Baseball may no longer be America’s pastime (surpassed in popularity by football) but it is still the most traditional of our team sports. As knowledgeable baseball fans watch a telecast of their favorite team, they are not only present-time oriented but have an acute sense of the past, i.e. of players, games, and records from the past and how the game they are watching fits into the overall scheme of things. Granted, most games do not involve some new record but from the first ball being pitched, that possibility exists. From the first hit as marking the end of the pitcher’s bid for a no-hitter to the first strike out, the first base-on-balls, a given player’s home run, a putout, an assist, etc. etc. … every single play on the field is measured and understood as part of the history of baseball, within a historical context of a game that has been played for well over one hundred years, with modern record keeping beginning in the twentieth century. Baseball is truly unique in that sense, a game that is present-time oriented but at the same time played within a historical context of one hundred plus years of baseball record keeping. This paper sets out to examine the inherent traditionalism of baseball and the clash of this traditionalism with modernism, with its emphasis on specialization supported by scientific and quantitative reasoning. The paper takes the position that the conflict between these two dynamics has had a powerful impact on the game of baseball, both historically and in the contemporary world.
About the presenterJoe Trumino
Joe Trumino is an Associate Professor in the Sociology and Anthropology Department of St. John’s University(Queens, New York City). He teaches both undergrad and grad courses, with his principal areas of interest Sport, Deviance, Urban, Community, and Social Theory. While he is an active academic, he also plays fast pitch softball for a local community-based softball club.