i can't see if a pitcher is painting the corners of the strike zone. there's such nuance, something like that. whereas the home run is, something that is visual to all across the arc of play, ruth pioneered, the home run is a key technique. and of course, along the way he became a kind of celebrity figure. he pioneered in some ways the celebrity endorsement profile for sports athletes and he made the yankees a dominant team to the point at which people referred to the yankees a dynasty. where does that term come from? else do we hear dynasties described outside of the realm of sports, how we describe chinese kingdoms of ancient times right, the han dynasty, the song dynasty the yankees dynasty. right. attributing again with the past baseball along the way toward this popularity very much tried to embed itself in american

identity as well. now how did it go achieving this? well, on one hand, baseball was first popular american and team sport right. why is it to go back to when baseball played in the summer? why is why is why is the summer an advantage and? advantageous time for baseball to play in order to capture the nation's attention. off of work so they might have more time to go to games so you've got flexibility on the part of children and parents alike to be able to attend games also other other leagues are not playing at that time. right like the other the other major sports leagues and of course as soccer has grown in popularity soccer is cutting in on baseball's time in the summer we'll talk about that later in the semester. right but baseball has the national stage to itself for the most part in summer. this is why, by the way, as the nba and the nfl, nba especially, has gotten savvier about its off

season trade deals, a big headline story guarantee you that this -- rob manford because everything will headline that is given over to the nba in july is a headline that is not dedicated. what is happening in baseball in terms of it being the premier signature sport right. but baseball also had a few particular aspects that is intertwined with national identity. let's give a couple examples here. first of all, baseball is the sport, the national anthem. first begins to take shape as a ritual, as a custom, as part of the of how a game will unfold on on opening day and in the playoffs. right. you guys see those guys see those those banners there that are hung out around stadium. why are those banners not green

and yellow? this isn't brazil. why are those banners not? black, yellow, red. this is in germany, right? those banners are red white and blue because it is baseball's attempt wrap itself in the flag in a strategic other examples who throws out the ceremonial first pitch at the beginning of each season? what individual? historically, often throws out the very first pitch of the season? the president the, president of the united states, it's actually began about 100 years ago with i believe it was taft, maybe the first one to have thrown up baseball was also the first sport that begins to welcome the champions to the white house every year. shout out our abc lacrosse team. i saw them bumping on my instagram feed on the white

house lawn. love to see that and finally and famously, baseball is, a sport that during world war two continue to play. why? because fdr explicitly wanted the game to go on because it was such a part of the national fabric, because it was such, you know, even though even though players did join the military during that time, the sport should keep playing. according to fdr and in terms of the single kind of most consequential baseball player of all time and how essential he is to the american narrative, you have to include the story. jackie robinson, of course, jackie robinson's number 42 is is is retired across all of baseball and no player baseball can have that number every spring. i believe, was in april. they've got a they've got a big

robinson day where the sport is celebrating jackie robinson and i want to show you a clip here that narrates some of the background and on how jackie robinson came into the league. and here's the question i want to ask. watch watch story of jackie robinson in a similar that it asks you to watch other clips before in this class. and the question i want to ask is why is baseball rules honoring of jackie robinson in a self-serving thing? in other words, by celebrating jackie robinson? what baseball also celebrate about itself. this was the only place in america that was segregated in the 1940s that the rest of the country wasn't as blatant about it. the separation and racial

prejudice existed there too. and when it came to the national pastime baseball, they were the major least the minor leagues and there were separate -- for ballplayers of color, white major leaguers played in fine ballparks, traveled first class and slept in hotels -- leaguers, had no ballparks of their own and usually got lower pay. equipment was shabby. the traveled brutal and blacks almost always had trouble. hotel rooms or restroom. one white man who understood how wrong it was to keep baseball segregated. it was branch rickey, general manager of the brooklyn dodgers. he knew that black ballplayers well pool of inexpensive talent and were enthusiastic about playing in the major leagues. rickey knew they would bring in a whole new audience. he decided was going to change

baseball. i was convinced that there was a time limit. somehow it, after waiting 100 years, these people were legally free, but virtually free men or morally free. if the right man and ability on the field and we've control of himself off field if i can find that kind of a man the american public got excited and branch rickey found jack roosevelt robinson. jackie robinson had earned letters in four sports at ucla he had done well in school and he had always stood up for beliefs as. an officer in the army robinson had once refused to move when a driver asked him to sit in the back of a bus. rickey was impressed he invited robinson to new york and told him he wanted him to break baseball's color line, but he had to promise to, hold his temper and not to fight back. no matter what happened. i'm certainly delighted with my

contract. i'll certainly do my very best on the field and i assure you, on april 16th, 1947, jackie batted in brooklyn for the first time as a major leaguer. and the question i opened with by celebrating jackie robinson. what is it that baseball is celebrating about itself? like why is i'm not asking to be cynical about jackie robinson. he is you know, not the object of our cynicism here. why would baseball strategically celebrate jackie robinson as much as it does? what purpose does that serve, benefit? does that have for jefferson? well, it's essentially masking essentially putting the focus away from its racist and trying to say like, hey look, we are a very equal league. and then it kind of gets the

listener, the viewers, to forget about its horrible, tragic, racist past very much on the right track. yeah, it's kind of like a white savior complex in the sense that that one coach saw his potential and broke racial boundaries and cast mlb as like the savior pats itself on the back a kind of savior type fashion. yeah part of what baseball is doing when it's jackie robinson is it's an equation, a branded equation for itself. and that equation says baseball equals civil rights, baseball equals equality. baseball equals the triumph over racism in american society. so if you believe in and support civil rights and equality if you are anti-racist, what you also be you should also be a baseball fan, right? in other words, baseball is patting itself on the back when

it pats the back of jackie in this regard. it shows this kind of post-racial narrative that that somehow america triumphed over racism because of baseball. right. and jackie robinson did indeed shatter a number of myths that were perpetuated. black players at that time missed included fans won't show up to watch black players. not true. baseball said attendance records. the first season that jackie robinson played that teammates would not want to play white teammates would not want to play with robinson. not true teammates were delighted to play with him because it also answered the question could these black players even be good enough to play with white players? yup. rookie of the year, hall of famer of the all time greatest players. right. jackie robinson is absolutely deserving of all the accolades that he receives. but don't forget what baseball is trying convince us of in

celebrating jackie robinson in the way that it now, what is this? and this is particularly relevant and jefferson may have been point of the second ago. right. when when what is baseball in celebrating robinson trying to also cover up for perhaps in our current moment. the current state of the racial population of professional league baseball players. now you can see there and a little little hard to see right. the blue line on that chart represents the share african-americans that play major league baseball. and as you can see from when jackie robinson has his first at bats through to the mid 1970s, the share of players in the major leagues grows to about mean it peaks out around 20% or so at that time and has plummeted in the years now it stands at about five or 6% depending on how you want to count it. right.

baseball has a huge challenge on its hands in terms of figuring how to reignite the popularity of the sport with young african-american players. at the same time as you can from that chart as well, you have had a steady growth of players from, the latin american world, right. a huge growth. and that's the largest feeder country for major league baseball is the dominican republic. and there is a very interesting detail, but i find it nonetheless revealing in terms of international affairs, immigration, things like that which. is that why it the case that as mandelbaum points out historically, dominican players have fairly impatient when they get up to the plate. why is it that stereotypically, historically within the lure of

baseball, many dominican players will swing at near the strike zone? why would there be some pattern there, particularly thinking here about immigration and thinking here about the hopes to make the major leagues? why would you be an impatient and you would swing at anything within the strike if you are hoping to make the professional ranks and any insights on this? this might be nuance a bit too far. there's a phrase, according to mandelbaum, within the dominican republic, you can't walk off the island. what do you mean by that? why would that help us answer this question? like when they get there, they want to make like a big impression on who on the fans and on like the like whites. i don't think the right way to say that scouts. yeah, scouts do. scouts come down to the dominican republic to whether or not a player has a really good

sense of the strike zone. no scouts. come down looking to see a hitter can match. and that means, according to mandelbaum, that there's this pattern, right. a way of if you want to make major leagues, if you want to use baseball as a leverage out of socioeconomic blight, you will swing at anything possible in order to grab the attention those scouts. does that make sense? one last aspect of this period that mandelbaum is highlighting here, that takes us up to really like from the from the first half of the 1900s to like the 1950s that we begin to see happening. the 1950s is westward expansion of the game. most famous move of a franchise of all is when the dodgers moved from brooklyn to los angeles. but there's a whole other teams who that same pattern and move

westward move to california when expansion of teams happens where they usually expand the sunbelt the south the west. why that a metaphor for america itself i don't know if i'm totally right here but when they were building the railroad roads in such a go across america, it was kind of that idea of westward expansion, expanding the nation as a whole. precisely right. yeah it is a a concept that we will analyze and critique later in the semester concept, manifest destiny, a kind of of connell collins zation exploitation and the westward migration of white settlers across the continent to the subjugation of native american populations. so as teams moved west, you saw a parallel in american history in that regard. so it sense. all right, let's take it up to the current day and try to tie

it together and wrap it up here. what is the story of the current day? well, the story of recent decades has been a story of tremendously escalate salaries. as you can see, the average salary in 1945 was about $45,000. in 2020, the average major league salary was $4 million. and in tandem with that was, also an uptick in labor unrest, strikes, lockouts lockouts. all of this is possible because. baseball up until the 1970s, baseball as was mentioned in the reading had something called the reserve clause in of the legality and policies how baseball plays short version of what the reserve clause was basically that up until the 1970s owners had control over

where players played. there was no such thing as free agency. up until the 1970s, the owners, by virtue of this reserve clause, could basically trade and dictate where players would play. owners had all the power because of the reserve clause. workers had none of the power in this dimension. and it been the case that players in the four decades since have grown to be by far the most powerful union in professional sports. the major league baseball players union is, without question, the most powerful labor force across the major team sports. so that's one pattern that we've seen in recent years. a second pattern that we have seen is a pattern of offense rising and falling and rising and falling over time. right. what would be some factors.

right? i mean, those are the details. i, i just put that chart up there. so you kind of get a sense of how the how the number of runs per game has gone up and down and up and down over time. what would be some that have contributed to that over the decades that would either have increased the average scoring in baseball or decrease the average scoring what might be one thing steroids. steroids are absolutely a factor in terms of increasing the runs scored in the 1990s. baseball that the way to win fans fans back after a devastating strike and canceled world series was more homeruns. and that was when the steroid era took shape other things that would impact how many runs are scored per game. pretty recent, but you have the crack down on spider tack rosin sunscreen. but for pitchers to spend the ball more absolutely right. you've got you've got various rules on what pitchers are allowed to do in terms their equipment at one what else the balls and bats that they use and

like i think it was like 2017 to 2019. they had like the juiced ball era, their guy and you know, they switched the balls maybe 20, 20, 20, 21. and you kind of see a decrease in runs and, you know, distances of balls are absolutely what is the equipment made up in some way? right. will impact the offensive scoring in a given context that's under the hand now. absolutely i'm going to hold on that 4 seconds. want to talk in detail about some of those changes that were made. that's that's the last year. so. yeah, absolutely right. what about to give up positions what position in baseball would be essential to or not our offense increases the pitcher the new like changing roles like the pitcher doesn't need to hit exactly and the pitchers substituted by the designated hitter. exactly right why is the designated hitter an absolute moral catastrophe in baseball why is it that the designated hitter goes against the core of

what a baseball player should be. what what what what is unique about baseball players compared to say football players they played all fans and defense exactly to have a player whose only job is to play offense is a moral catastrophe designated. here's syracuse hot take interlude designated as a terrible, terrible idea goes it cuts to the cuts the core of what a baseball player should be and do which is that you should be on both sides of the field. right. shouldn't just chill in the dugout while. your teammates are out there either pitching fielding, right? yeah. other things that we could identify here. right. this goes a little bit off of rules of the pitcher is right. the the strictly saying spell this right the strike zone right how large or small the strike has varied over time and that too is determined how much offensive scoring takes place. the introduction of artificial

turf, a modern innovation has impacted scoring over time. someone mentioned steroids are ready. and one of the thing which is. expansion. here's an odd question for you, why would it be the case that when the league expansion teams that would increase the number runs scored like there's an odd correlation there which is that for some reason whenever the league expands and more teams are added, run scoring goes up, what could possibly be the logic there? you think maybe that they're completely new strategy is and no one has seen these teams before so they're unprepared for the way of plausible other theories on this problem terms of the expansion draft would even out the worst teams in the

best and better teams to like create a more balanced playing field. okay true but then off then the even field would probably even out on the scoring as. well right. for some reason i don't know why we've got some some, some and some baseball players in here. maybe they know why there are more good hitters in the world than there are pitchers. and it's the case that again, when you dilute the league, you dilute the number of pitchers. you just wind increasing offense as well. right. it's a very it's very curious fact of write a couple last things before we wrap up. here are, talking quickly about. the design of the stadia that baseball games are played within. these are very these are very symbolic in many ways, because what is the baseball stadium? it is garden in the midst of a city center. it is the rustic in the midst of

an urban landscape. it is a place where people in these big crowds shaded, noisy, bustling cities can feel the countryside can take people back in these spaces, these urban, modern places. it can teleport people back to a kind of agrarian landscape being out there in nature, being out there in the open. and there have been kind of main areas of stadium design throughout history that i just want to identify for you here. the first era baseball parks were in the middle of cities and they were built around the obstacles in cities. do you guys ever look at like an overhead view of of of a fenway park right. it is plunked down in a way that like like could they could could this baseball desighave been plunked in the middle of fenway?

no. you're shaking your head. why not? well, i mean, it's just like the way everything is arranged, like the city was already there before the turf was, and so they had to find a way to make fit. they had to find a way to make the stadium fit into the city as it already existed. right and so what that created was these very cozy, intimate, i mean, like a game at fenway, right? like, i mean, the seats uncomfortable in tiny human beings were smaller 100 years ago than we are nowadays. and so there's a way in which it's very cozy. it's very intimate. people are thrown together in a kind of, you know, jostling way walk you walk to the park, you take public transit. i don't know. i last night was picking my wife for you, and i don't know why the stupid it like routed me right down brookline drive or whatever. right. like at like 630 before that was a come on. like, why are you doing this to me anyway? it's really not an interesting anecdote all but it's the case that like these these stadiums are plunked down right in the middle of cities. right. and so it has to work the city in this way. and so there's a sense that like

people going to people going, the games are going to just encounter a bunch of strangers on way to the game, walking to the game walking from a bus or a subway right. that's the first area of baseball. the second era of baseball gives us those stadiums inhe middle of the 1960s to 1980s. right. this when stadiums got big, they got modernists, they got cookie. they all look the same. right. like like look at all those different ballparks. and there's not that much difference to them. there's big an ocean parking lot that sits outside stadiums. these stadiums were not put in the centers of cities. they were put more on kind of the suburban edges. right. the expectation is that people drive to the games. not coincidentally, it is the case that this the era in which suburbanization takes hold there's flight from the inner baseball stadiums map onto that pattern of american history right. domes baseball should never,

ever be played inside all those dome stadiums. there's few nowadays, but like the tropicana field, tampa is an absolute moral catastrophe as well. baseball should never be played inside. why? because it stands for the agrarian, traditional in which people experienced life right. and then lastly there was this huge change kicked off by that stadium on the top, right. camden field, camden yards in baltimore kicks off a renaissance of baseball stadium building where all of a sudden the stadiums are new, but they're made to seem old. the design of all the so many stayed almost, almost every single stadium, with the exception of one that's been built since 1992, when camden yards kicked off. this trend has been completely new, but it's been meant to seem old timey. all of these new stadiums also take our put right in the heart

of downtowns. right. so there's a kind of downtown rejuvenation been happening since the 1990s. does this make sense? what i'm saying is that like baseball, where they put stadiums has mirrored urban development and where cities and cities have sprung up and shape. right. it's it's symbolic we've gone from the city to the suburbs back to the city again. so that. makes sense. one last thing before we finish on the day, which what is the what is story of baseball now? it is well, according to two short readings that i gave by mahler and dormouse, they identify a few aspects that baseball has had to worry about in the past 10 to 20 years. ratings, especially ratings at the national television level, are way down the world series does not nearly draw as many eyeballs as it used to, and it's not even close compared to what

the nfl playoffs draw. my god, i just saw that. i just saw the data on this first weekend of the nfl's season, nfl games averaged 20 million viewers per game for first game of the season, baseball could only dream of getting 20 million for the world series. baseball is not the center of the national conversation as it used to be. there's long been a worried about pace of play. this is something that we're in to talk about a second induced some of the that were made there's a worry fan age right what is the somebody said this earlier right the age is much older in major league baseball you are correct. and to give you a sense of what those numbers look like, the average fan in major baseball is 57 years old. the average in the nfl is 50 years old. the average fan of the nhl is 49.

and basketball has the youngest average fan, 42. if you're manfred, this keeps you up at night. how do you make the game and popular again? how do you try to compete? other entertainment that's out there? how do you make baseball compete with tip talk? how do you format it for those kind of viewing expectations? how do you market? why is it the case that no one would recognize? mike trout outside of orange county that's not good for baseball when your number one superstar is anonymous nationwide and the economics of it every season in april there's at you know within one week there's at least 567 teams that are eliminated from playoff because they're not even trying because of the economics of the sport baseball tried to rectify all of this with a few rule changes that it made in 2023.

it banned defensive shifts in the hope that you could try get more ground balls through the infield. they tried to they tried to reduce the number of pickoff attempts that were allowed in the hopes that you could get runners to steal more bases. they also increased size of bases in the hopes that you could increase more bases. and the biggest change baseball history is the inclusion of the clock, right? this all these things that were introduced in 2023 baseball traditionalists, purists said you're cutting the heart out of the game to which baseball guess how many minutes we shaved off the game when these rules were instituted baseball? cut the average game by a half an hour. that's a much more competitive product in terms of people's attention nowadays. nobody has the attention to watch it. three hour plus g