Barth: The Evolution Of Baseball

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Barth intentions for the evolution of baseball is merely astonishing. Barth portrays that the uprising of America’s game played a critical role of how once a society that was strictly business and no leisure gradually found the equilibrium between working and leisure. Barth overall suggests that the intensified urbanization was the leading cause in the acceptance of games and races as extravaganzas, because the cities attracted people with leisure time wanting entertainment and gained spectators who were seeking escape from their monotonous lifestyle. While Baseball is commonly known as “America’s game”, its high success did not become successful all on its own. Before baseball became the most popular; horse racing lead the race with boxing…show more content…
The sport dominated the sport industry throughout 1840-1870. As the sport gained more spectators, the game itself generated more games and lead to more opportunities for spectators to go view them. While more games were being played this gave spectators something to talk about at work, especially when reviewing a previous game or anticipating a future one. In New York men would play ball games in lots, this lead to the first organizations, which lead to the first adopted set of rules. The randomized setting of the game vanished around the 1850s due to the multiple organizations that had been developed. In 1858 the National Association of Base Ball Players was created to distinguish more order. This order was increased during the Civil War. Not only did people throughout the country want to play baseball games they also played the same way, starting games easier, more quickly, and reducing arguments. Once the game was established with more specific rules this continued to strengthen the path for improvement for the…show more content…
Sports journalism first took off when spectators could not attend a specific outing, and it helped bring the distant outings closer. The sports journalist quickly created a bond with the multiple different spectacles being reported. Sports journalist not only helped increase the number of sports that were reported they began to increase the audience at sport outings as well. These sports journalist increased audience size with the amount of reports, and statistics, and records they were keeping track of for each baseball team and each baseball game. These journalist were so concerned about giving detailed descriptions on an entire baseball game they attracted thousands of readers. These articles and statistics filled in spectators who unable to catch a ball game, or listen to the ball game feel as if they did get to do those things just by reading an article. Without sports journalism baseball might not have been so popular, spectators would have been unaware of the previous night’s games, the standings of a team, or the updates on how the World Series tournament was playing out. Most importantly they gave an identity to baseball, gave a name to put with the famous persons face, and kept spectators interested and loving the sport in good and bad

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