Politics of Baseball

Ron Briley is assistant headmaster and teaches history at Sandia Preparatory School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he has taught for more than thirty years. His baseball essays have been published in the annuals for the Cooperstown Symposium and in such journals as Baseball History and Nine. He is the author of several books and lives in Albuquerque.

“Editor Briley has done a fine job of choosing and arranging the essays into a strong lineup...baseball intersects with many aspects of culture but none more important than politics, and Briley and his contributors have made a noteworthy contribution to the subject”—Nine.

• Table of ContentsIntroduction (RON BRILEY)      PART ONE: BASEBALL AND DOMESTIC POLITICS1. Baseball and Ballots: Players and Politicians(JOHN A. TURES)      2. The Baseball Evangelist Throws Out John Barlycorn: Billy Sunday and Prohibition(WENDY KNICKERBOCKER)      3. Red Press Nation: The Baseball Rhetoric of Lester Rodney(SCOTT D. PETERSON)      4. Bob Dole and the Brooklyn Dodgers(RAYMOND I. SCHUCK)      5. Are We There Yet? Major League Baseball and Sexual Orientation(LISA DORIS ALEXANDER)      6. Professional Baseball Wages in the Era of Integration(MICHAEL J. HAUPERT)      7. Sam Jethroe’s Last(N. JEREMI DURU)      8. The Church of Detroit Baseball: American Civil Religion and Willie Horton at Comerica Park(JOSHUA FLEER)      PART TWO: THE DIPLOMACY OF BASEBALL AND THE INTERNATIONAL GAME9. The Nationalist Pastime: The Use of Baseball to Promote Nationalism Globally(RUSS CRAWFORD)      10. More Than a Game: Baseball Diplomacy in World War II and the Cold War, 1941 –1958(BRYAN C. PRICE)      11. Exporting the Horsehide American Dream: The Hidden Side of Nicaraguan Baseball(ROBERT ELIAS)      12. The Politics of American Colonialism Through the Lens of Major League Baseball Academies(JESSICA SKOLNIKOFF and ROBERT ENGVALL)      13. Recognizing—Not Just Rooting for—the Home Team: Nationalism and the Taiwanese Name Dispute at the 2006 Baseball Classic(GLEN M.E. DUERR)      14. Bud Selig’s Use of “Smart Power”(ROBERT F. LEWIS)      15. Commodore Selig: The Importance of Japanese Baseball Players in Major League BaseballMATHEW J. BARTKOWIAK and YUYA KIUCHI)      16. Major League Baseball, Welcome Back Veterans, and the Rhetoric of “Support the Troops”(MICHAEL L. BUTTERWORTH)      About the Contributors      Index