”

On the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color barrier and paving the way for Black ballplayers to compete in the National and American Leagues, his No. 42 was retired across the sport. Commissioner Bud Selig, was joined on the field at Shea Stadium by Rachel Robinson and President Bill Clinton, to make the announcement.  

BBWAA Career Excellence Award winner Claire Smith, who was covering the ceremony, said:

“When he (Selig) announced it, there was a collective gasp in the stadium, and around baseball. I was stunned. Obviously, it had never been done before in Major League Baseball to universally retire one number. And in the four major sports, it had not been done. ... Jackie Robinson is my hero. He's why I write. And that was the most moving thing I'd ever seen on a baseball field.”

The Character and Courage display features statues of Lou Gehrig , Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente that welcome every visitor to the Museum. 

For many of us, 9/11 is a moment etched into our memories. The events of that day left us with a tremendous sense of loss and anger for what had been taken from us, and a heavy feeling that our lives would be changed forever. Thankfully, baseball was there to help us heal again. 

Just 10 days after the attack, on Sept. 21, Major League Baseball resumed in New York. The city was still reeling and coming to grips with a changed world. That game represented hope – and gave people faith that despite our terrible loss, America was going to persevere. The evening reached a crescendo as future Hall of Famer Mike Piazza of the New York Mets hit one out of Shea Stadium to beat the rival Atlanta Braves. The crowd went wild – screaming, jumping, hugging and crying together. 

The jersey Piazza wore that day now splits time on display between the Museum in Cooperstown and the Mets Hall of Fame and Museum at Citi Field.  

Just a few weeks later, in late October and early November 2001, the New York Yankees were facing the Arizona Diamondbacks in the World Series. Games 1 and 2 took place in Phoenix. When the series returned to New York for Game 3, President George W. Bush was at Yankee Stadium to throw out the first pitch. 

In a show of American strength and perseverance, Bush strode to the mound wearing an FDNY jacket to honor the first responders, and as Yankee fans erupted in cheers of “USA, USA, USA,” the President delivered a first-pitch strike. 

Years later, President Bush spoke about that moment, saying:

"I had never had such an adrenaline rush as when I finally made it to the mound, I was saying to the crowd, 'I'm with you, the country's with you' ... And I wound up and fired the pitch. I've been to conventions and rallies and speeches: I've never felt anything so powerful and emotions so strong, and the collective will of the crowd so evident."

The video clip of this moment is featured in the  Whole New Ball Game  exhibit on the Museum’s second floor. 

The 2013 Red Sox proved " Boston Strong " with a World Series win in the shadow of the Boston Marathon bombings.

Again in Houston, baseball served an important purpose. As the region crawled back from the destruction of Hurricane Harvey, the  2017 Houston Astros  claimed their first-ever World Series championship.

The Museum documents these moments and more. Moments in which baseball and our culture have intersected in powerful ways. 

Related Stories

When Robinson signed with Montreal, baseball and America changed forever

The History of Baseball and Civil Rights in America

Doby was Second to None

After Pearl Harbor, baseball played a part in fight for freedom

The History of Women in Baseball

Ball caps for the Black Sheep

#GoingDeep: Reflections on World War II

'On Account of War'

President Roosevelt gives ‘green light’ to baseball

#Shortstops: Bat for a Cause

Negro Leagues stars served with honor during WWI

#Shortstops: Gehrig’s legacy shined bright in Normandy

#Shortstops: Moe Berg’s life in baseball

Torre, Rivera help make history at Game 3 of 2001 World Series

#Shortstops: The 9/11 baseball

Home — Essay Samples — Arts & Culture — American Culture — Baseball History Essay

Baseball History Essay

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The Best of Baseball History Comes Alive: Selected Essays by Gary L. Livacari Paperback – May 6, 2022

• Print length 428 pages
• Language English
• Publication date May 6, 2022
• Dimensions 6 x 0.97 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 0578395967
• ISBN-13 978-0578395968
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gary Livacari (May 6, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 428 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0578395967
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0578395968
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.59 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.97 x 9 inches
• #6,851 in Baseball (Books)
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About the author

Gary l. livacari.

Baseball historian Gary Livacari is a long-time member of the Society for Baseball Research (SABR) who enjoys writing about baseball. His forte is identifying ballplayers in old photos. For many years he did player identifications for the Baseball Fever web site. He was also an editor for the Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Baseball Project, helping to identify ballplayers in almost 3000 photos from the 1930s and 1940s. He has written biographies for the SABR Bioproject, plus numerous articles and book reviews.

He is the co-editor of the Old-Time Baseball Photos Facebook page which has grown to over 75,000 followers; and he is also the developer, administrator, and editor of the Baseball History Comes Alive web page, which also enjoys a large following. He has written two other books: "Memorable World Series Moments," and "Paul Pryor In His Own Words -The Life and Times of a 20-Year Major League Umpire" (editor)

Gary and his wife Nancy reside in Park Ridge, Illinois. He can be contacted at: [email protected].

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Baseball in japan and the us: history, culture, and future prospects.

The essay that follows, with a primary focus on professional baseball, is intended as an introductory comparative overview of a game long played in the US and Japan. I hope it will provide readers with some context to learn more about a complex, evolving, and, most of all, fascinating topic, especially for lovers of baseball on both sides of the Pacific.

Baseball, although seriously challenged by the popularity of other sports, has traditionally been considered America’s pastime and was for a long time the nation’s most popular sport. The game is an original American sport, but has sunk deep roots into other regions, including Latin America and East Asia. Baseball was introduced to Japan in the late nineteenth century and became the national sport there during the early post-World War II period. The game as it is played and organized in both countries, however, is considerably different. The basic rules are mostly the same, but cultural differences between Americans and Japanese are clearly reflected in how both nations approach their versions of baseball. Although players from both countries have flourished in both American and Japanese leagues, at times the cultural differences are substantial, and some attempts to bridge the gaps have ended in failure. Still, while doubtful the Japanese version has changed the American game, there is some evidence that the American version has exerted some changes in the Japanese game.

Baseball in the United States is essentially a nineteenth-century sport that has made the necessary adaptations to survive in the modern era. The first recognizable teams appeared in the 1850s and 1860s. Professional teams emerged with the formation of the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869 and the team that became the Boston (now Atlanta) Braves in 1871. The first organization of professional teams came with the creation of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players in 1871, which would become the National League (NL) in 1876, and the NL is still part of Major League Baseball (MLB) today. By the late 1800s and early 1900s, baseball had developed a strong national following and became the most popular sport in the country. Horace Wilson, an American English teacher at the Kaisei Academy in Tokyo, first introduced baseball to Japan in 1872, and other American teachers and missionaries popularized the game throughout Japan in the 1870s and 1880s. Popularity among Japanese grew slowly and led to the establishment of Japan’s first organized baseball team, the Shimbashi Athletic Club, in 1878. The convincing victory of a team from Tokyo’s Ichikō High School in 1896 over a team of select foreigners from the Yokohama Country & Athletic Club drew wide coverage in the Japanese press and contributed greatly to the popularity of baseball as a school sport. The rapidly growing popularity of baseball led to the development of high school, college, and university teams throughout Japan in the early 1900s. Important rivalries developed at the high school and university levels, highlighted by the intense battles between Keio University and Waseda University—which started in 1903 as an annual competition between the two schools and continues to this day. Photographs from 1903 onward show large crowded stadiums as Waseda, Keio, and the Imperial universities fought for the annual championship. High school tournaments also gained popularity in the early 1900s and remain immensely popular today. Despite their cultural differences, the growing popularity of baseball in Japan encouraged Japanese university teams and other baseball clubs, led by a team from Waseda University in 1905, to travel to the United States in the early 1900s to study American baseball more closely and play exhibition games against American teams. In return, American professional teams made annual trips to Japan between 1908 and 1935 after the World Series to play Japanese teams. Japanese baseball teams rarely prevailed against their American counterparts, but their improvement was steady.

Professional baseball in Japan began slowly in the 1920s, and the first professional team, The Great Japan Tokyo Baseball Club, was formed in 1934 by a prominent Japanese newspaper Yomiuri

Shimbun publisher, Shōriki Matsutarō. The club’s success against an all-star American team of professionals that included Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, and Charlie Gehringer encouraged the development of the first professional baseball league in Japan in 1936, the Japanese Baseball League (Nihon Yakyū Renmei). The league disbanded briefly in 1944 due to Allied bombing of Japan, but it resumed play during the Allied Occupation following the war. In 1950, the league would become Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB; Nippon Yakyū Kikō) and was large enough to divide into two leagues: the Central League and the Pacific League. NPB still exists today, and the best-known teams in the Central League are the Tokyo-based Yomiuri Giants and the Osaka-based Hanshin Tigers. The most famous Pacific League team is the Tokyo region-based Seibu Lions.

It was only in the 1960s that Japan had enough players to compete seriously against the best in America. American teams again began visiting Japan as early as 1949 with the minor league San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League (PCL), soon followed by visits of MLB teams, including the Brooklyn Dodgers, who played in exhibition games against Japanese teams. Japanese baseball rules allowed each Japanese team to sign a maximum of two foreign players (later raised to four). The result has been a steady flow of American players coming to play in Japan since the early 1950s.

Americans continue to play on Japanese teams today, though a growing number now come from other Asian countries such as Taiwan and South Korea. No Japanese players attempted to join Major League Baseball until 1964, when a young pitcher, Masanori (“Mashi”) Murakami, made a sensational debut with the San Francisco Giants. By 2015, over fifty Japanese players had played in the major leagues.

American and Japanese Baseball Relations

American-Japanese baseball historian Robert K. Fitts identifies three players who had key roles in developing a strong baseball relationship between the United States and Japan: Babe Ruth (1895–1948), Wally Yonamine (1925–2011), and Masanori Murakami (b. 1944).

Ruth was long past his prime in 1934 when Shōriki Matsutarō announced that he wished to sponsor a tour of American all-stars in November. The editor wanted to boost his paper’s sagging circulation with the publicity such a tour featuring Ruth, who was as famous in Japan as he was in the United States, might bring. Prominent citizens in both countries, such as American Ambassador Joseph Grew and Japanese Prime Minister Reijirō Wakatsuki, worried by the already-tense relations between their governments, hoped a goodwill visit by Ruth and other star players would be a critical exercise in soft-power diplomacy that would ease tensions.

In his 2012 book Banzai Babe Ruth, Fitts describes the huge and warm reception the Americans received when they arrived in Tokyo. Over a half-million Japanese watched the Americans as they made their way in an open-car motorcade from Tokyo Station to the Imperial Hotel where they stayed. The Japanese all yelled, “Banzai [long live] Babe Ruth!” and treated him almost as a god. The American players obliged, playing very well and showing maximum courtesy to their hosts and the

Japanese ball players. Ruth was an outstanding cultural diplomat, willing to embrace the Japanese players, people, food, and drink. His towering home runs brought warm cheers from spectators. The Japanese people were thrilled when Ruth made many warm comments and gestures about the host nation, and the success of several Japanese players such as pitcher Eiji Sawamura (1917–1944) brought on a wave of national pride. The success of the 1934 tour did much to further popularize baseball in Japan.

Manager Connie Mack (1862–1956) later called the four-week tour, which included eighteen games in twelve cities, one of the greatest peace measures in the history of nations. However, the goodwill eventually wore off. Fitts notes sardonically that several of the Japanese players such as Sawamura went on to serve in the Japanese army in World War II and developed strong anti-American feelings. Sawamura’s pitching arm came in handy when hurling grenades at American troops before his transport ship was sunk by an American submarine, with no survivors.

General Douglas MacArthur ordered the reintroduction of the game at the very start of the Occupation he directed, beginning in 1945. MacArthur noted that baseball had been hugely popular before the war and that playing ball might divert the attention of Japanese from the misery of living in a war-ravaged land.

A key figure in the resurgence of Japanese baseball was Hawaiian-born Japanese-American athlete Wallace “Wally” Yonamine. Fitts in his 2008 biography of Yonamine credits this superb athlete as playing an important role in bringing about reconciliation between the United States and Japan in the immediate postwar period. Yonamine was a natural athlete. Yonamine played one season for the San Francisco 49ers in 1947, becoming the first Japanese-American to play in the National Football League (NFL). He also became one of the first Americans to make it big playing baseball in Japan. His natural ability and starring role with the preeminent Japanese baseball franchise, the Tokyo-based Yomiuri Giants from 1951 to 1960, helped create both sporting and cultural bonds between the United States and Japan that remain to this day.

Yonamine was a hero in other ways, too. He came to Japan at the end of the American Occupation, when some Japanese still harbored anger at the United States. Feelings were especially strong against Nisei like Yonamine, a second-generation ethnic Japanese born in the United States. Even in 1950, five years after Japan’s surrender, living conditions in Tokyo were still harsh by Amercan standards. High-quality food was difficult to obtain, and fuel for heat was scarce. Some Japanese viewed Nisei as traitors for not joining their mother country during the war. Furthermore, many of the Giants’ stars were war veterans. Would they accept an American as a teammate?

Fans and fellow players showered Yonamine with a cascade of insults and occasional rocks and trash, but like Jackie Robinson in the United States, he endured these attacks with a quiet and positive demeanor. He played hard and introduced a hustling and brash form of base running common in the United States but unheard of in Japan. Aggressive moves like sliding into a second baseman to break up a double play were routine in the US, but not in Japan. Yonamine demonstrated raw talent that invigorated and brought quick success to the Giants.

Yonamine’s positive attitude and sheer talent eventually bought both players and fans to appreciate him. His aggressive style was adopted by more and more Japanese players, whose overall skills improved. He became a very popular goodwill ambassador and a clear bridge between the two former adversarial nations. Other American players were soon invited to play on Japanese teams.

While American players thrived in Japan in the 1950s and early 1960s, no Japanese national played in the MLB until 1964, when a young pitcher for the Nankai Hawks, Mashi Murakami, made a successful debut as a late-season roster addition for the San Francisco Giants. That year, Mashi was only supposed to play in the American minor leagues, but the San Francisco Giants were so impressed with Mashi that they called him up for the last few weeks of the season.

Mashi’s historic moment came on September 1, 1964, against the then-lowly New York Mets. He struck out two and completed a full inning of relief. Mashi’s impressive debut drew attention in the American and Japanese press because it was the first time that a native Japanese player had played in the majors—and had been successful, to top it off. Mashi continued his hot streak and appeared in relief eight more times before the season ended in early October. He was a hot commodity with a strong record of strikeouts of opposing players.

Mashi’s success created instant demand for his services in 1965 from both the San Francisco Giants and Nankai Hawks. Each team claimed Mashi, and although he appeared in spring training with Nankai, by the start of the 1965 season, Mashi was back in San Francisco. His full season in the majors was again successful—Mashi appeared in forty-five games, had a respectable ERA of 3.75, and was credited with four wins and only one loss. The Giants were so impressed with their star Japanese pitcher that they wanted him back in 1966, but pleas from his parents to come home and Mashi’s sense of responsibility to the Nankai Hawks convinced him to return to Japanese baseball for good.

Although Mashi was good for a short time, thirty more years would pass until the first Japanese superstar, pitcher Hideo Nomo (b. 1968), made his 1995 debut with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Nomo would become an all-star, win National League Rookie of the Year, lead the league in strikeouts in his debut season, and have a successful thirteen-season career in the MLB with various teams. His

success would help bring future Japanese stars to MLB, including Suzuki Ichirō, who debuted in 2001 for the Seattle Mariners. Ichirō, still an active major league player in the US, holds both MLB records for hits in a single season with 262 and the longest consecutive season streak of 200-hit seasons at ten.

Cultural Differences between Baseball in Japan and the United States?

One of the most widely known and interesting treatments of the cultural differences between the way baseball is played in the United States and Japan is Robert Whiting’s 1989 book, You Gotta Have Wa. According to Whiting, despite virtually identical rules, American players arriving in Japan very quickly notice big differences in how the game is played and organized in Japan. The emphasis in the United States is on the role of the individual, but that is not as much the case in Japan, where the focus is on the strength and harmony of the group. The same rules apply for the worker on the assembly line as for the baseball player. Whiting insists that the key difference is wa—team spirit or unity. There is a much greater sense of playing for the team and much less emphasis on individual success in Japan than the United States. Whiting has compared the typical Japanese player’s ethos to that of samurai in earlier periods of the nation’s history. Whiting’s strong assertions regarding cultural differences have not gone unchallenged and are the subject of some controversy. Yale University Professor James Kelly, who has published extensively on Japanese baseball, recognizes

Whiting’s extensive knowledge of the game. He agrees that some professional baseball in Japan fits the samurai stereotype, “not entirely, not convincingly, not uniquely, but enough to feed the press mills and the front offices and the television analysts.” In fact, he says, this “spin” is part of the game. Our job is “not to dismiss this commentary as misguided (though much of it clearly is)” but to ask who is putting these ideas about, who is believing them, and why they are appealing: “The myths are essential to the reality. . . .” Japanese baseball is “not a window onto a homogenous and unchanging national character, but is a fascinating sight for seeing how these national debates and concerns play out—just as in the United States.” 1

Controversies notwithstanding, famous stars in Japanese baseball receive far lower salaries than in the US and are said to be valued for their contributions to their teams rather than for their individual exploits. Salaries in Japan for NPB players in 2014 ranged from US $44,000 to US $6 million, while the range in the United States for MLB players in the same year went from US $500,000 to US $26 million. 2

Most Japanese professional teams are owned by major corporations for public relations purposes. Team names reflect their owners rather than the cities the teams call home. For example, the Tokyo-based Yomiuri Giants are owned by Japanese media conglomerate, the Yomiuri Group. There is another downtown Tokyo team, the Yakult Swallows, who are owned by dairy probiotic drink company Yakult Hansha Co. Ltd. The Hiroshima Tōyō Carp are owned by the Tōyō Kōgyō Co. Ltd., the owners of Mazda. In a rather unique case, Japanese electronics and entertainment software company Nintendo was majority owner of the Seattle Mariners of the MLB in a similar fashion from 1992 to 2016.

When Americans come to play in Japan, they are often startled by the amount of time that they are expected to stay at the ballpark for what seems to them to be endless practice sessions that could last every day for ten or more hours. Players are expected to push themselves to the limit even when they have a day off and have to practice. Even injured American players are told to go out into the field with the team. Not to do so would, some say, destroy the team’s quintessential wa. Whiting feels that while Americans “play” ball, the Japanese really “work” at it, and suggests that a key difference between American and Japanese baseball is the idea of individual initiative. While American players certainly exhibit some team spirit, they are also playing for their own benefit. If they get a high average, win a lot of games pitching, or hit a ton of home runs, they can earn much higher salaries than are possible in Japan. Many American players are said to lack team loyalty and move on to new teams that offer better salaries and playing conditions. Japanese players at home show far greater team loyalty by playing with the same team much of the time. There are trades and the like, but there is far less emphasis on players changing teams.

The lure of American salaries has altered this tendency since many stars leave or consider abandoning their Japanese squad for the higher salaries and greater fame possible in the MLB. NPB teams have countered this through establishing a posting system between their league and the MLB, where MLB teams must pay a Japanese player’s team a fee in addition to negotiating the player’s contract for their team after the NPB team has made that player available to the MLB. This allows NPB teams to receive compensation for players leaving to play in the MLB.

However, Kelly and others have justifiably pointed out that in a game where individual statistics can make or break a player, there is always tension between personal and team goals. Also, as is the case in the US, different professional organizations have contrasting expectations and organizational styles that reflect the personalities of their owners. 3

Despite differences that preclude sweeping generalizations, Japanese teams are more regimented than their American counterparts. Many Japanese players see their team as family and are expected to show utmost respect and loyalty to their team. The team manager has absolute authority, and it is a major sin for any player to disobey or criticize the manager. Players who show a lack of wa, even if they are winning a lot of games with home runs or fine pitching, can be relegated to the bench or even removed from the team.

Although Whiting’s book was written in 1989, he feels that little has changed today. In 2012, he wrote:

Besuboru—or “yakyū” (field ball), as it is also called—is the national sport of Japan, but it is not the game that Americans know and love. Take a trip to a Japanese ballpark such as the Tokyo Dome, home of the Yomiuri Giants, and a completely different baseball culture will reveal itself. It’s not just the sake and squid and the beer girls in short shorts carrying draft beer kegs. It is the values of group harmony and discipline that mirror the society at large. Besuboru strategy focuses on tactics like the sacrifice bunt, something most American managers eschew. There is a decided lack of the hard slides and brushback pitches typical of Major League Baseball: A pitcher who accidentally hits a batter will politely tip his cap in apology. 4

Bobby Valentine’s Difficult Managing Experience in Japan: A Clash of Cultures

Bobby Valentine was a very successful Major League Baseball manager in the 1990s. He gained respect for his ability to turn mediocre teams into pennant contenders. His success in the United States persuaded Japanese baseball team The Chiba Lotte Marines to hire him to manage the team in 1995. Valentine’s experiences in Japan clearly illustrate several key cultural differences between American and Japanese baseball cultures. 5

The Marines had been perennial losers for a great many years, but the management hoped Valentine could transform them into championship contenders. Unfortunately, upon arriving in 1995, Valentine almost immediately clashed with a coaching staff determined to maintain the rigorous training program that dated back to the nineteenth century, when baseball was first introduced to Japan. It was a system that featured dawn-to-dusk spring training camps that were three to four times longer than in the US. Coaches focused on so-called “guts” drills, where players were made to field balls to the point of exhaustion and on occasion entailed corporal punishment for slackers.

Valentine introduced his own hybrid approach brought from his experience in the United States. During spring training, he conducted short, snappy practices limited to three hours a day, not nine, as in other camps. Valentine contended that the long drills during spring training so exhausted the players that their play suffered when the season began in April. During the season, he reduced the time spent in pregame workouts to conserve players’ energy for the games. He reduced the number and length of pregame meetings, and discouraged the use of the sacrifice bunt—long a favorite tactic of most Japanese managers—believing that a sacrifice was just a waste of an out.

Although the overall play of the Marines improved markedly in 1995, the clash between Valentine and his coaches grew in intensity. As the season ended, the coaches complained to management that Valentine did not make enough of an effort to comprehend the psychological value of the traditional approach to Japanese baseball. Management sided with the coaches and fired Valentine.

Although Valentine returned to Japan for another successful stint of managing the Marines from 2004 to 2009, including winning the Nippon Series in 2005, the traditionalist approach to management still appears to dominate Japanese baseball today. By 2009, Marines team management felt Valentine was not performing up to his expensive contract, and the team was losing money after making substantial upgrades to their stadium, including large, HD video screens. One Japanese critic claimed that Valentine’s easygoing American approach and lack of discipline had backfired and were destroying team harmony (or wa).

The Japanese professional leagues also tried a novel experiment with foreign umpires in 1997, when they hired a young but experienced American umpire, Mike DiMuro, to work in Japan. DiMuro immediately encountered trouble in Japan because his American interpretation of baseball rules often differed from those employed in Japan. His interpretation of the strike zone and what constituted a balk enraged Japanese players and management, and soon led to DiMuro’s firing.

Baseball’s Future in Japan and the US

Baseball will remain a highly popular sport in Japan and the US for a long time, but scholars, sportswriters, and, most importantly, sports fans know whether they admit it or not that the sport is no longer “the national pastime” in either nation. Japan is today experiencing a soccer boom, and many Japanese college students seem to prefer J1-League soccer over baseball. Japanese overall still regard baseball as the most popular sport, but the popularity of soccer is growing rapidly. According to one survey in 2005, 52 percent of respondants rated professional baseball as the most popular sport in Japan with only 23 percent of respondents selecting soccer. The same survey in 2013 showed 48 percent supporting baseball and 36 percent in favor of soccer. Today, soccer has replaced baseball as the favorite sport among middle school students in Japan according to surveys by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.6 The overall popularity of Japanese baseball is further diminished by the fact that many Japanese leading baseball stars have left for the “greener pastures” of Major League Baseball.

Football today is more popular than baseball with the American public. It is clear that the National Football League (NFL) dominates fan interest in the United States. For example, the 2014 AFC Wild Card game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Indianapolis Colts was watched by more people (27.6 million) than the World Cup Final (26.6 million), the NBA Finals (15.6 million), the World Series (13.8 million), and just about every other televised sporting event of 2014.7 In 2016, it is estimated that 111.9 million viewers tuned in to the 2016 Super Bowl 50 game, while only 14.7 million watched any part of the 2015 World Series. To make matters worse for Major League Baseball, the median age of Americans watching the World Series is approaching fifty-five, while the median age for the NFL’s Super Bowl is well under forty-five.8

The situation is somewhat better in Japan. Baseball remains the most popular team sport in Japan, with high school, university, and professional games attracting the public and dominating the media during the spring and summer months. However, as is the case in the United States, other sports such as professional soccer are attracting increasing numbers of younger viewers and fans.

Nevertheless, there is evidence that the “grand old game” will continue to thrive in both Japan and the United States. The recent surge of interest in baseball in South Korea, Taiwan, and even China has sparked further interest in Japan, especially when national teams play each other in tournament games. In the US, professional baseball, despite its secondary status compared to professional football, continues to be popular, and there is encouraging evidence Little League baseball is growing for the first time in many years in inner-city neighborhoods. The game is here to stay in both nations.

SUGGESTED ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Fitts, Robert K. Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. —. Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012. —. Mashi: The Unfulfilled Dreams of Masanori Murakami, the First Japanese Major Leaguer. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. Hayford, Charles W. “Samurai Baseball vs. Baseball in Japan.” Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 5, issue 4, no. 0 (2007): 1–10. Available at http://tinyurl.com/hsvfz42. Whiting, Robert. Chrysanthemum and the Bat: Baseball Samurai Style. New York: Avon Books, 1983.

NOTES 1. See Charles W. Hayford, “Samurai Baseball vs. Baseball in Japan,” The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 5, issue 4, no. 0 (2007): 1–10. Available at http://tinyurl.com/ hsvfz42. 2. Statistics for player salaries are used from NPB Tracker (www.npbtracker.com) and Yakyubaka (www.yakyubaka.com) for NPB while MLB data is from Spotrac (www. spotrac.com) and Statista (http://tinyurl.com/hexvyft). 3. Professor James Kelly, conversation with Lucien Ellington, June 24, 2016. 4. Robert Whiting, “Diamond Diplomacy,” The Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2012. 5. Much of the material in this section is derived from Robert Whiting’s article “Valentine’s Philosophy Brought Marines Glory, Money,” The Japan Times, January 24, 2010. 6. See “Explore Japan: Sports,” Kids Web Japan, accessed September 8, 2016, http:// tinyurl.com/zxhng5s. 7. Marissa Payne, “NFL Dominated Sports Fans Television in 2014,” The Washington Post, February 11, 2015. 8. Jonathan Mahler, “Bad News for Baseball: World Series Viewers Are Getting Older and Older,” Deadspin, last modified October 23, 2013, http://tinyurl.com/hh4wzk7.

DANIEL A. MÉTRAUX, Professor of Asian Studies, has been teaching in his field for forty years, thirty-three at Mary Baldwin College. His specialty is modern Japan and Korea, but he teaches a full spectrum of Asian Studies courses. Métraux is the author of fourteen books, and many book chapters and articles. He served as Editor of the Southeast Review of Asian Studies and as President of the Southeast Chapter of the Association for Asian Studies. He is Editor of the Virginia Review of Asian Studies. Twice a Fulbright Scholar, he has lived, taught, and studied in Japan for over five years. He received his doctorate in East Asian Studies from Columbia University. Métraux has also taught at Doshisha Women’s College in Japan and was a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University in 2002.

Additional Reading:

Japanese Baseball Collectibles

Much like in America, collecting baseball memorabilia became a popular hobby for Japanese as the sport grew in Japan. The first baseball card made in Japan appeared in 1897 as a circular cardboard disc for Menko, a game with cards displaying images from Japanese popular culture where players attempt to flip a flat-laying card with their own card. The card displayed a generic baseball player and is the only known piece of Japanese baseball collectible dated from the nineteenth century.

In the early 1900s, Japanese baseball clubs commonly produced postcards of their team as advertising, selling packs of cards featuring players posing, action game shots, and full team images. By the 1920s, Menko was on the rise again after a lapse in popularity and new card shapes were developed, including rectangles similar to typical American baseball cards and cards in the shape of their subject, such as an animal or a popular baseball player (for example, a giraffe card is shaped like a giraffe). Other popular baseball collectibles that emerged in the 1920s were bromides, mass-distributed photographs ranging from small and large sizes of popular singers, actors, and athletes; and furoku, large magazine inserts that measure up to a foot long.

In 1950, Japanese gum and candy stores, mirroring a US trend, began producing and packing Nippon Professional Baseball player cards with their products. Baseball cards became the most popular baseball memorabilia in Japan, especially as the popularity of Menko waned. While only two major gum companies in the US, Bowman Gum and Topps Chewing Gum, were granted rights to produce baseball cards by the MLB, a wide variety of Japanese candy manufacturers produced their own cards. Dagashiya, cheap Japanese candy stores, popularly distributed lower-quality baseball collectibles.

The Japanese company Kabaya Leaf produced the first large set of baseball cards in Japan in 1967, featuring 105 players, and only produced for one year. In 1973, the Calbee Food Company produced its first modern baseball card set of ninety-one cards. The company includes a baseball card in every pack of potato chips they produce—a trend they continue today. Calbee card sets have ranged in size from 1,436 in 1975–1976 to 144 cards in 1993, and remain the most widely collected baseball cards in Japan today.

MATTHEW TORMEY AND JEFFREY MELNIK

SOURCES Rob Fitts, “Vintage Japanese Baseball Cards,” Rob Fitts Baseball History, accessed July 11, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/zm6tkz2. John Gall and Gary Engel, Sayonara Home Run!: The Art of the Japanese Baseball Card (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006). Dennis King, “A History of Japanese Baseball Cards,” Japanese Baseball Card Quarterly (1991).

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Why is Baseball the Most Literary of Sports?

Lincoln michel goes deep into the prose of america’s pastime.

The World Series is here. Even though it’s the (ugh) Braves vs. the (ugh) Astros, it’s still time to put on a ballcap, break out of a box of Cracker Jack, and head on out to the old ballgame… or least stream one online. Baseball has been known as America’s “national pastime” since the 1850s. While the sport may have been surpassed by football in the TV ratings, there’s still something about wooden bats, leather gloves, and grass-and-dirt diamonds that feels distinctly American. And distinctly literary.

Baseball has a tremendous literary history, one that stretches back through decades and across literary genres. Baseball appears in postmodern comedies like Robert Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association (1968) , horror stories like Stephen King’s Blockade Billy (2010), fabulist novels such as W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe (1982), YA fantasy like Michael Chabon’s Summerland (2002), and works of literary realism like Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding (2011) and Emily Nemens’s The Cactus League (2020). Pick a literary genre and you can find baseball books.

I added my own contribution with my science fiction novel The Body Scout . My novel takes place in a future New York City ravaged by climate change, pandemics, and body modifications, in which genetic editing is as common as cellphone apps are today. When I started writing, I knew I wanted to explore questions of the body and technology and center it in a future sports league run by biotech and pharmaceutical corporations. I had a lot of hard decisions to make about worldbuilding and plot and character, but there’s one thing I didn’t think twice about: the sport would be baseball.

Sports and literature aren’t always the best pairing. Novelists are classically weirdos and introverts, more likely to be bullied by the jocks than compete with them. There are some hugely popular sports that have almost no novels about them. So why is it that baseball has had such an enduring literary appeal?

I. A Quick Look at the Literary History of Baseball

Baseball novels stretch back to the 19th   century with the first such novel apparently having been written by Noah Books in 1884 . As the sport grew in popularity, it found its way into the popular dime novels of the day. Zane Grey is mostly remembered for his Westerns, but the author had gone to college on a baseball scholarship and wrote several books of baseball fiction.

When we talk about baseball as literature in the more snooty sense, one of the earliest classics—and indeed arguably the classic baseball novel—is Bernard Malamud’s 1952 debut novel The Natural , which was based in part on the life of Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus. Malamud would go on to win the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for later work, and his debut helped cement baseball as a thoroughly literary topic. This novel was famous enough to be parodied in the classic The Simpsons episode “Homer at the Bat,” in which Homer—like Malamud’s Roy Hobbs—has a lucky bat carved by a lightning-struck tree.

Malamud’s friend (and sometimes rival), Philip Roth wrote his own baseball novel two decades later with 1973’s satirical The Great American Novel .

The great postmodernist trickster Robert Coover wrote his baseball novel in the early innings of his career. His second novel, The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (1968), followed an accountant who escapes from his dreary life into a dice-simulated baseball game.

I mentioned W.P. Kinsella’s sports fantasy novel Shoeless Joe (1982) above, although most know it better in its film adaptation form: Field of Dreams (1989). Kinsella leaned fully into the mythic quality of baseball in that novel, and he wrote other magic and mystic baseball works. His collection The Dixon Cornbelt League: And Other Baseball Stories (1993) includes, for example, a werewolf baseball story titled appropriately, “The Baseball Wolf.”

One can’t bring up the literary history of baseball without Don DeLillo’s phenomenal Underworld (1997), which opens with an extended fictionalized account of the New York Giant Bobby Thomson’s game-winning homer against the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951. The real life homerun was so famous it’s simply called the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World.” DeLillo’s own version was also famous enough, at least in literary circles, that it was eventually published as a standalone novella, Pafko at the Wall , in 2001.

More recently, Chad Harbach’s college baseball novel The Art of Fielding (2011) famously secured a massive $665,000 advance—extremely rare for a debut novel, much less one about sports—and was released to wide acclaim. In 2020, when COVID forced the MLB to play a shortened season in empty stadiums, we saw two more notable baseball novels: Gish Jen’s dystopian The Resisters saw baseball as location of resistance in an authoritarian future America while Emily Nemens’s The Cactus League explored the lives of a wide variety of characters during spring training.

These books are of course only a small sampling of the baseball literature out there. The Library of America’s Baseball: A Literary Anthology includes Amiri Baraka, John Updike, Annie Dillard, Robert Frost, Yusef Komunyakaa, and many more poets and novelists who found baseball making an appearance in their work.

II. The Quirks and Lingo of America’s Sport

Why does baseball translate so well to the page?

Part of the answer is the basic nature of the game. Baseball plays out largely in a series of one-on-one matchups with very clear dramatic stakes. Do you hit the ball or swing and miss? Get on base or strike out? Catch the ball or get an error? Not only are the stakes clear from moment to moment, but the game is played out over a lot of tension-building downtime punctuated with short bursts of dramatic action. While haters will say this makes the game boring to watch, it certainly makes it easier to render on the page. The chaotic non-stop action of sports like hockey and basketball are trickier to pull off in text.

Of course, the literary appeal of baseball runs much deeper. For one thing, the sport is simply unique. It has runs instead of points, managers instead of coaches, a diamond instead of a rectangle, and an offense that never gets to hold the ball. The uniforms feel time-warped from another era. It’s weird. But even more than the quirks, the language of baseball is everywhere in America.

We talk of “knocking it out of the park” when we do well and “striking out” when we fail. We “touch base” with old friends, guestimate “ballpark figures” in office meetings, and take a “rain check” to reschedule a plan. (Back in the day, if it rained too heavily to continue the game fans would be given a “rain check” voucher to use at another game.) We separate things into the “big leagues” and “bush leagues.” Sometimes life “throws a curveball” when something comes right “out of left field.” Other times we have to “play hardball” with someone or apologize for talking too much “inside baseball.”

Baseball’s long cultural importance in American life means that the sport has given us far more terms, phrases, and idioms that most other sports. Its language is part of America’s language—and what are authors if not people attuned to language?

III. Baseball as the Flexible American Metaphor

All of the above combines with baseball’s long and storied history, which has often dovetailed into larger American narratives. Jackie Robinson’s breaking of the racist color line. Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech . Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe. The 1990s steroid era. Baseball also winds its way through people’s lives, from elementary school t-ball to middle age office softball leagues. It’s perhaps the sport that best cuts across class, race, gender, age, and the urban/rural divide (even as it’s infused with the conflicts of those categories).

So baseball in literature tends to stand in for America. It might represent an earnest nostalgia, such as in Kinsella’s work. It may reflect the small anxieties of average Americans as in Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association. Or it might be used to examine the great forces of history that shaped the country, as in DeLillo’s Underworld when J. Edgar Hoover is informed of Soviet nuke tests during a game, or in Roth’s The Great American Novel when the Cold War is fought out over a fictional baseball league. In literature, baseball can represent any part of American life the author needs.

Elements used in literature accrue meaning the more they are used. The fact that baseball has appeared in so many literary works—not to mention films like A League of Their Own and The Sandlot and the countless other movies, video games, comics, and television shows—has imbued it with extra meaning. This is why, I think, baseball is at home in a horror novel or science fiction TV show as it is a Pulitzer Prize’s winners work. It’s a flexible metaphor, one artists can use to explore all different aspects of America. This is why I knew my novel would be about baseball. I wanted to tap into that rich and storied tradition.

So this World Series, if you’re looking for something to do between innings why not pick up a baseball novel and read?

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Essay on Baseball

500+ words essay on  baseball.

Baseball is a bat-and-ball game that two opposing teams play. To put it into simpler words, it is one of the most loved games of America. It is as big as cricket in India. Americans are crazy about this game. Therefore, one might wonder what makes this game such a big hit amongst Americans? This essay will aim to clear that by describing the game.

All About Baseball

There are nine periods of play in a baseball game. Each of these periods is known as an inning. Similarly, when an inning ends, the team with the highest runs becomes the winner. In this game, the pitcher will throw a ball towards the batter who will be playing from the opposing team.

The batter will attempt to hit the ball into the field. When they hit the ball and run around a series of bases, they will score runs. However, this must be done before a field player puts them out.

So, you see that it might look like just any other ball game. It has a ball, bat as well as players. But, the people of America don’t consider it just that. They do not wish to bring this game down to simply as a ‘hit and run’ game.

While a five-year-old child will easily understand the meaning of this game, there also lies a subtlety. This very same subtlety is what attracts older people as well. While some may find it to be slow, Americans believe that the slow pace is what makes it interesting.

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Baseball- Not Just a Sport but a Passion

Baseball is not simply a sport for people, especially Americans. It is much more than that, it’s their passion. If people are not watching it live, they’re watching it in pubs or at their homes. The sound of the cracking gloves and ball hitting the bat is like a melody to the fans of the sport .

The game which entertains most people is that has a low score or no score until late in the game. Moreover, the homerun is one of the most anticipated events of the match. The home run is not simply about the great hit but also the speedy running and sacrifice.

In other words, this game gives an adrenalin rush to Americans. You can view it as an opera. The buildup is quite systematic that will occupy you till the very end. The climax is the ultimate reward which is incomplete without a slow buildup.

Alternatively, it is also about strategy. For a lot of Americans, it is a tradition. People spend time with their loved ones at baseball games. Kids look forward to going to the games with their fathers .

Moreover, it also has the ability to bring an end to long-time rivalries. All in all, it’s about the great feeling it brings for one and all. Baseball got its community status from Americans only. Thus, it went on to achieve a national identity.

Everything ranging from baseball caps to tee shirts is a common sighting in America. In New York, there is a Baseball Hall of Fame that is known for immortalizing the great players of the game from the past to the present.

Thus, the game is all about passion. It can make a passerby standstill on their feet to watch the homerun. Similarly, it can diminish rivalries and bring people together. It is a passionate game with passionate fans.

FAQ on Essay on Baseball

Question 1: Where is Baseball most popular?

Answer 1: Baseball has the most popularity in the United States. The people are ardent lovers of the game in America and have made it a popular game.

Question 2: Baseball is the national game of which country?

Answer 2: It is the national game of the Dominican Republic.

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Power Rankings: History-making moment leads to new No. 1

Will Leitch

These are team power rankings, not hitter power rankings; we have those elsewhere here at MLB.com , don’t you worry. But it is impossible to write these power rankings every week and not be blown away by the amount of superstar talent on display right now. This week featured one reminder of that after another, from Shohei Ohtani reaching a 40-40 season to Aaron Judge hitting his 50th and 51st homers to Bobby Witt Jr. trying to hit above .400 at home. The top four teams in these rankings have been the top four for weeks now, in varying order. The cream just keeps rising to the top, no matter what.

These rankings, as always, are compiled from rankings from MLB.com contributors whose names you can find at the bottom of this (and every) piece, but the words are mine. If you dislike the rankings, yell at all of us. But if you dislike the words, feel free to yell at me .

1. Dodgers (previously: 4) Season high: 1 | Season low: 6 When we all tell the stories of Shohei Ohtani decades from now, recounting all the incredible things he did, don’t forget this one: The day after he became the first MLB player to ever reach the 40-40 mark in August, he threw his first bullpen session off a mound since having Tommy John surgery. “It went well,” Dave Roberts said, in case you weren’t scared enough already.

2. Yankees (previously: 2) Season high: 1 | Season low: 7 It is really, really hard not just to type “Aaron Judge Aaron Judge Aaron Judge Aaron Judge Aaron Judge Aaron Judge Aaron Judge” over and over in the Yankees’ blurb this week: What he is doing is something that, quite possibly, no one alive has ever seen in baseball. It is possible he is having the best season by a right-handed hitter in baseball history. And there have been a lot of right-handed hitters in baseball history!

3. Phillies (previously: 1) Season high: 1 | Season low: 8 It really is a good thing that neither the Braves nor the Mets have been on any sort of hot streak lately, because the Phillies have left the door cracked open for both of them. The Phillies have had a lot of slack in the division race lately, and they still haven’t used up all of it. We’ll see how much they have left when they face the Braves for four games in Philly this weekend; they get three games against the Astros heading into Thursday.

Have the latest news, ticket information, and more from the Brewers and MLB delivered right to your inbox.

4. Orioles (previously: 3) Season high: 1 | Season low: 5 Jackson Holliday was 0-for-20 before his massive three-run sixth-inning double on Saturday to beat the Astros. Holliday’s tear upon returning to the Majors in late July had slowed to a stop, but he’s a streaky player by nature, at least at this stage in his career: Don’t be the least bit surprised if he goes on another run now. The Orioles can just hope he’s on a hot streak come October.

5. Brewers (previously: 6) Season high: 5 | Season low: 19 How are the Brewers doing this? How are they better than they were last year despite how much they’ve lost? There are many reasons, but here’s a quiet one: Heading into Sunday, they led all of baseball with runs scored with two outs, with 262. That tells you a lot about how they are winning despite all their injuries and defections.

6. Astros (previously: 9) Season high: 5 | Season low: 26 A quiet key contributor to the Astros this season has been former World Series hero Jeremy Peña. He is one homer short of a 15-15 season, and here’s a fun fact from MLB Network’s research team: “Peña’s 12.1 WAR through his first three seasons is 10th highest by a SS in the last 50 seasons. He could surpass Cal Ripken Jr. (8th, 12.4) and Trevor Story (7th, 13.1) before the year ends.” Didn’t realize that, did you?

7. Guardians (previously: 5) Season high: 2 | Season low: 21 The seasons that Aaron Judge and Bobby Witt Jr. are having shouldn’t take away from José Ramírez -- who honestly should have won the MVP back in 2020 -- making his own MVP case. He probably can’t compete with those two in 2024, but he is still having the best year of his career, on pace to set career highs in homers, RBIs and steals. He still has a chance at a 40-40 season of his own too.

8. Diamondbacks (previously: 9) Season high: 8 | Season low: 19 The Diamondbacks have been so hot lately that they’re now on pace for 92 wins, which would be their fourth-best winning percentage in franchise history … and better than the 2001 and 2023 teams, both of whom reached the World Series.

9. Padres (previously: 8) Season high: 7 | Season low: 21 If the Padres are going to make the playoffs -- and right now Fangraphs gives them a 92 percent chance to do just that -- they’ll need all the pitching they can muster. Which is why it’s good news that Yu Darvish is out facing hitters and ramping up for what looks like a mid-September return. Which might be just in time.

10. Royals (previously: 9) Season high: 6 | Season low: 24 The Royals have a most important series in Cleveland starting on Monday, but right now, the Royals are intriguing for more than just what their team is doing. If you’re on Aaron Judge Triple Crown watch, the only thing stopping him from breezing to one is Bobby Witt Jr., who is 12 points ahead of him in batting average … but the gap is closing.

11. Twins (previously: 7) Season high: 7 | Season low: 23 The Twins have a nice opportunity to make some real headway in the AL Central this week: The Royals and Guardians play four games against each other in three days while they have a homestand against the Braves. If they win, they’re going to gain on somebody.

12. Braves (previously: 13) Season high: 1 | Season low: 13 Charlie Morton has aged enough that he’s now the same age as (and a former teammate of) many of the guys who come back for Alumni Night. He had a vintage Morton start in front of those old teammates on Saturday, which must have made them feel even older. That’s the thing about being Charlie Morton: He gets older, but his current teammates stay the same age.

13. Red Sox (previously: 14) Season high: 11 | Season low: 22 The Red Sox’s Wild Card hopes are barely hanging on at this point, with every tough loss hitting a little harder this time of year. But here’s something happy: Rich Hill threw two hitless innings over the weekend, pitching against players half his age (and even a little bit younger than that). It’ll be fun to see him if he gets back to the Majors … and he may well help.

14. Mets (previously: 14) Season high: 10 | Season low: 25 Can you believe Francisco Lindor hasn’t made an All-Star Game since 2019? He’s having an MVP-level season, again, and though Shohei Ohtani is going to make it harder for him to win the award, he’s a clear top-three vote getter … and maybe even higher if the Mets make the playoffs. This would be the sixth time he was in the top 10 of MVP voting, and the third season in a row.

15. Mariners (previously: 15) Season high: 6 | Season low: 21 It was obviously a tumultuous week in Seattle with the firing of manager Scott Servais, replaced by former Mariners catcher Dan Wilson. It’s a long road back to the top of the AL West, but Wilson is looking at the right guy as inspiration: Lou Piniella. “He demanded our best every day,” Wilson said at his opening press conference. “I think those are things that hopefully I can instill as well.”

16. Giants (previously: 16) Season high: 12 | Season low: 23 It was very strange, and worrisome, to see Camilo Doval sent to the Minors because of his struggles, so it was encouraging that his return on Saturday went so well. He escaped a jam in the seventh and added a scoreless eighth in a win over the Mariners. He doesn’t have his closer job back, but he looked like himself again: It’s a start.

17. Cubs (previously: 18) Season high: 8 | Season low: 22 The Cubs crawled over .500 for the first time since June, and into second place in the NL Central, with a dominant 14-2 win on Saturday. It might be a little bit late for the Cubs to crawl back into the playoff chase, but the run of late looks more like the team Cubs fans thought they were getting.

18. Rays (previously: 19) Season high: 9 | Season low: 24 The little Taj Bradley boomlet may be fading. The starter was fantastic in July, going 3-1 with a 1.45 ERA, but he has bottomed out in August, going 0-3 with a 8.14 ERA.

19. Cardinals (previously: 17) Season high: 12 | Season low: 27 A dimming season got even dimmer on Saturday when Willson Contreras, by far the Cardinals' best hitter this season, went on the IL with a broken finger. It’s the second fluke upper body injury for Contreras this season -- a bat broke his arm behind the plate back in May -- and is just the latest problem to befall a team that may end up with its second losing season in a row for the first time since 1994-95.

20. Reds (previously: 20) Season high: 11 | Season low: 25 The Reds got some relieving news this week when they discovered that Hunter Greene’s injury did not involve any UCL damage, only inflammation. That probably won’t help much the rest of this year -- it’ll be a couple of weeks until he would even try to throw -- but he should be fine for next season … and maybe even a late-season run if the Reds need him.

21. Tigers (previously: 21) Season high: 7 | Season low: 24 Are the Tigers going to fight their way over .500? If they can sneak over the mark, they’ll end a streak of seven consecutive losing seasons, the third-longest stretch in all of baseball. The only teams with longer losing streaks are the Royals (eight), who are on the verge of ending that very skid, and Angels (also eight).

22. Rangers (previously: 22) Season high: 4 | Season low: 23 Have we seen Max Scherzer for the last time in a Rangers uniform? It’s possible. He was scratched before a rehab start this weekend and will be “evaluated” moving forward. Meanwhile, the Rangers are now a full 11 games under .500.

23. Pirates (previously: 18) Season high: 9 | Season low: 25 There may have been some sour feelings when Barry Bonds left Pittsburgh more than 30 years ago, but there weren’t any over the weekend when Bonds, alongside Jim Leyland and Manny Sanguillen, was inducted into the Pirates Hall of Fame. “I was shocked it was happening,” Bonds said. “It's nice coming back to a place where it started for me.”

24. Blue Jays (previously: 25) Season high: 8 | Season low: 25 Bowden Francis was this close to pitching the first Blue Jays no-hitter since Dave Stieb’s way back in 1990, losing it in the ninth inning against the Angels. He had just won AL Player of the Week the week before … and considering he has given up just three runs in four starts in August, Player of the Month may be coming his way next.

25. Nationals (previously: 24) Season high: 20 | Season low: 27 The Dylan Crews era has arrived. The MLB Pipeline No. 3 prospect, as you may have noticed if you have looked at MLB.com at all in the last few hours, is making his debut Monday night against the Yankees. That lineup is going to be something to watch for the next few years, to say the very least.

26. A’s (previously: 26) Season high: 20 | Season low: 30 There are only two A’s in the last 20 years to have two 30-homer seasons: Khris Davis and, as of Saturday, Brent Rooker. Rooker is actually having a much better year than he did in 2023 when he made the All-Star Game: He’s likely going to end up with a 35 HR, 100-RBI season. He’s quietly one of the happiest stories in baseball over the last couple of years.

27. Angels (previously: 27) Season high: 24 | Season low: 28 It has been a little under-noticed that, with all the Angels’ issues this year, Zach Neto has emerged as a player they can count on moving forward. He’s actually fifth among all MLB shortstops with 4.6 WAR.

28. Rockies (previously: 28) Season high: 27 | Season low: 29 MLB.com’s Thomas Harding had a fun story this week about Ezequiel Tovar -- who is quickly becoming the Rockies’ signature star -- being the voice for the passenger trains at the Denver airport. It’s the year of the shortstop, and Tovar is one of the more underappreciated ones. And now you can listen for him when you’re traveling through Denver.

29. Marlins (previously: 29) Season high: 23 | Season low: 30 The Marlins got a little glimpse of the future this week with the callup of Connor Norby, who has manned third base since arriving on Monday. He hit his first homer as a Marlin on Saturday and looks like he’s not going to be dislodged from third base for a long time.

30. White Sox (previously: 29) Season high: 28 | Season low: 30 The only real positive news you’re going to find with the White Sox is happening down on the farm, so let’s focus on the professional debut of No. 5 overall pick Hagen Smith. He threw three scoreless innings for High-A Winston-Salem on Saturday night, striking out four and giving up only two hits. Good start, kid!

Voters: Nathalie Alonso, Anthony Castrovince, Mark Feinsand, Will Leitch, Travis Miller, Sweeny Murti, Arturo Pardavila, Mike Petriello, Manny Randhawa, Andrew Simon, David Venn, Zac Vierra.