Playing For Keeps: A History of Early Baseball by Warren Goldstein is a historical novel about the economic and sociological advancements of the game of baseball. Goldstein used sources like biographies, magazines, and various newspapers. He used these sources most likely because they were readily available at the time and provided him with many hands-on experiences and a direct source of information from that time period. Goldstein portrayed throughout the book that baseball went from a club-based fraternity sport based on pure enjoyment to a business that was profit driven as well as a boyish sport to a manly one. He states that baseball has “two very different kinds of histories: one linear, chronological, and cumulative, the other cyclical, generational, and repetitive” (Goldstein 2). The origin of the sport began in the nineteenth century. Baseball was created by taking three different sports – town ball, rounders, and cricket – and blending some of the rules of those games into what was then called “base ball.” Before the Civil War, baseball was played out of pure enjoyment. The first baseball club, the Knickerbockers, played themselves at first but eventually started to play other clubs in 1846. The members had occupations varying from firefighters, policemen, barkeeps, and more. Playing other teams created competition, which in turn brought up the idea of every team having their own specific uniform, captains, and an umpire at every game to call the shots. Soon enough there started to become spectators of the game which sometimes caused an uproar when they did not agree with the umpire’s call.
Eventually, there were regularized rules of the game. For instance, there were pitching rules, fielding rules, and general game rules. Many offenses were punished by suspension, expulsion, or fines. The players who played by the rules, including the controversial fly rule (not an out if it touches the ground), were considered men. That one bounce of the baseball being considered an out if caught was considered extremely boyish and only for the children. This was one of the many “tensions that structured the experience of early baseball - manliness versus boyishness…” (Goldstein 4). If players played by the rules, they would be considered gentlemanly, but they could not do it alone. Many players influenced women to come watch the games, which was “supposed to help men control themselves on the ball field” (Goldstein 38). Spectators are also what separated the boys from the men. There were not spectators at a junior league, but actual baseball clubs began to attract audiences which helped the men who were trying to distinguish their manliness from the boyishness of the junior baseball games.
Goldstein also touches upon the arguments of professionalism versus amateurism. The amateurs were playing just to win and to have fun, no ulterior motives of money involved like in the professional league; it was not about money, but camaraderie. This shows how the amateurs played for the pureness of the sport. Professionalism, on the other hand, had a focus on always having the best players at all times which meant having the time and place to practice as well as “revolving” to always have the best of the best. Professional teams also had to have the money to do this as well. Professionalism turned baseball from a sport to a business. Because of this, many people started to begin gambling which undermined the integrity of the game. The only profitable clubs were the winning clubs and it became so much money to the owners that they felt they had to lie to their own teams and tell them that they could not afford to pay them their salaries. This is all because there cannot be a competition without money involved.
Ultimately, Goldstein used Playing for Keeps as a way to educate people on how baseball was at first played out of pure enjoyment and now played as a business or a job even though it was not destined to become “work.” He preached of men like Albert Spalding, Harry Wright, and Al Reach who all used the business aspect of baseball to their advantage with their ideas. He also portrayed the manliness versus boyishness by describing the different baseball clubs or junior leagues. Many people believed that professionalism (the manly game) was the right direction to go in (which it obviously ultimately did) but teams struggled to keep the manly aspect intact. The rising professionalism had interrupted the sport itself by breaking teams apart, formations of new groups, and was just the beginning of the changes of the game of baseball that we know today. The two histories of baseball that Goldstein described really emphasized the overall outlook of baseball. The linear, chronological, and cumulative history reflects upon the “progress and perfection” of the game itself. The cyclical, generational, and repetitive history reflects upon the nostalgia of people who worshiped the game when it had just begun. Either way one looks at it, both histories have brought together what we now call our national pastime, baseball.