News Flash! Integration Was Good For Baseball

So, how much did integration improve the talent level of baseball? According to Mark Armour of the SABR Baseball Biography Project (and, truth be told, common sense) a lot. (But even more in the National League, which on the whole was much quicker to integrate.)

UTPB PTI

Many of you have asked about being able to see the YouTube of the UTPB Pardon the Interruption from my fall semester Sports History class. Here it is, in three parts. They did a great job, especially given the technological constraints and that we do not have any sort of broadcast journalism major (and it came out even better on dvd -- there are many sacrifices the student who posted this had to make for it to be YouTube-able). My Global Sports class this semester now has a high standard to reach.

Mega Self-Indulgence Alert

There has been no lack of analysis of the state of the Republican Party by fairly prominent folks. In my latest History News Service op-ed (which has not yet gone up on the "Recent Articles" page for some reason) I weigh in on the state of the GOP. I try looking back to another era of deep divide within the Republican Party and show how the lessons the far right needs to learn from Ronald Reagan seem not to be the ones they are learning. So far it has been picked up by the Durham (NC) Herald Sun, the Albany (NY) Times Union, and the LA Progressive.

It has also appeared on websites ranging from History News Network to The Dallas Morning News to USA Today to WBIR.com (Knoxville, TN), to Florida Today.

As long as I'm cranking up the self indulgence, I also may as well mention that on Friday, April 23, 2010 I'll be giving a talk at the Newberry Library's Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture as part of the 2009-2010 Chicago Seminar on Sport and Culture. The title of my talk, part of a larger project on sports, race, and politics in South Africa since 1994, is "Stopped at the Try Line?: Rugby, Race, and Nationalism in Post-Apartheid South Africa." I have an article with a similar title coming out in the next couple of months.

Debunking the Rose-Fosse Myth

In honor of tonight's All Star Game, I am directing you to Deadspin, where Dashiell Bennett debunks the hoary myth that Pete Rose's (still sort of dickish and unnecessary) decision to truck Ray Fosse in the 1970 All Star Game destroyed Fosse's career.

We have all heard it a load of times: The All Star Game once met so much to the players, who, along with their managers, treated it like a real game because there was real rivalry between the leagues, whose players only saw one another at the World Series. But I am not certain I particularly care to return to a time when the Midsummer Classic was an especially significant sporting event. I guess that may be because I have never known better. It is probably still the best all star game in all of professional sports, but it does not really matter much to me if the American League wins, though I suppose the home-field component means that I'd as soon see the Junior Circuit emerge victorious. And while I hope the Red Sox players in the game do well, I mostly would as soon see none of the pitchers, save maybe first-timer Tim Wakefield, even touch the mound tonight.

The C's Top Ten?

In an early effort to place the Celtics' recent title in historical perspective, Bob Ryan ranks his Top Ten Celtics teams of all time. Not surprisingly, the 1985-1986 team tops his list. Surprisingly this year's team gets number two. But most shocking to me is that of his top ten, three did not win the championship, and one did not even make the finals. Bob Ryan may be the most respected basketball writer in history, so I will tread lightly with my criticism, but it seems a dubious decision to argue that the team that has the most NBA titles has three teams that were better than ten championship teams. I am firmly of the belief that "better" being subjective, winning it all is a better sign of greatness than whatever we project onto teams that did not win it all. Still, the whole excercise is thought provoking, serves as a reminder of the storied history of the C's, and is fully worth it if only for this picture:

The Evolutions of Football

Sports are organic. The games we see played on the fields and courts today have changed, in some ways significantly, over the decades, and if we were to travel ahead a century in the future those games would likely appear in somewhat, and perhaps markedly, different form. The Times of London reviewed a book last week that revealed the ancient origins of the two great football games that England helped bequeath to the world: rugby and soccer. Hugh Hornby's Uppies and Downies: The Extraordinary Football Games of Britain looks like a valuable addition to the shelf of sports fans and historians alike.