American baseball culture
American baseball culture
In the mid-19th century, the rapid development of American cities and science and technology promoted the modernization of sports. Industrialization and specialization of production mode make cooperation become an important relationship between people. Thus, the development of American sports during this period was manifested in the rise of team sports, which focused on competition, rules, inter-club alliances, performance, data and record keeping, and the dissemination of information about sports and players.
The tradition of young men and boys playing with sticks and balls dates back to the 1840s and 1850s. The game that began with cricket eventually evolved into an American sport, baseball, which became the most important sport in the United States in the second half of the 19th century.
At that time, although the term "Base Ball" had been coined, different rules were enforced throughout the United States. In 1845, Alexander Cartwright, a bank clerk, wrote the rules of baseball. The New York Knickerbockers, of which he was secretary, took the rules nationwide in the years that followed. As New York became the largest and most influential city in the United States, the rules were adopted everywhere, earning the title "the Father of American Baseball."
Thomas W. Higginson, a famous American writer of the time, used his own baseball experiences in the 1850s as an example. In an article published in the Atlanta Monthly, he argued that baseball, an outdoor competitive sport, strengthened the body and described the players as displaying "manly, handsome, eager faces." Higgins and his supporters urge those who overuse their brains to get out and play sports on the baseball field.
Baseball has a place among the sports played in the United States by all social classes, races, and ethnicities. By 1866, at The eleventh annual meeting of The National Association of Base Ball Players in New York, 212 baseball clubs from all states had become members. The historian Ronald Story has investigated the appeal of baseball in early America and found that it was seen in part as a form of cathartic release for rabid young men, and that its reputation had somehow risen above other realms, giving players a certain level of social status and high respect.
