The Sporting Past in American History

Linda J. Borish

Reprinted from the OAH Magazine of History
7 (Summer 1992). ISSN 0882-228X
Copyright (c) 1992, Organization of American Historians
 

The study of the history of sport, recreation, and leisure facilitates a more comprehensive understanding of the experiences of the American people. Interconnections between sport and other aspects of American culture reflected in historical topics include: sport and religion; sport and the search for community; sport and modernization; sport and health reform movements; sport and gender issues; sport and race relations; sport and rural culture; sport and technology; sport and education; sport and politics; and sport and consumerism. The contributors demonstrate in this issue of the OAH Magazine of History that the integration of sport, recreation, and leisure into the study of American history illuminates critical issues in social, cultural, economic, and political history. The articles and lesson plans in this issue examine ways that social class, gender, race, ethnicity, and region have influenced the formation of a sporting culture over time in the United States.

The literature on sport history continues to flourish, and history instructors seeking to integrate sport history into their courses will find a variety of materials available. Scholarly journals such as The Journal of Sport History and The International Journal of the History of Sport offer various perspectives useful for the academic study of sport in a historical context. Steven Riess points out important scholarship in American sport history in his historiographical essay. Works in sport history include monographs on individual sports like baseball, boxing, and basketball, as well as other works examining the quest for exercise and physical health for men and women, the growth of intercollegiate sports, and sport and leisure in specific time periods. Riess's essay indicates how themes in sport history intersect with major topics in American history. In addition to the secondary sources, an array of primary sources exists for the analysis of sport in American history courses. The authors of the articles and lesson plans in this number use a wide range of primary documents such as letters, diaries, newspapers, periodicals, oral history, graphics and paintings, guide books, advice literature, autobiographies, and local history materials. Whether a teacher examines colonial life or contemporary life in America, the use of primary sources about sport will enhance the students' understanding of American history and culture.

While popular mythology in American life often suggests sport represents the American dream of social mobility and equality, several of the contributors explain how sporting experiences reveal the lack of opportunity for many people in the past. In fact, sport has existed as a contested arena with conflicts shaped by social factors like class, gender, race, and ethnicity limiting upward mobility and maintaining inequality. Even from the founding of the American colonies, leaders and colonialists debated the place of sport, recreation, and leisure in society. Reading Nancy Struna's essay on the labor-leisure relationship in early America reveals how politics, economics, class, religion, and reform were intertwined in the transformation of work and leisure in the seventeenth century. Students of history might examine King James's "Declaration of Sports" from 1618 in order to explore the conflict between the King and the Puritans about the view of sport and religious ideology. Struna's essay communicates the significance of leisure and work in the development of the American colonies.

Important questions about sport and American society focus on baseball in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Baseball as the national pastime expresses the ideology and reality of American sport. Baseball retains a prominent place in American history, and the essays on baseball in this issue address various facets of the national game. Ronald Briley explores American cultural values embodied in baseball and the tensions linked to changes in baseball and the larger society in his lesson plan. Baseball holds the promises of fair play, democracy, and sportsmanship. As Briley argues, however, these ideals do not always mesh with the reality of the game when scandals emerge, business values dominate, and participation in the game is not open to all Americans. Indeed, the article contributed by Jules Tygiel on the Negro Leagues explores the segregation of blacks in baseball and the lack of equality in sports during the Jim Crow era. Today, sport and race relations remain important historical topics--concerning events on the playing field and in management offices. Baseball in American life has engaged ordinary Americans as well as presidents of the United States. James Per-coco's lesson plan on baseball and World War II, which draws on the correspondence between Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, indicates the central place of baseball on the home front even during wartime. The call to "play ball" during the war years manifests gender and race issues. In the war period, the professional All-American Girls' Baseball League formed, and the question of the integration of baseball loomed on the homefront. Teachers and students can find a variety of perspectives on the study of baseball.

Boxing, too, represents an important topic in the American sporting past. Controversy surrounding boxing existed from the antebellum period, as Elliott Gorn shows in his analysis of the first championship prizefight in America. Boxing aroused the concerns of white middle-class reformers worried about the rowdy bachelor types who gambled and drank at the contests. While some hailed boxing as appropriate for developing manliness and physical health, critics argued it was a violent sport and should be prohibited. Moreover, Gorn interprets the ethnic and class tensions surrounding the first American championship prizefight. During the Progressive Era, as in the antebellum period, boxing generated heated controversy. In his lesson plan, Peter Adams discusses the cultural meanings of the sport communicated in George Bellows's paintings. Race, class, ethnicity, and gender are also part of the story of the boxing world and Progressivism.

Gender shapes the experiences of men and women in the history of sport, and several pieces here analyze gender as a critical factor in sporting activities. Definitions of domesticity and manliness have been linked to images and perceptions about the body and physical health. Women's sport history connects to larger issues like gender roles and expectations, women and health, the quest for equality, and women and reform. Jane Curry and Marjorie Bingham examine these themes in their lesson plan which looks at women's participation in basketball and bicycle riding. Sport heroines often faced scrutiny about their gender identity. Susan Cayleff explores the sporting experiences and influence of "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias, the great female athlete of the twentieth century who excelled in several sports and Olympic competition. The role of the female athlete and the debate about competition for women in sports remain important subjects in American women's history. The year 1992 marks the twentieth anniversary of Title IX of the Educational Amendment Act of 1972, proposed to eliminate sexual discrimination in high school and college athletics. Instructors might explore the growth of women's participation in sport and assess with their students the impact of Title IX on their own schools.

Certainly the relationship between sport and education deserves attention in American history courses. At a time when scandals in both high school and college athletics seem commonplace, teachers, administrators, and other critics of sport utter cries for reform of scholastic and inter-collegiate athletics. Understanding the historical context of high school and college sports will be beneficial to those studying and debating the status of sports in educational institutions. J. Thomas Jable gives a historical view of scholastic sport in his lesson plan. Jable investigates the evolution of high school sports in the late-nineteenth century and the significance of high school sports in the late-twentieth century. Historians might probe the history of intercollegiate sport, beginning with the first intercollegiate athletic contest in 1852, a rowing match between Harvard and Yale. The study of sport might look at who should control college athletics, the role of commercialism, community identity, and the impact of technology on sport.

In national and international events, sport plays a major role. And as the world comes to Atlanta for the 1996 Olympic Games, the centennial of the modern Olympic Games, history instructors and students will find it interesting to explore the role of the United States in the Olympic movement. From the study of the playing fields and gymnasiums of the past to the modern Olympic Games, instructors of history can enhance their knowledge of important themes and events in American history. Sport history and American history make a winning team in the classroom.

The guest editor would like to acknowledge the support of the Burnham-Macmillan History Endowment, Department of History, Western Michigan University during preparation of this issue of the OAH Magazine of History.

Linda J. Borish is Assistant Professor of History at Western Michigan University. She has published articles on American women's health and sport history in The International Journal of the History of Sport and Agricultural History and teaches the American Sport History course in the Honors College at Western Michigan University.