When Baseball Went White by Ryan A. Swanson

Author:Ryan A. Swanson [Ryan A. Swanson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780803235212
Publisher: UNP - Nebraska
Published: 2014-03-25T20:32:04+00:00

The sheer amount of coverage papers gave to nonsectionalism and nonpoliticism made it obvious that baseball was, well, indeed sectional and political. The prior military affiliations of players did matter. And if anything, the Richmonders seemed to be the only participants honest enough to admit that baseball was a vicarious fight over issues of race and sectionalism.

In one season baseball had become a gauge of Southern resistance to Reconstruction. Richmond’s white baseball organizations gained popularity by espousing the city’s antebellum notions of what it meant to be a white Southern gentleman. A few days after the Nationals left town, the Dispatch commented at length on the rapid rise of baseball in the city. The editor doubted the ballplayers would give up the game even as winter temperatures descended upon the region. “Baseball is not only a fashion, but an enthusiasm,” the editor reported. The paper praised the early accomplishments of the city’s baseball players, but also reminded Richmond men of the other challenges at hand. “Their ‘runs’ and ‘innings’ are great. If their ‘innings’ could only indicate the financial reconstructedness of the South we would flourish. . . . If the Radicals could only take to ‘base-ball,’ it would be a national blessing. They would be diverted for a while from deviltry. But let the boys go it on the base-ball game. It won’t harm them, while it will help to develop their manhood.”28 The Maryland Base Ball Club of Baltimore arrived in Richmond only days after the Nationals left. Again, the Richmond Times referred to political conservatism to assure its readers that the visit was acceptable. “Most of the gentlemen composing the visiting club served in the Southern army during war, and are really exponents of the Southern element of Baltimore, to which element we are indebted for much sympathy and material aid,” the Times reported on the day of the Maryland Club’s arrival.29 Like the Nationals before them, the Marylanders had their way with the Richmond competition.30

1867

While baseball fever seemed only to intensify in 1867 in Washington DC and Philadelphia, Richmonders reconsidered their role in the “national pastime.” Baseball games continued, but at a less frequent clip than in 1866. Plans for a grand baseball tournament in the spring of 1867, the first of its kind to be hosted in Richmond, had to be scrapped due to lack of interest from the city’s clubs.31 And by 1868 reports of baseball games in Richmond appeared only irregularly in Richmond papers.

Reconciliationist promises dominated the baseball headlines, but beneath the surface the Southern ballplayers probably also noted the paternalistic and condescending treatment occasionally directed their way by national papers such as the Ball Players’ Chronicle. It was as if, even while trying to be inclusive, the Northern baseball community’s true feelings occasionally seeped out. In late-June 1867, for example, the Ball Players’ Chronicle printed what it probably considered to be a fair assessment of both the backwardness and the brimming possibilities of the South. “The time has arrived,” the Chronicle reported

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