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baseball

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    11/2/2022

    "A League of Their Own" Update Engages Lives of Queer Women in the 1940s

    by Lauren Gutterman

    "The series’ portrait of queer life amid World War II might seem unrealistic to some, but history reveals that queer women and trans men — from butch to femme and married to unmarried — often found opportunities to act on their desires and build queer communities."

  • SOURCE: Dissent
    3/28/2022

    Baseball's Labor War

    by Peter Dreier

    Organizing the Brotherhood of Professional Base-ball Players in 1885, John Montgomery Ward asked whether team owners could treat their players as chattel through the "reserve clause." Today's players seem to be learning some similarly radical lessons from the recent owner's lockout.

  • SOURCE: The Nation
    2/7/2022

    Baseball Players Can't Live on a "Cup of Coffee"

    by Kelly Candaele and Peter Dreier

    Framing the baseball lockout as a battle of billionaire owners vs. millionaire players misses the fact that most players who ever reach the big leagues won't make great salaries, garner endorsements, or get a league pension. 

  • SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times
    2/6/2022

    Baseball and the Unspeakable

    As history teachers struggle with how to handle racist slurs in primary sources, an unexpected remark from a ballplayer in 1938 illustrates that this struggle isn't new. Columnist Neil Steinberg asks if making words unspeakable blows up in the faces of teachers more often than bigots.

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    12/14/2021

    Baseball's Lockout Shows the Growing Power of Labor

    by Gwendolyn Lockman

    "In many ways, the twists and turns of baseball’s labor battle over salaries, pensions and more have reflected the ebbs and flows of labor power in the United States."

  • SOURCE: Global Sport Matters
    10/6/2021

    MLB Passed on the Chance to Stop the Drain of African American Players from Baseball

    by Lou Moore

    Major League Baseball noticed that the trend of increased Black participation in the pro game was making a sharp U-turn as early as the mid-1970s. MLB ignored the advice of many Black players, managers and scouts to reach out to African American youth to protect the diversity and quality of the game. 

  • SOURCE: Vox
    5/17/2021

    The Violent Origin Story of Dodger Stadium

    by Ranjani Chakraborty and Melissa Hirsch

    Through interviews with several former residents of the area, Vox explores the story of their neighborhoods razed to make room for Dodger Stadium. It’s one that’s often missing from the history of Los Angeles and has created a double-edged relationship for some Dodger fans. Features commentary by historian Priscilla Leiva. 

  • SOURCE: Defector
    5/5/2021

    Clark Griffith Was Too Cheap To Integrate Baseball

    Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith did not seize the opportunity to bring the Black superstars who played for the Homestead Grays in the nation's capital, or the District's enthusiastic Black baseball fans, into the Major League fold. Was bigotry or cheapness to blame?