The spectator sport needed professionals, and it needed amateurs. The professional series was then divided into two leagues, the National League in 1875, and the American League eventually in 1900. These two leagues would compete in their own games within a series of home and away games and then the winner of each league would become the World Series champion. This was a huge, innovative idea because this was like no other sport or event in its day. What is even more amazing is that when this idea was created, it stuck within the leagues and commissioners, and it’s used in so many more other sports.
Television Sidebars: DREAM SEEKERS Five decades after the widespread distribution of television, the relationship between television and African Americans can best be described as ambivalent. On the one hand, the industry has made a genuine effort to treat blacks as artists on an equal basis with whites, to end discrimination against them, and to depict them realistically. On the other hand, the industry continues to portray blacks in stereotypical ways and is reluctant to hire them or to develop their talents. Blacks remain underrepresented in the production and management sides of the business. EARLY “BLACK” TV SHOWS The African American presence in the television industry followed the pattern set by radio in the 1920s through
Louis, Philadelphia, and New York.” (Rader, 2009, pg. 59) Only cities with a minimum population of 75,000 could host the sport at the time. Interest in professional baseball boomed throughout the 1880s. Baseball, although a huge business enterprise, lacked player regulations. The players’ unethical practices of gambling, drinking, brawling, and loitering lead to admonishment and fines.
Especially in the Black community where when they were mentioned in White press it was often in an unfavorable light. As Black newspapers covered daily life in their community it was in a more positive and uplifting manner in order to inspire their community out of a life of poverty. When it came to baseball coverage, within the press, White baseball was often the center of subject matter within the sports section and had deep coverage of the events going on in baseball. However, in the Black community the importance of race and integration in sports was often left out of both Black and White press. Even within “The Negro Star” coverage of the sport was lofty and more often written as a human-interest topic than coverage of the actual sport or the importance of the growing number of Black teams.
What does a championship winning baseball team look like? Are they the hulking, barrel-chested cousins of Paul Bunyan? The answer is rarely. The game of baseball has evolved from teams with the most homeruns always being the victors, to teams with smaller and faster players playing David to the league’s Goliaths. The manner in which a player’s talent is evaluated has been changing ever since a man named Bill James first published his “Historical Baseball Abstract” in 1977.
The First Black Characters Donald Bogle has written several incisive books and the depiction of African American film and television. Some of his works include Dorothy Dandridge a biography (1996), brown sugar: Eighty years of American female black superstars. In this essay Bogle describes stereotypes about black men and women in American movies. These movies did not have sound and were in black and white. They did not have a famous director or writers because they did not need them.
While most leagues limit what they put on the web and avoid streaming live video online out of fear that their television ratings could be hurt, MLB’s experience suggests that such concerns might be misplaced. “Rights fees are Up, attendance is up, viewership is up,” says Bob Bowman, chief executive at MLBAM. “Some how the strategy of putting [baseball games] on every device that has a plug or a battery has
In other sports you don’t really have to worry about most of these things because you have set and designed plays you follow, if its not their you just improvise. Don't get me wrong, baseball teams make up some plays to try and pick off baserunners or try to cover a bunt. But for the most part, you never know what is going to happen. A player that is at shortstop could not get a ball all game, then just like that he has to make the game saving play to win. A catcher could be behind the plate and no baserunner has been on all night, but the one time there is he has to be on high alert.
Troy constantly uses baseball metaphors in his speech due to the fact that he was in the Negro Baseball League and got to old when African Americans were allowed to play in the majors. He uses baseball metaphors towards his son in my opinion meaning he doesn’t want his son to go down the same road he did and end up with nothing from
TV shows also brought uniform style to the people with most people dressing like the characters they saw from shows or commercials. Television lead to more conformity than any other factor in the 1950s. Sadly since the 1950s little has changed in America we are now more than ever a conformist society who fiends the popular media for all of our tastes whether it be music, fashion, political opinions. Rarely do I meet people who form their own opinions and don’t spit out stuff they heard on the radio and it all stems from the 1950s where America learned to be the same because of housing, television, and