New York City Team Case Study

Back in 1958, a man by the name of Walter O'Malley moved his professional baseball team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Although Walter didn’t know it yet, this move would affect the professional sports league in two significant ways. First, it expanded the market for professional sports to cities on the west coast in states like California, and Washington. Second, the relocation also altered the relationship between sports franchise and their communities.

One of the biggest events that really sparked the start of the new interest of baseball was the building of the new New York Yankee stadium. By the outside being painted, light towers being placed in the outfield, a two story concession stand being built, and corporate boxes being put in, the Yankee’s manager, Leland “Larry” MacPhail, was really setting the stage as to what baseball and baseball parks would turn

The MLB went through a drastic adjustment as a result of the introduction of Jackie Robison to the league. The league at the time was a white league. He broke a wall that prevented the opportunity for people of colour to have a chance and show the true potential and skill of their abilities. Other than breaking a major colour barrier in the sports leagues, he helped with the introduction of more black players in the league. The league started seeing more and more players that were not white. Soon after in 1947, the next black player joined the Cleveland Indians. The players became much more comfortable with the idea of a minority playing with them.

Nowhere in the country is he more popular than in Seattle, where he is considered the savior of baseball in the city. In the 1980s, the Mariners were a historically moribund franchise playing in the crumbling Kingdome. Prior to his arrival, the Mariners had been seriously considering a move to Washington DC, but that all changed once Griffey came (Fort, 2000, p. 313). His exciting style of play immediately attracted fans and attention to the franchise (Caple, 2010). In 1995, Griffey led a miracle rally to the Mariners first playoff appearance in decades (Reader, 2010), and capped the season by scoring the game winning run to defeat the New York Yankees in the first round (Schaefer, 2003, p.6). His rise rejuvenated baseball and the city in general, leading the building of the new stadium, Safeco Field, dubbed the “House That Griffey Built”.

Baseball has always been an American sport full of merriment for the whole family, but what lies beyond the rooting, peanuts, and crackerjacks, is a bitter memory for the families who resided in the Chavez Ravine. The Chavez Ravine was located a few miles from downtown Los Angeles. This “poverty stricken” place was home to a tight knit Mexican community. Many families were forced out of their homes kicking and screaming others took the couple of dollars given to them to relocate in order to build federally funded public houses. The Chavez Ravine faced many problems from the remove of its inhabitants to subject of McCarthyism, and finally an unhappy memory to those who lost their homes when the Dodger Stadium was built.

Thesis: Major League Baseball was founded in 1869 and up until April 15, 1947 an African American had never played in the major leagues before and that man was named Jackie Robinson. On that day he did not open the door for other African American athletes. He just maybe turned the knob a little bit which also lead to a new attitude people had towards African Americans no one had ever seen before.

Another impressive aspect of Rogosin’s book is the way he ties the hardships that African American’s faced and baseball together in a seemingly smooth connection. Rogosin realized that although he was writing a book on The Negro Leagues, he also couldn’t neglect the background information that came along with that time period. Rogosin includes stories of how teams remained afloat by scheduling exhibition games whenever possible to make money for the team. Rogosin goes on to say “it was pure economics: white people had more money.”2 Another aspect that is appealing in the book is Rogosin often draws comparisons to The Major Leagues on how the leagues differed and how they were similar. The disparities between the leagues really shocks the reader, and challenges their perspective of the time period the book acknowledges.

Baseball, America’s so-called national pastime, has a history that closely mirrors the country’s own. Specifically, for most of the first half of the twentieth century, white and black Americans played in entirely separate leagues like much of the heavily segregated society at the time. White owners and general managers would simply not allow black ballplayers on their teams, regardless of their skill level. While whites had organized baseball, a rigid professional system complete with minor leagues and farming system, blacks had their own all-black leagues. The history of these leagues is fairly complicated and follows a story-like arc with successes and failures. In Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution, historian Neil Lanctot explores the Negro baseball leagues beginning in the 1920s until their eventual collapse in the 1960s. Exceedingly well researched, Lanctot’s book probes the sport’s racial history on an almost season-by-season timeline and carefully shows what led to the league’s eventual demise.

Since its inception in the 19th-century baseball and its players became a synonym for America. From challenges of racial segregation to fights for fair wages, baseball mirrored the economic, political and social changes in America. The sport impacted people’s lives through the promotion of values such as integrity, fairness, responsibility and respect. Players became brands who carried socio-political capacities like moral leadership.

Baseball has always been more than just a sport to the American people. For many, it is a way of life, teaching not just brute skills but life lessons and morals. In the wake of World War I, racism and bigotry abounded in the United States. Even though the integration of schools had recently been instated, Jim Crow laws severely limited the activity of African Americans in society, resulting in baseball teams being limited to whites. Jackie Robinson made an important step in gaining rights for African Americans when he broke the color barrier of baseball in 1947. He did this by making civil rights his ambition even before the protests began (Coombs 117). Jackie Robinson’s fame as a baseball player and determination to defeat adversity

Baseball has always been America’s national pastime. In the early and all the way into the mid 50’s, baseball was America and America was baseball. The only thing lacking in the great game was the absence of African American players and the presence of an all white sport. America still wasn’t friendly or accepted the African American race and many still held great prejudice towards them. All this would change when the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey decided he was going to sign a Negro player. Jackie Robinson was that player and Jackie Robinson changed the game, America, and history. By looking specifically at his childhood adversity, college life and the hardships he encountered by becoming the first black player

In this essay we will take a look at the unique history of the Negro Baseball Leagues. We will discuss how they were an integral part of the African American culture and what they meant to their communities. We will also discuss some of the more famous players of the Negro Leagues as well as take a look at what the impact of Jackie Robinson being the first African American to be signed to a professional Major League team was and how it affected the future of baseball.

Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby were very determined to stick with the game they loved and to make a change. Thanks to their performance both on and off the ball field, “other owners began to seek talented black players, and by 1952, there were 150 black players in organized baseball” (Branch). Their “actions had repercussions far beyond the sports world” (Jim). The integration of baseball was an enormous smack in the face to all of segregation. Many racial barriers quickly tumbled down with the integration of baseball; restaurants, hotels, and stores removed their “white only” signs bringing blacks and whites together. Robinson and Doby could not have won the battle against segregation on their own, the press helped to make their struggle to be known throughout the country.

The Negro Leagues, baseball leagues for merely black players, allowed urban communities to “pass down the tradition of ‘their’ game 25.” As the Negro leagues ended, baseball’s popularity diminished because it no longer acted as a unique and individualized aspect of African-American culture. The Negro Leagues and the black baseball movement inspired hope as a part of the larger civil rights movement of the 20th century and the black community utilized baseball “as a means of collective identity and civic pride 26.” African- American’s racial advances in baseball signaled the long term success of the larger civil rights movement of the 20th century. As a result, baseball became essential in identifying the progress and identity of African-American culture. Baseball lost its social prevalence after the African-American civil rights movement due to the emergence of other

The story of the campaign to integrate baseball remained unknown to most whites in the United States. For blacks, it was one of the most important stories involving racial equality in the 1930s and 1940s. Black sportswriters and others framed the campaign to end segregation in baseball in terms of democracy and equal opportunity. To black’s newspaper, if there could be racial equality in baseball, there could be racial equality elsewhere in society. The black sportswriters took their campaign to baseball commissioner. They made their case to baseball executives at their annual meeting. They met individually with a number of team owners who promised tryouts and then canceled the tryouts. Yet the story of the campaign to desegregate baseball remained unknown to most of the United States.