Over the past decade, football in the ratings and the eyes of Americans surpassed baseball in popularity. Leading many sports writers and common sports fans to pronounce football as America’s new national past time. However, a national pastime is not created over a mere decade. A sport that encapsulates a nation shares feelings about an event or general trend in the country with the majority of the country and has events within the country interwoven within the sport. Even Professor Gerald Early at Washington University in Saint Louis said that “There are only three things that America will be remembered for 2000 years from now when they study this civilization: The Constitution, Jazz music, and Baseball.” Baseball best captures the essences …show more content…
Before Jackie Robinson played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, there was a gentlemen’s agreement that no black players would be apart of the MLB, and the black players would play in the Negro Leagues. By the early 1940s however, the one of the executives for the Dodgers, Branch Rickey, believed it would improve his team’s chances of winning. Thus, in 1945 Jackie Robinson was signed to a minor league deal and debuted for the major league team a year later. Furthermore, Dodger executives to Robinson he would hear racial slurs constantly and dirty play against him, but he could not retaliate. Moreover, his first major league season was a roaring success and began the integration of blacks into baseball. Baseball was also the first major sport to integrate blacks into the game. This furthers the point of baseball’s encapsulation of America because race and segregation was and is a major issue in American society and it was in the middle of baseball. Importantly, when discussing the segregation of sports, Robinson’s story is almost always brought up. Therefore, baseball is interconnected with segregation because it was the first major sport and one of the major spaces where segregation …show more content…
The War on Drugs was a governmental philosophy created by President Nixon in 1971 where he wanted to stop drug abuse any way possible. Additionally, it began campaigns of increased incarceration for possession of drugs and foreign intervention in order to stop drug cartels from carrying drugs to the US. Baseball’s connection to the campaign begins in late 1970s when they begin cracking down on amphetamines or “greenies”. The issues of “greenies” climaxed with the Pittsburgh drug trials in 1985 where a group of baseball players testified and admitted to using steroids. Repercussion followed after the trial to a varying level. Nevertheless, MLB’s war against steroids is more memorable and is still active today. By the mid 1990s, the general public realized baseball players were using a collection of steroids in order to hit baseballs farther and further. Baseball did not effectively deal with the issue until the 2006 Mitchell Report that indicated multiple baseballs players and use of steroids. Since then, baseball has heightened the stakes of using performance enhancing drugs with a three strike policy involving incremental increases in suspension for use. Hence, baseball is intertwined with war drugs because when the governmental philosophy began, baseball changed its philosophy on drugs in