Little League: Big Success
An Analysis of Children in Sports and the Rise of
Little League Baseball
Anthony Markish
April 8, 2014
American Sports History
HIST 471E5
Dr. Claudine Ferrell
I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received
help on this essay.
MARKISH 1
Abstract:
Sports are well known for the connections to proving masculinity through strength and skill for
various purposes. Masculinity and proving oneself as a civil gentleman was motivation enough
for men to participate in sports and for spectators to view them. Many studies point out that
other social and racial groups as well as gender issues complicate how sports are viewed beyond
this spectacle of the white man proving his superiority over another. This research paper focuses
on another dynamic that makes the story of sports in America more complex; age. Carl Stotz,
the founder of the National Little League, started to structure a league for boys to compete in
organized baseball games as early as 1938. Therefore, with the addition of yet another distinct
dynamic in the history of sports in America, this research paper analyses the popularity of
children participating in baseball and the popularity the National Little League developed for
spectators as the National Little League became the largest youth sports league in the United
States.
MARKISH 2
LITTLE LEAGUE; BIG SUCCESS:
THE RISE OF LITTLE LEAGUE IN POST VICTORIAN ERA UNITED STATES
Throughout the history of America, starting with the original colonists, there have been
athletic competitions for various reasons. In colonial America, a man might participate in horse
races to prove his ability to tame an animal to prove his ability to afford the expenses associated
with horse racing, while proving and cementing his masculine and high class status.1
Furthermore, men would choose to settle a scuffle between other men as well as proving their
masculinity through harsh bare-knuckle boxing bouts. Masculinity was, and has always been a
keystone in the popularity and success of sports in America.2 The idea that a man could make
his body do extraordinary things that set certain men apart from others drove the popularity of
sports in beyond the turn of the twentieth century. Racial minorities and women faced ample
amounts of hurdles trying to be taken seriously in sports because masculinity contests where the
realm of upper class white men. Anyone else attempting to compete was subject to ridicule,
humiliation, and social dissent.3 However, with masculinity at the core of what made sports
popular spectacles both for participation and spectatorship, how did youth baseball rise to
popularity in the public eye? This essay focuses on baseball, America’s pastime, to analyze what
led to the rise in popularity of the National Little League, a nationally renowned league created
to allow young boys the opportunity to compete in an organized league complete with rules and
regulations. By focusing on the rise of youth baseball, it is possible to conclude that masculinity
1
Elliott J Gorn and Warren Goldstien, A Brief History of American Sport, (Urbana-Champaign, Illinois:
University of Illinois Press: 1993), 4-17.
2
Elliott J Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare Knuckle Prize Fighting in America, (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University
Press, 1986).
3
Allen Guttmann, A Whole New Ball Game: An Interpretation of American Sports, (Chapel Hill, North Carolina:
The University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 119-138.
MARKISH 3
affects young sports participants in several, but different ways, and once something becomes
acceptable in sports, it is possible for it to become a norm for spectators and participants alike.
Before focusing attention on Little League baseball, it is imperative to underline the
social views of sports and physical competition for children that preludes youth baseball, as it
provides a platform to base the analysis of the rise of social acceptance of children participating
in sports in general. Throughout history, sports have been utilized as a tool to prepare a person
to perform in other important functions of life, a concept that was broadened to include children.
Sports could prepare and keep a man in shape physically and mentally for war, or at one’s job.
Sports provided an individual with many benefits, and young men were often participants.
Youths in the 1500s would participate in sports that prepared them for possibly contributing in
war. Certain competitions that are precursors to similar games that have stood the test of time,
like “Keep Away,” or modern day American football, there were games that involved
strategically taking over buildings that were approved of and backed by the Christian church
itself, even though these competitions were also condemned by others.4 Furthermore, though not
much is known of children possibly competing, Native Americans had similar competitions, one
of which we adopted the modern game lacrosse after, that also prepared a participant mentally
and physically for war and other functions of life, like hunting. Therefore, the idea of physical
competition utilized to improve one’s mental and physical abilities for purposes beyond proving
one’s masculinity is mostly universal knowledge. However, proving one’s superior masculinity
would often motivate a sports participant to excel at these competitions.
4
Elliott J Gorn and Warren Goldstien, A Brief History of American Sport, (Urbana-Champaign, Illinois:
University of Illinois Press: 1993), 4-17.
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Proving one’s masculinity was strong motivation for a man to participate and excel at
sports, but could a young boy prove he was manlier through athletic competition? The concept
is odd when shifting focus from sports for men proving their skill and masculinity to children
competing and proving themselves in sports. Certainly young boys aspired to grow up to be
strong and masculine men that could potentially contribute to their community. Therefore,
masculinity can be connected to young boys as where they aspire to achieve to a large extent, but
that does not quite cover motivations to compete. What about competition for competitions’
sake? It is plain to anyone who has competed in sports that proving yourself is one thing, but
personal desire to compete and beat another player or team is another concept entirely. What
sort of motivations beyond just proving one’s masculinity and competition where there to
include children in sports?
As early as the Victorian Era, it was deemed valuable for children to participate in
activities that kept them physically fit. The Victorian Era lasted between 1837 and 1901, and
was so dubbed for Queen Victoria of England and her influence toward a conservative and
elegant lifestyle that extended to the United States’ views on social standards. These
conservative social standards provided a strict guideline for behavior, and in particular, violent
hooliganism associated with most sports was socially unacceptable. However, Victorian Era
people were quite aware of the importance of maintaining an active and healthy lifestyle, which
extended beyond just keeping men strong and physically fit.5 In 1881, The Christian Recorder
published a newspaper article on “The Health of Boys and Girls” which explained the
importance of keeping children physically healthy declaring:
5
Kathryn Grover, Fitness in American Culture: Images of Health, Sport, and the Body, 1830-1940, (Amherst,
Massachusetts: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1989), 19.
MARKISH 5
Let the girls share the sport of their brothers, let them run and
jump, play ball, ride horse-back, and exercise their muscles in
every possible way. Then, and not till then, shall we have a healthy
as well as an intelligent manhood and womanhood in the
generations to come.6
It is no secret that there is a connection between a healthy body and a healthy mind. Health and
medicine knowledge in 1881 may seem archaic by contemporary standards, but people were still
acute to what contributed in making a person healthier or unhealthy. Thus, games for children
that “exercise their muscles in every possible way” were not just acceptable, but encouraged.
This was deemed necessary for bringing up a healthy and proper generation of citizens.
Sports also had many negative consequences that condemned certain sports more than
others especially for children.7 Take boxing for example. There is no more direct way to prove
one’s superiority over another than physically beating the fact into them. Thus, bare-knuckle
boxing was a popular way of settling disputes. American football was another way to physically
pummel one’s physical dominance over another’s. The brutality of these more physical sports
naturally turned up noses of those who deemed such acts as uncivilized. Therefore, sports have
been molded and shaped to resemble more civilized forms of competition at many different
levels to suit one’s taste. It took a sport to be organized with control over the violence and
negativity to become anything that would be feasible to organize a whole league around for
children to participate with society’s blessing.
Thus, baseball has captivated American audiences for over a century, and the ability for
Little League baseball to become successful owes a large portion of its success to what makes
baseball so uniquely American, and also more civil than other athletic competitions. Sport
6
7
Jennie E Gilmour, “The Health of Boys and Girls,” The Christian Recorder, (April 21, 1881).
Kenneth Rudeen and James T. Farrell, “The Little League,” Sports Illustrated, (August 15, 1957).
MARKISH 6
historians have argued some of the things that make baseball more appealing to American
audiences, one of which being the one aspect baseball has in spite of being a team sport. A
pitcher throws a pitch as well as he or she can, and the batter attempts to hit the pitched ball as
well as he or she can. Therefore, the pitcher can prove his or her dominance over the batter, or
the batter could whack the ball and prove his or her dominance. Thus it is up to the position
players to assert their athletic abilities. The ability to prevent batters from scoring or providing
an opportunity for others to score is the way a position player gets to assert his or her athletic
dominance.8 Essentially, the team succeeds and fails according to all players’ performance at the
task associated with a position given to them, like parts of a machine working together to achieve
proper function. These players can be graded statistically according to how the individual player
performs. This structure is similar broadly to how the United States society ideally ran, in
particular, the economy. People performed functions according to their job, and their production
relied on their competence at their job. A would rely on its employees to perform as a team, and
each individual’s production directly contributed to the business, and furthermore, the team of
employees and their production directly contributed to the business’ success. If a specific player
on a team in baseball underperforms, that player could mean the failure of the whole team, and
that player baseball is ridiculed for the performance given. Thus, Americans are already warm to
this value system approach when baseball began to emerge as a major sport during the turn of the
twentieth century. They are also warm to the win-at-all-costs mentally, so ties, which regularly
happen in soccer, are just unacceptable by American standards. Baseball is preferred in
American for a larger list of other reasons as well. It is relatively easy and cheap to pick up in its
8
Scott, “From NASL to MLS: Transnational Culture, Exceptionalism and Britain's Part in American Soccer's
Coming of Age” (2011 23 p.).
MARKISH 7
most basic form. It has regular breaks between innings, so baseball is much easier on spectators
to make an evening out of the event.
Inning breaks and the easy and cheap structure of the game also made baseball perfect for
children to play, and when baseball began to develop sport heroes, like Babe Ruth who is a
house hold name even today, young boys naturally took notice. On the asphalt of the streets in
their towns, or in fields out in the middle of the countryside young boys would try their hand at
the game. In the early 1900s, it did not take much to organize a simple game if the passion to
have one was there, which was critical for youth sports participation in this era. This is because
the United States was fully involved in industrializing at the end of the nineteenth century. The
Industrialization Era changed social life for the United States as well as the work environment,
which in pre-child labor law America, also included children. Instead of working on a farm like
in a typical agrarian economy, much of the working class citizens flooded to jobs provided by
factories in the urban cities of the United States. Instead of helping out on the farm, children
worked in factories. As this was before any real labor reforms had taken place, children were
often subjected to long work days with few breaks. This is where the importance of innings and
the functionality of baseball ties in for children in pre-child labor law America. Three outs and
teams switch from offence to defense. Each team’s turn on offence marks an inning. Thus, a
game can easily be determined and decided in a structured frame to keep the players content for
the most part. These games could be fit into narrow time frames, and if there was not an agreed
outcome, a game could be continued during the next work break or so.9
9
Lance and Robin Van Auken, Play Ball! The Story of Little League Baseball, (University Park, Pennsylvania:
The Pennsylvania University Press, 2001). 4-18.
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Innings helped make baseball functionally sound for children, but so did the equipment
needed, and the playing area. In non-official structured baseball, the equipment, location, and
amount of players determined the structure of the game. For example, if the game was played in
a wide open field with no boundaries, everything hit could be determined “in the park,” therefore
there was no need for the distinction of homeruns. But if the field was strictly limited, for
example, in a street, the game would be restricted based off of the forced boundaries. If not
enough players showed up, certain parts of the field could be deemed out of play, or “foul.” If
too many players showed up, some sat out. The location was agreed upon and determined at
some prior point in time, and if that location was a street, players would occasionally contend
with wagons and traffic to be on the street. Bases could be designated from imagination, like a
mailbox or anything someone could lay on the ground to mark a location.10 If no one had a real
baseball, balls could be fashioned out of rubber and tape.11 If the ball was damaged during the
game, the ball could be repaired with more and more friction tape, which ultimately gave the
pitcher an extra advantage because it gave the ball more weight and grip. Pitchers called their
own strikes and balls, and any discrepancies were sorted out like young boys would sort out
anything, including the worst of disagreements ending in fistfights. The pitcher was naturally the
biggest or toughest kid in the neighborhood, as that was the most desired position.12 The heavy
ball would often damage the baseball bat used as well. More serious fractures in the wood would
require the use of nails, but most damage fixes would be the job of tape again.13 Thus, baseball
for young kids was organized by the players, like any pickup game today could be decided. The
10
11
12
13
Ibid., 8-18.
See Appendix A.
Ibid., 8-18.
See Appendix B.
MARKISH 9
object of playing the game was what mattered to the children, so rules were shaped around the
situation.
Children from all walks of life came to play the game. Before child labor laws were
enacted, some children did not get the leisure time other kids their age were afforded. Still, if
one did find the time to play, he was not limited to playing time because his father was not as
successful as another player’s father. If he could play well, he played.14 Can this be contributed
to the “win at all cost” mentality of American sports during this time? Sure, but it is natural to
want to win a game as a young boy; to show your skill is better than another kid’s. Simply put,
losing is not fun. In these pickup games, it was boy against boy for the fun of the game, and the
game was not corrupted by the vices the adult games brought.
If any of this seems familiar, it is because these pieces of Americana tend to live on and
become normal structures to the average participant. Playing in the street and the occasional
unfortunate broken window has worked its way onto the silver screen in the United States. We
smile when we relate to the horror of accidently hitting a baseball and breaking something
because this piece of nostalgia in playing sports has stood the test of time. Furthermore, things
like “drafts” for professional sports seem normal because they have been around for decades, and
are built off of the simple concept of picking teams. This concept of picking teams naturally also
was present in early baseball. Typically the two best players and or the biggest and toughest kids
who showed up were named “captain.” These two captains picked players back and forth until
the desired number of players for each team was reached. This concept has far outreached the
extent of early baseball, and has become standard for deciding where players go in things such as
professional sports, though modern psychologists disapprove of this approach for children
14
Ibid., 8-20.
MARKISH 10
because of the negative consequences being picked amongst the last players causes.
Nonetheless, these original concepts have existed even today because of the simple
characteristics of these practices. To extend this point further, children competing in sports such
as baseball have also stood the test of time and have become normal today.15
America’s pastime was in a perfect storm situation to become the first sport to succeed as
a children’s league, or at least in a better situation than the violent, more restrictive alternatives.
Parents who grew up watching baseball become successful and participating in the game
themselves would undoubtedly want to pass on their experiences playing the game to their
children. The development of Little League baseball owes a lot of credit to the nostalgia of
baseball itself. Baseball being the most popular organized sport now had a generation who had
children of their own that would want to share the period of childhood nostalgia they associated
with baseball, and teaching the game to their own children became natural. Baseball is
America’s pastime for many reasons. The crack of the bat, the sound of a baseball hitting a mitt,
the atmosphere associated with playing the game, as well as watching the game at a ball park is
deeply rooted in the culture of baseball and also America.16 Nostalgia itself has no doubt made
baseball in particular unique to this situation of children participating in organized sport. Pop
Warner football and basketball have never come close to generating the same following as Little
League Baseball.
In 1938, Carl Stotz, came up with the idea of having kids with real uniforms, a new ball
to play with, and people to come see them play in a real league. Stotz, the story goes, was
playing catch with his nephews after they had been excluded from playing baseball with older
15
16
Ibid., 1-20.
Nicholas Dawidoff, "FIELD OF KITSCH," New Republic 207, no. 8/9 (August 17, 1992): 22-24.
MARKISH 11
and more experienced youths in the neighborhood. High Schools had baseball teams, but the
idea of an organized team for younger children had not been implemented yet. It is said that
Stotz asked his nephews how they would like to play baseball with uniforms, a new ball, and
people to come watch them play. This brilliant stroke of genius led him to develop the Little
League, the largest youth sports program in the United States. Stotz would lay the foundations
for Little League baseball to become what it is today. With a stopwatch and cardboard to
determine the bases, he would set the distance between bases children would have to run, a
measurement still used today. He would determine the distance from home plate the pitcher’s
mound would be, a measurement that would be changed several times due to children
discovering how to pitch better over the years. If there was a necessity for a rule or regulation,
Stotz determined it, the only thing between him and successfully completing the development of
the league was resources, which required money.17
To say money was hard to come by was an understatement in the 1930s. What would
become known as The Great Depression, the American economy was slowed tremendously,
which in turn caused everything else to slow, like the development of baseball itself. Still, Carl
Stotz walked door to door asking for a thirty dollar donation from local businesses in
Williamsport Pennsylvania, enough to cover uniforms and equipment. Accounting for inflation,
asking for thirty dollars in 1938 was equivalent to asking for five hundred dollars in 2014.
Naturally, many businesses did not have spare money to offer to any cause. Stotz’s first stroke
of luck came from Lycoming Dairy, who gave Stotz the desired donation, and thus Lycoming
Dairy became the first sponsor of a Little League baseball team. Shortly after Lycoming Dairy
sponsored Carl Stotz’s Little League, another local company, Lundy Lumber, also gave Stotz the
17
Kenneth Rudeen and James T. Farrell, “The Little League,” Sports Illustrated, August 15, 1957.
MARKISH 12
desired amount to sponsor another team, and they have sponsored the National Little League
ever since. The third and final team Stotz would start his Little League which was sponsored by
Jumbo Pretzel. Thus, Stotz had a three team league, and that was the first ever baseball Little
League.18
In less than a decade the league Carl Stotz created took off in popularity. US Rubber
became the first corporate sponsor, and the first ever National Little League Tournament was
held in 1947, the predecessor to what would become the Little League World Series. The
National Little League Tournament gained a great deal of local attention, as newspapers reported
the results. World War II, like the Great Depression, led to a decline in sports all around after
the United States was drawn into the war 1941-1945. Men shipped off to Europe and the Pacific
Ocean, and the United States shifted most of its focus to the production of war goods rather than
spending much attention on sports. Still, children in Little League baseball were too young to
fight in war, and people needed a distraction from the unfortunate realities of the Second Great
War.19
Meanwhile, the league expanded beyond Pennsylvania and in 1953, CBS with famed
sports reporter Howard Cosell broadcasted the first ever televised Little League game, which was
the championship between Birmingham, Alabama and Schenectady, New York where
Birmingham would win 1-0. The game reportedly drew millions of viewers.20 Thus, when many
other businesses and sports leagues were in decline, Little League baseball perused in spite of all
the hardships it faced. But what else besides the boys being too young for war, and the
Kenneth Rudeen and James T. Farrell, “The Little League,” Sports Illustrated, August 15, 1957.
Little League, Little League Chronology.
http://www.littleleague.org/learn/about/historyandmission/chronology.htm (Accessed: March 27, 2014).
20
Ibid.
18
19
MARKISH 13
occasional lucky break caused Little League baseball to succeed, where the Minor Leagues and
other sports leagues suffered?
Some were quick to blame television as an issue for why the minor leagues and other
spectator sports took a decline, but the National Little League provided sports fans with
something that other local leagues lacked. Minor League baseball teams used as feeder teams to
the Major League suffered from lack of spectatorship and revenue, and one Boston barber put the
situation into tremendously telling words. “You know what's killin' the minor leagues? It's not
television—it's the damn Little Leagues."21 The difference was the barber would rather be a
spectator at his own son’s baseball game than seeing one played by men he had no ties to, and so
would many others. As the American economy was evolving from labor reforms and Franklin
Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal set through the 1930s, children once again had plenty of leisure
time, while the parents brought in all the revenue needed for maintaining the household. Once
again, youth baseball benefited from a new social structure, this time one in which children had
more time for leisure, and the shorter work day and extra revenue allowed parents to provide
their children with anything they needed to become young Little Leaguers, including time to
watch them play.
Once again, there is a change in sports that has become normal over time. Going out to
see your children play ball! It was a few decades removed from social rules frowning upon
children involvement in sports, a decade removed from children not having such things as
structured baseball, but now children were playing baseball in front of their parents, and parents
were going out and cheering them on with many other local spectators. Today, we find this a
21
Kenneth and James T. Farrell Rudeen, “The Little League,” Sports Illustrated, August 15, 1957.
MARKISH 14
normal aspect of American culture, yet this part of American culture has only been around for a
blip in America’s timeline.
Another draw toward Little League baseball was the love of amateurism in sports. When
people started becoming professional athletes, competing for money, many argued that this
defeated the purpose of sports. Endorsers would rather turn down money at times than succumb
to the wave professional sports had become. What is more amateur than children playing a game
in the style of the professionals? In Little League, children do not play with any expectation for
major prizes or money beyond a trophy. There was a real draw to see the raw, amateur sports,
and Little League was just that. Where amateurs across the sporting spectrum were having their
amateurism questioned, they were also dying off, succumbing to the draw of professional sports.
Early professional baseball players and athletes in other sports could be swayed to possibly
throw a game for money or many other reasons which affected the outcome of an honest game.
Professional sports had developed for some a dirty stigma that was associated with
thrown games and other forms of fraud. Children however, are innocent, and Little Leaguers are
not corrupted by the nastiness associated with fraud. In the article I am and Umpire and I am
Scared, the narrator who umpired for the little league in the 50s shows several examples of
children who would admit to him honest mistakes they made which would cause him to have to
turn calls.22 There is an innocence there that is lost when competing professionally that is
attributed to the love of an honest competition. Children exemplify honest competition for the
most part, or at least way more than any other competitor.23
22
Norman Katkov, "I'm a Little League Umpire -- and I'm Scared!," Saturday Evening Post 227, no. 50 (June 11,
1955): 32.
23
Allen Guttmann, A Whole New Ball Game: An Interpretation of American Sports, (Chapel Hill, North
Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988). 101-118.
MARKISH 15
What is also clear throughout the development of Little League baseball is that
masculinity played a strange and sometimes absent role in dictating what made the league so
popular. People did not go to Little League games or watch them on television to admire the
physique of a well crafted athletic specimen, or to see something extraordinary that they
themselves could not imagine doing. Yes, many young boys wanted to out-compete their
opponents to prove their skill over each other, and yes, many of these boys aspired to grow up to
be masculine idols like their heroes before them, or even to just grow up to be a masculine man
in their own niche in society, so masculinity has its place in the discussion of youth sports. But
what made youth sports and Little League baseball popular was much more complex than the
simplest level of boys competing.
Structured Little League baseball in its early form benefited from the unique dynamics of
each of the social structures of the United States in which it spanned. The Victorian Era set the
stage for baseball because it shunned the violent and less socially acceptable sports. The
Industrial Revolution further pushed baseball into a unique niche of practicality, and even the
Great Depression and World War II with its hardships saw Little League baseball succeed where
most sports took a decline in the United States. Over time, boys, and later children in general,
became normal to the game of baseball as participants, just like deceptive pitches and stealing
bases had to become acceptable in the game, yet over time became normal. In 1959, the modern
helmet was made and implemented into the game. Before helmets became required, many men,
and furthermore children, considered it (here is that word again) unmanly to wear protective
equipment, and furthermore it was impractical and expensive. In 1971, the distinctive “crack” of
the wooden bat was switched over in favor of the now distinctive “ping” of Little League
MARKISH 16
baseball, as the aluminum bat replaced it. And in 1974, the rules expanded to allow girls to
compete, and the Little League Girls Softball League was formed.24
All of these changes implemented have eventually become normal to most Little League
baseball fans. By 1978, 6,500 Little Leagues were available for 9-12 year olds, 2,850 Senior
Leagues were adapted for 13-15 year olds, and 1,300 Big League programs were created for 1618 year olds to participate in America’s pastime.25 It has even become regular to see a team of
young baseball players from Japan win the Little League World Series against American teams.
Watching children instead of men proving their masculinity over athletic competitions is the
choice of many spectators today. There are plenty more dynamics that can be analyzed and
critiqued toward what makes certain spectator sports more suitable for different audiences, but it
is ultimately up to spectator or participant to decide why they support what they choose to
support. Baseball has captivated Americans for over a century, and it looks like the kids are here
to stay.
24
Little League, Little League Chronology.
http://www.littleleague.org/learn/about/historyandmission/chronology.htm (Accessed: March 27, 2014).
25
Ibid.
MARKISH 17
APPENDIX A:
MARKISH 18
APPENDIX B:
MARKISH 19
Annotated Bibliography
Cannella, Stephen. "Little BIG TIME." Sports Illustrated, August 25, 2003. This article from
Sports Illustrated is a colorful reflection on Little League Baseball from 2003.
Dawidoff, Nicholas. "FIELD OF KITSCH." New Republic 207, no. 8/9 (August 17, 1992): 2224. This article argues that nostalgia negatively effects baseball, but underlines the major
contributions to nostalgia in baseball.
Gilmour, Jennie E. “The Health of Boys and Girls.” The Christian Recorder (April 21, 1881).
This is a primary source depicting the importance of children staying physically fit.
Gorn, Elliott J. and Warren Goldstien. A Brief History of American Sports. Urbana-Champaign,
Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1993. This source provides great analysis of early
sports and influences to sports in America from pre-Colonial America to contemporary
times.
Gorn, Elliott J. The Manly Art: Bare Knuckle Prize Fighting in America. Ithaca, New York:
Cornell University Press, 1986. This source provides a strong base for masculinity
research for sports in the United States.
Grover, Kathryn. Fitness in American Culture: Images of Health, Sport, and the Body, 18301940. Amherst, Massachusetts: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1989. This
source is a compilation of essays outlining the role of sports and physical fitness in
America from 1830-1940.
Guttmann, Allen. A Whole New Ball Game: An Interpretation of American Sports. Chapel Hill,
North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988. This source is an
analysis of American Sports that includes major sports, corruption, muscular Christianity,
and amateurism.
Katkov, Norman. "I'm a Little League Umpire -- and I'm Scared!." Saturday Evening Post 227,
no. 50 (June 11, 1955): 32. This comical newspaper article depicts the innocence of
Little League Baseball and his brush up with local fans after bad calls. Good for
highlighting the amateur sports connections to little league.
Little League, Little League Chronology.
http://www.littleleague.org/learn/about/historyandmission/chronology.htm (Accessed:
March 27, 2014).
Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society. Taped Baseball a Natural in its Time.
http://philadelphiaathletics.org/taped-baseball-a-natural-in-its-time/ Accessed: March
15, 2014. Primary sources for baseball equipment are hard to find, and this website
provided a picture of a classic example of a baseball fixed up with friction tape.
MARKISH 20
Rudeen, Kenneth and James T. Farrell. “The Little League.” Sports Illustrated, August 15,
1957. This early issue of Sports Illustrated is a primary source addressing what readers
called “the burning issue of the Little League,” which addresses the issues and concerns
people had about Little League Baseball in its infancy of popularity.
Scott, “From NASL to MLS: Transnational Culture, Exceptionalism and Britain's Part in
American Soccer's Coming of Age” (2011 23 p.). An article about how soccer did not
catch on in America like baseball and other sports.
Van Auken, Lance and Robin. Play Ball! The Story of Little League Baseball. University Park,
Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2001. A great history of baseball and
the Little League.
Wilson, Kenneth. More Than a Game.
http://kgwbreadcrumbs.blogspot.com/2013_12_01_archive.html Accessed: March 15,
2014. This website provided a great example of a repaired child’s Louisville Slugger
repaired with tape and nails.