mansfield, are all catholic. the whole country is taken over by papists and nobody notices. so, mr. patricia, in a sense, 1960 was a new mindset, a new frontier. it was a new frontier. and when you see the you know, it's it's it sort of coincidental. i think so many things are happening at once in the sixties. there's jack kennedy in the white house and his push toward youth and ask moving forward and ask not what your country can do for you, but also changes in the roman catholic church with vatican two, the youth revolution with rock and roll, and the beatles and the pill and the sexual revolution. all all happening at once. and it's a question of of how

much each is creating a synergy. and by jack kennedy certainly is a new frontier in terms of american politics because it's going to put create the impetus for doing things in different ways moving forward, not in a old mannish sort of way of eisenhower and truman, but that you're going to have the best and the brightest and the youngest in charge. and sometimes that doesn't work out as well as they wanted, i.e., vietnam well, that is a brief and quick look at the election of 1960. our guest is ben david pietrusza, president, historian and author of this book 1960 lbj versus jfk versus nixon the epic campaign that forged three presidencies. mr. patricia, we appreciategrea.

this is a difference setting for us, but i hope you guys had a wonderful week. we're going to dive right into the material today because we're going to try to keep it to about an hour conversation is going to be all about baseball and the chapter that i had you read for today had quite a lot of material in it. we will try break down, as always, the sort of most important themes and the most kind of relevant details that we're going to try to emphasize here today. as usual, we'll start off some teaser questions, such questions. did the pitch clock destroy baseball soul or did it save it why are baseball players the most superstitious weirdos of all athletes across? the spectrum of sports and the game of baseball still relevant nowadays? or is it past its prime of those

readings that short? there's no shorter pieces that i had you read. were certainly trying to ask that question about how baseball maintain its relevance in the current moment. but as is often the case, i want to start things off by a little bit of conversation brainstorming. i want to open with it with a very particular question and feel free to take this in any direction that you like. does baseball seem old to you? if so, yes if y if if what? if yes. why? if no, why not? yes, i'll i'll say yes because. when you think about like some of the best baseball, you think back like 100 years ago, like someone like babe ruth, mickey mantle, ted williams, but if you're thinking about like football or basketball, don't think you're really thinking that far back. maybe you're going to like the eighties or nineties, but with baseball, i feel like you can dated back. so far. so it makes you think it's a lot older. so the stars come from more from

yesteryear than the present moment other folks on this question does baseball seem old if so why if not, why not other impressions on just your gut impression? does baseball have an old feel to it in some way? yeah, i think just because of the stadiums are still standing compared to other sports that have newer stadiums. so these sort of architectural monuments have a place in history in some way. i saw another hand over here. yeah, i was also going to say yes. i thought like kind of like fan base, too. there are a lot of like not to say that all of baseball has an older fan base, but i think more than most sports it does like the generation you know cause bigger they're absolutely fact we're going to add some data and then a little bit in class just precisely about that yeah there's a way in which the core idea of the mandelbaum chapter that i had you read for today is the idea that baseball is intimately connected with the

past, that it returns us to an earlier, simpler time, that it's very backward looking. and so the question becomes, why is tradition so up in baseball? and mandelbaum offers us as a starting point the notion that baseball evokes both childhood and 19th century life as well. right. why does baseball in particular evoke child boyhood? let's take that first one. right why and how is baseball intimately connected to in a way that other sports are less connected to childhood? well, let's tease this through. what tell you go ahead. well, going off our discussion the other day, there are plenty of movies that feature children as the stars in, these baseball films and aren't those in football or basketball? i mean, baseball is like mike, but, you know, football not doesn't have the same kind of meaning as a baseball child's movie. all right. so hollywood has caste with a

childish right. and that could be one reason. right? but let's think about this as well. yeah, we got it talked a lot about like the feeling of nostalgia in baseball for for children and for adults. so i think most of us in here probably played t-ball or something or little league of some sort and even if that's not the sport we eventually go into, we have sort of experience around it when we're younger absolutely and when what time of year are you playing baseball as a child? like the spring summer, like warmer months. why would you be so nostalgic for summer? why is a child? is summer better than other months of the no school? there's no school, right? what is better than a time of year without school, without work, without the routines of this of expected daily life. right. and so there's a way in which baseball is connected to that time period that lacks responsibility, that lacks those kind of imposed disciplines of school or perhaps the working is a little bit lighter in summer.

baseball is also, according to mandelbaum intimately connected the 1800s and 19th century life baseball is born at a point in history when a way of life is largely from professional or from from from the from the from the experience of most people in the united states. as we talked about a few times this semester, the 1800s were the period when the industrial revolution kicked in and a society that had been rural, more agricultural so more traditional be began. right. in other words, the industrial revolution was transforming the world and. the frontier was disappearing, that which the frontier stood for in of the american ethos and the american way of life, wide open spaces and all of this traditional agrarian farming experience is disappearing from people's lives and people's jobs. and it is at that moment that

baseball comes into existence. and so, according to mandelbaum, in a very kind of clever analysis that he does in this chapter, it is the case that baseball has a bunch of different features that if you look at baseball, you see all of these dimensions of ancient, of agrarian life, of a life before the modern world came into existence. and let's tease some of those different dimensions that he identifies. here. one major difference between and the other major teams was that for more than 100 years there was no clock whatsoever in the game. now, of course, that changed last. we'll talk about that in a little while. but why would it be the case that a sport not having clock in the way that football has clock in a way that basketball a clock. why is that? why why would feature of baseball take people back to a pre-modern take people back to the era of agrarian ism that

kind of occurs its own pace like there was in rawls saying like move faster move slower you kind of go however fast slow you wanted to. it's slow. it's leisurely, right? it takes own time. traditional society would have been the same way people, were not nearly as rushed as you are nowadays. people are not nearly as driven by the clock. right. slaves to the clock got to get out of here at a certain moment in time because that's what the clock in the schedule dictates. baseball for more than a century did not operate at that pace. and that contrasted with the sort of rush footballs and intensely rush, can you guys watch football or are you just on edge? the whole time? right. because like, oh, my god, there's like multiple clocks happening at once. like, are they going to beat the clock baseball? chills you out. baseball takes you back. that kind of agrarian pace. life, it's leisurely, it's unhurried in this way. but baseball also follows the natural cycles of the agrarian

world. what do we mean by that? well, a couple of different facets here. right. first of all, baseball for most of its history was played during the daytime. for most of human, you could only do when the sun was out. electricity is a relatively recent invention in the course of human history and similar to how humans had work for most of human history, baseball did its work during the daytime as well. what else about baseball? why is it that the seasons of baseball correspond with the natural world correspond with farming world? why is it that baseball, in terms of its seasons, offers metaphor for agrarian. in play? during the longest days of the year? there's more light there. they play during the longest days of the year. what about the seasons that baseball mirrors the world? you couldn't really play during the winter similar to when you farm? exactly when does baseball

start? in the spring. when the natural world is coming back to life? when does baseball finish in the fall? where everything dies slowly, right, precise, like the natural world as well, right? and also where. okay, so the seasons, right? but where where is baseball played in the winter? where strictly do players play during winter months? oh, it's central arica in the south. exactly right what else flies south in winter winter? like birds. birds, baseball players are like birds. they fly south in winter when the weather does not permit them to play during the frigid new england winters. like we like winter here. so so this the cycles of baseball near this kind of agrarian farmland and experience. secondly the spaces which baseball takes place could be described as premodern or traditional in some way.

what it about what is it about the spaces of baseball like when you look at those pictures on the right there, how is it that those evoke the traditional way of work? how is it those bring us the sort of things that people for most of human history, the grass is kind of kept definitely mirrors a farm and how you have to cultivate it really specifically what is the what is the texture of the surface of baseball played on grass and dirt farmland texture agrarian textures right it reproduce juices for us the esthetic of the ancient world and how people did their work at that time. think the names of where baseball games are played. fenway park, wrigley field. these are all meant to sort of induce some feeling of baseball being agrarian in some fashion. another and this is a little bit

trickier point that mandelbaum is getting at, but let's see if we could try to make sense of it. there's a way in which baseball stadia and the fields players of baseball play on are not standardized. like other sports. what are some examples of that? what first of all, what do we mean when we say that baseball? when we say that baseball spaces are not standardized compared to other sports? i think every part has different dimensions for one another. exactly right. every park has different dimensions. certain parks like here in boston have giant wall in left field for a period of time. the houston astros completely insane. they had a field in the middle and they had a hill up in the middle of center field. and they actually had a they had a flagpole, the field of play, which was fans were always worried that some center fielder going to clock his head out on that field on that pole anyway. the point being is that these non standardized that baseball is played in are similar to the non standardized architectural

of the pre-modern world back the era of farming and the agrarian kind of landscape. do you think people came to villages that were built like that cookie cutter housing, track housing that way no each unique space that people found themselves in was different based upon the local region, the local flavor right. baseball mirrors that. well, right. baseball is unique in the way that pre-modern spaces unique as well. mandelbaum also talks how baseball has certain and certain skills that map onto the natural ancient, agrarian, traditional world. what are the tools of baseball made out of. you? said wood. right? wood. leather. where does leather come from? the animal kingdom.

right. so baseball in the materia, oils of baseball are more are drawn from the natural world or drawn from the agrarian world. what kind skills do you need in baseball that are different from other sports? a certain habit of mind a certain sense of reflexes you have to have. i mean, just think about think about the basic motion of baseball, right? like this motion here. when in human history would have been useful to, have been able to do that motion in particular for your own survival, like what point in human history like why like why would human why should human beings need to have done that, like spearing an animal for hunting and food precisely that motion of throwing that is essential to the play of baseball also happened to be essential for human beings to survive during the hunter gatherer era. so you need you need baseball as a game of technique that way,

right? it's a game of it's it's more of a game of skill than it is physical combat as football which we'll talk about in more later in the semester baseball also a game of tremendous hardship and superstition. why would that reflect the farming era? why would that reflect the pre-modern era? because during the farming year, there was lot of natural on sort events and disasters that you couldn't control. there's a similar sort of lack of control. these droughts, floods, all kinds of, terrible things that, you know, plagues that happened to people in the natural, ancient world that you couldn't. why these things happened, there was tremendous hardship. there was tremendous failure. failure and scarcity is the natural condition within

baseball. think about the absolute best hitters in baseball. they get up and they attempt do something and the best ones fail. seven times out of ten, the absolute best players in baseball fail at the thing that they're trying to accomplish times to ten. what kind of a mind set do you need to have? like what if you came in to all of your classes and you thought, if i try as hard as possible on this exam, the best i can do is get 30% of the questions right? what kind of a mindset would you have to cultivate if that is the thing that you're facing in everyday life? how do you how do you cope that? what kind of a mentality, what kind a mentality do you need to cope with a landscape of such hardships, scarcity, such failure? what do you need to have kind of a baseball brain? do you need to have in the face of that hardship somewhat of like a religious standpoint, a

sense that you can, i mean, fall back on and not you can almost not blame yourself for the loss. you can blame some other entity or some other force, something religious right, something deeply superstar, vicious in some way. right. and we read this a little bit earlier in the semester. we read the article by melchior about how within baseball, particularly in in the realm of hitting and, pitching, there is tremendous superstition to go around fielding, not so much fielding. you should get right you shouldn't fail at fielding, pitching and hitting. it's a wild card, right. and this clip here gives us a little bit of a sense of precisely how much superstition there is within baseball. it up here. on towards the pitcher's mound. don't know.

this game will go kind of crazy. so you need some things. you need something to take you off the game, then people will go with something that they think want to spread. i mean, there are just some odd stories around ball or this time where it's i'm it's in stocks that we going outside work the next day i use the same and to make the line about i don't like doing things i wore the same helmet that i wore the yankees have invented as an agent for two years until i finally got the most number of all of the bathroom like what kind of shampoo which way i wash my hair where i brush my teeth, which in. and brush my teeth with too long before me superstition of the industry. i try to do things you all were going to through invisible models uses and theories and. and even if players aren't superstitious they know someone who wears just really really.

superstitious about us bats and take us back to when he'd sleep with his bat this bat and several seriously bugs and chicken for pregame i was never really a big fan of chicken anyway. i couldn't believe that he could do that virus in chicken. jail. think he probably played with the same love for about 15 years or so his play came out over my house it was in l.a. always to go home was here for hairspray, the guy's attention. and i'm wondering what the heck is that problem? to see some all sorts of resistance where we're seeing people take the same steps to this glove. you don't count. and if he gets along, i'll do it again. one of the nazis insist that the guy might have this when they wear their hats. that looks like that. get up and walk away with a hat without you. i think it would by itself, i believe it was a positive thing. you want to see their takes, you know, that's i say and it speaks like you wouldn't believe it. you get to superstitious it can it can really run your life.

no not garcia takes it upon himself to be superstitious every single time. and that's not very unique for people. he steps into the batter's box in the mind behind everything he did. what i'm to be talking about in this game, i saw that. i saw the gloves walking down. and then the second thing on the ball, this is text obsessive compulsive disorder. and i see that with admiration as someone who suffers from textbook obsessive compulsive disordered behavior, right. this is the habit and a mindset of individuals who cannot control the larger fate of the world that is put upon them. and so they're just resorting to these tricks and these superstitions and, these taboos, in order to get through it, that that that is a mentality that you need baseball in order to persevere with all of the failure that you will face, particularly across a long season, 160 games is a long time

if you get too down too fast, you will not be able to make it through the long season. similar. you need to get through the long season of the farm land. lastly, in terms of these parallels that mandelbaum identifies for us, he talks about baseball having a kind of character archetype, the rugged individual, the kind of cowboy, the farmer, the homesteader in american history, tough, stoic independent, self reliant, requiring tremendous courage to get up there and do the job that you're called do because you know that you alone are the only ones can do can who can do that job. let me offer you a hot take in the form of a question. if i say to you, baseball is not a team, how is it we can argue that baseball is not a team sport sport? if we could say baseball, unlike

football or hockey or other forms of team sports, baseball, not a team sport like those other are. how might we make that argument? it's kind of very individual. like you have the pitcher facing, the batter, whereas other sports like hockey and you have passing and stuff that but you can't really do that besides maybe like double plays or outfield assists or something. okay, absolutely. and add to that, they say, i don't care if you hit the ball for you, you have to do it yourself. it's just you in the box for that. you're just you in the box facing your fate. so your hands will doesn't say that if you at where the like the play went wrong it can point to exactly who made the error. whereas like football, all the team teams coming together at once and there's so much and kind of interactions that, you don't know what happened as a team apart rather than baseball. the individual player fell apart. exactly. baseball is a series of individual actions that are coordinated into a kind of quasi team goal, right?

baseball. you can almost every single thing in baseball to individual's responsibility and you can tally it based upon that right baseball is a series of one thing happening at a time in a way that it's not like sequence like other sports, aren't there? there are a few plays a play right. you know, turning a fly from the outfield and things like that. right but, but baseball is not like football, right. where it's like somebody needs to catch ball, right. when the quarterback the ball right. that's a team sport somebody to hit that block or else one player is you know laid out on the ground it's because of that that baseball is the place that fantasy sports are born. why would it be that fantasy are born in baseball? because is a highly individualized sport because you can tally statistics and attribute them every single individual on the field of play.

and that is precisely what you need in order to play fantasy sports. we can talk more about fantasy sports later in the semester does all this make sense? any questions about of mandelbaum take about how again you can look at baseball and you can the past reflected you can see the kind of agrarian era reflected in all of this. all right well, talk then about some of baseball's past more particularly and. let's go through some of what he has to say about the great age of baseball. right. mandelbaum sees the kind of high watermark baseball's popularity in central in american culture. basically in the first half of the 20th century, the first half of the 1900s. and there were a few aspect at that time that introduced to baseball that enabled it to become the dominant sport that it was. and it really was the dominant, popular american sport for that period, for first of all, you had the building of stadiums that were dedicated, the play of

baseball within cities. we're gonna talk about this a little bit more later in class because the evolution of what those stadia looked like over time and where they were located is highly consequential to the american as well. but these stadiums became like a part of the city's identity right? like like when people visit boston, right. and they're like, well, what are the five things i have to see in boston are like fenway park. it's a cathedral. it is one of the central aspects that boston sticks its identity upon. right. and a lot of these baseball cities relied upon their stadia in order to make a part of the urban identity, in some fashion. secondly, media are essential to making baseball popular. we're going to spend a whole week diving into sports and media later in the semester, but just will tease it a little bit here. when newspapers into existence in the 1800s, they began covering baseball games regularly. that helped interest that help

increase rate. leo was especially essential for baseball as popularity to skyrocket. why would that be the case? why would why baseball so on radio in a way that other say particularly a basket ball and hockey love them absolutely to listen to on radio why does why is why is radio biased toward baseball because it moves so that you can individually like the player the play what's going on that if you're just listening on radio you almost picture it like you are there right killing that that or similar thing. i was going to say pretty much the same thing. like if you were trying to explain hockey game on radio, there's just no way you could get every thing that happens. i love i understand hockey quite well. it makes absolutely no sense what's going on when i try to listen to it on radio. baseball, though, is a series discrete individual actions that you can narrate orally in a

fashion that's highly entertaining for people at home. and so baseball on. radio becomes the background soundtrack to your summer becomes the thing that sort of weaves in and out of when you're going places. the storytellers of the radio, announcers of baseball become the voices that put you to sleep. a child and so it is the case that really baseball has become very dependent upon radio and it launches baseball into its kind of first superstar era of babe ruth and the new york yankees. babe ruth, whose name transcends not just baseball but sports, as well, is obviously the single most important player in terms of the history, the popularity of the game and he us the homerun, right? he didn't invent homerun, but his technique that he approached the plate before ruth and, before this era of baseball came around, players would choke up a

lot more on the bat. babe ruth took much more of like, i'm going to treat this thing like a golf club, right? i'm going to choke down the bat and i'm going to swing for the fences in this regard. right. and homerun became essential to baseball's popularity. why why would the home run as and as something that can within the context of the game be so important to inducing popularity it in a game that's otherwise slow and deliberate. it's an explosion of excitement in matter seconds so it's an instant explosion of energy and excitement that happens in an otherwise languid sort of sometimes soporific type game. it also highlights the individual quality of the player because nothing that anybody else can do to stop it from happening. so it's it's again, it goes back to that individualized quality that baseball wants to emphasize. right? that single individual hit, that home run, other ideas here, why in