The Social Context of Baseball
Channel: LIVING SOCIOLOGY
Date: 2019-12-03

First Person, Plural on CFUV-fm, Victoria, BC 
Originally aired June 13, 2002

Like everything else of interest to our crack research staff, baseball is organized. The characteristic, one notes, is not restricted to "organized baseball." The term "organized baseball" is usually applied only to major league baseball and the affiliated minors. It is not applied to the independent minors, leagues outside Canada and the U.S., and the uncountable number of amateur programs, including college baseball, designed to identify the best players at each age level and funnel them into situations that will facilitate the development and assessment of their skills. The taxonomy is sprawling and decentralized, the leagues and other associations are marked by arcane local mores, and the specifics change annually, with exhaustive information not to be found in printed sources. In short, the environment is an organizational dynamics researcher's dream come true.  I spoke with Terry McKaig by telephone on May 30th. McKaig is the head coach of the University of British Columbia baseball team. The program had drawn my attention for two reasons. First, UBC is a member of the NAIA, a collegiate athletics organization based in the United States and until recently composed solely of U.S. college and university athletic programs. Second, Jeff Francis, a pitcher on the team, had been the first Canadian collegian to make Baseball America's preseason all-America team and, as anticipated at the time of this interview, Francis went 9th overall in the recent college draft by Major League Baseball.  He will be playing for the Colorado Rockies.

When baseball fans discuss baseball they use statistical records, RBIs (runs batted in), ERAs (earned run averages), on-base percentages, number of homeruns in a season and so forth.  These numbers lead to the assertion that one player is worthy of more attention than another because they are compared over time to other players.  But can the numbers from players in the nineteenth century really be compared to players in the twentieth century?  At what point can one say that "modern baseball" began?  Some say at the turn of the century.  Some historians say 1871, 1876, 1901, or 1920.  Carl makes a case for the late 1940s when the colour line of baseball was broken when Jackie Robinson became the first recognised African American in the previously white leagues.  The text of his argument is below.

How is baseball sociological?  Looking at how college baseball is organized and issues across international boundaries and racial boundaries shows that baseball lives within a context that is social and political in nature.  Like all human activities, in order to be acceptable as entertainment, baseball must be legitimate in the eyes of others.  Labels such as NAIA affiliation or Major League Baseball provide those legimitations.   

copyright: Carl Wilkerson and Pattie Thomas
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