It is not 1950 anymore.
America is celebrating its 250th birthday and there is a big question about America’s Pastime. Is baseball significant anymore? Once upon a time, the Fourth of July was baseball, apple pie, swimming and fireworks. Baseball was Casey At The Bat, or Take Me Out to the Ballgame, as Katie Casey told her boyfriend I want to go to the ball game in the song. There was the Babe and the great DiMaggio who was lionized in the Old Man and the Sea classic book by Hemingway and Who’s on First. Joe DiMaggio would be revisited in song in Paul Simon’s classic Mrs. Robinson. Baseball players were in vaudeville, burlesque, in movies, and on radio and on TV. In 1954, the French social commentator Jacques Barzun noted. “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.”
There was a countdown to spring training and for certain Americans that was also the countdown to spring and the coming of the warm weather. There was the Fall Classic and the Hot Stove League. Opening Day was an event and it was the Boys of Summer. Now sports seasons clash. Opening Day takes a back seat to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, the National Football League Draft, the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup and National Basketball Association Finals, along with women’s sports, all competitors, the 2026 World Cup and an established soccer league and July NFL training camps. Yes, there were horse racing, summer golf and tennis tournaments but baseball until the 1960s was always at the top followed by boxing and horse racing. There is one other thing hanging over Major League Baseball. A possible labor action in 2027. Barzun rejected baseball by 2008, because it was over commercialized.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
