“I needed him to be a hero.”
—Al Stump, Cobb
The dilemma faced by writer Al Stump was difficult. Hired by baseball legend Ty Cobb to write his biography, Stump quickly discovers that, in Cobb’s own words, “the greatest ballplayer who ever lived was also the greatest bastard.” Stump would have to choose; to write the truth, and trash the mythic aura of one of baseball’s greatest legends; or continue, as real-life sports writers had done during the era of Cobb’s career, to preserve Cobb’s image as a true baseball hero. In the end, Stump decides to publish the lie, and “put the truth in the closet.” “I needed him to be a hero.”
Claude Levi-Strauss (1969) writes that the principal function of myth is to reconcile the contradictions between conflicting values within a culture. For nearly 100 years, this has been the function of the myths of baseball. Since the early 20th century, the stories, legends and lessons of the game offered up by journalists, social reformers, story-tellers—and film makers—have addressed and offered reconciliation of the competing values of a changing America.
In the early 1900s, in response to the strains of urbanization and industrialization, these stories of the game offered an easing of tensions between the older, fundamental values of a passing rural America, and the newer demands of an urbanized society. Baseball, it was said, could show us how the long-held value of individualism could be smoothly incorporated into an appreciation of and commitment to the notion of teamwork, so critical to the functioning of the emerging industrialized economy. This game of rural origins played on a grassy field in an urban environment, it was said, could serve to bring the strong, religious-based moral values of rural America into the city; the conflict between the country and the city could become a balance, and America could take the best of what both had to offer. And a game which emphasized respect for authority and fair play, its advocates claimed, would serve to temper the potentially corruptive competitive energies of a rapidly advancing capitalism with self-restraint. America’s youth would learn that there are rules to the game, and that playing fair is more important than winning.
Tommy Lee Jones (center) as Ty Cobb in Cobb (Warner Bros., 1994).
These conflicts, between such values as individualism and teamwork, self-reliance and cooperation, urban and rural, competition and fair play, remain a part of the American struggle today. And America’s national pastime, baseball films continue to assure us, can still show us the way. The vision of an ideal community, and the kinds of heroes/citizens which inhabit that community, are still the dreams of which baseball films are made. But perhaps the greatest contradiction confronted by baseball films is that between the vision and the reality. This is the contradiction confronted by Al Stump. This is the contradiction confronted by America, as well.
From one perspective, a critical one, the role of baseball, and baseball films, in addressing that contradiction is problematic. From this view, the game, and the films about that game, are seen as obscuring that contradiction, and as constructing support for the existing social order. Through the promotion of a particular set of social values, baseball and baseball films invite citizens to see the world, and their place in it, in ways that encourage acceptance of the existing social order, rather than leading them to challenge it. There is much evidence in the history of the construction baseball’s ideology to support the argument that this is indeed a primary function of the national pastime. And, as discussions throughout this book have suggested, baseball films have consistently supported that ideological project. It is through such ideological work, argue critical theorists, that dominant interests are able to maintain their dominance.
Michel Foucault (1995) has traced the processes through which, in the modern era, the means of social control have shifted from coercion and punishment to socialization and normalization. While various forms of punishment certainly still exist, and always remain as the ultimate threat to those who would transgress against social norms and laws, Foucault argues that individual adherence to social norms, and maintenance of the social order, is achieved principally through education. This is not simply a matter of teaching citizens what those social norms are, says Foucault, but also of inculcating in them the practices of self-surveillance and self-discipline. For the most part, we obey the laws of society not simply because we fear punishment, writes Foucault, but because we accept them as “right;” because we have internalized the basic values which those laws seek to protect, and because we fear the discomfort of being seen, and seeing ourselves, as out of step with dominant social norms. We learn, says Foucault, to police ourselves.
Central to this disciplinary project is the concept of normalization; of communicating to individual subjects what constitutes acceptable thoughts, ideas, desires, values and behavior within a given culture. We learn, through the work of such interrelated social institutions as schools, churches and media, as well as the legal system, to recognize the “normal;” to value it, to monitor our own thoughts and behaviors, and to bring ourselves into compliance with it. Baseball, like most popular culture in America, has been a part of that socialization process. As Reiss (1999) has noted, professional baseball’s ideology, which was constructed in the early years of the 20th century, “spoke directly to white Anglo-Saxon Americans and their need to secure order” (p. 7). A significant concern among white, middle-class Americans—the primary target audience of baseball’s ideological message—was the prevention of “radicalism and anarchy by acculturating and exercising social control over the new immigrants and their children through such institutions as the public school and the national pastime...” (p. 7). In a time of tremendous social upheaval, and amidst widespread concerns about the stability of America’s social order, baseball’s ideologists represented the game as a means of binding together an increasingly stratified industrial society, of forging a sense of shared community in large, impersonal urban settings, and of teaching to both American youth and the thousands of immigrants coming to America’s shores the basic values of American culture.
A large part of baseball’s ideological work has been devoted to accommodating America’s citizens to the needs and dangers of a corporate, industrial and urbanized economy. In the early part of the 20th century, amidst the social changes of a rapidly shifting economic and political landscape, the game’s admonitions against such vices as drinking and smoking, for example, served as a reinforcement of traditional Puritanical values which were believed to be threatened by urbanization and its accompanying social and moral ills. The game’s emphasis on teamwork, and putting the team’s interests ahead of one’s own, as Gelber (1983) observed, helped condition workers to the new realities of a corporate, industrialized workplace which not only required workers to cooperate and work together in the new processes of production, but which also required their loyalty in a changing economic and political sphere. And, as it has consistently through the years, baseball continues to embrace these same values even today, holding them up to American youth as central tenets to be followed both in the game of baseball, and the game of life. Indeed, it is because these values remain so central to baseball’s and America’s definitions of what is “normal,” that the failure of contemporary ballplayers to adhere to these moral tenets themselves is the center of continued media attention and public consternation among American educators and political figures.
Since the 1930s, these have been the values celebrated in baseball films, as well. Unlike films of other genres, which have at times sought to challenge—or at least expose the inconsistencies between the real and the ideal—baseball films have remained true to the game’s core cultural vision. Thus, from Elmer Kane (Elmer the Great, 1933), to Lou Gehrig (Pride of the Yankees, 1942), to Crash Davis (Bull Durham, 1988), to Jimmy Morris (The Rookie, 2001), cinematic baseball heroes of all eras have exemplified such values as hard work, teamwork, humility, and moral virtue; the same essential values which are taught in American schools, churches, youth programs and other social institutions every day as “basic, American values.” Through their definition of what constitutes both the ideal community and the ideal citizen within that community, baseball films are a part of the disciplinary project of modern American society. The idealized hero of baseball films is also the ideal citizen in America’s ideal community. These films have sought to teach us the way we, and the world—at least according to baseball—are meant to be.
The history of baseball ideology, then, reveals a conscious and concerted effort to use the game as a means of smoothly acculturating America’s citizens into the dominant order of industrial capitalism; to create, as Lipsky (1981) writes, “citizens of industrial civilization” (p. 112). And, baseball films have clearly played a supporting role in that ideological project. However, at the same time that the game, through the dissemination of values such as hard work, humility, and moral virtue, has functioned to socialize citizens into the dominant social order, it has also served to provide citizens an escape from the frustrations, hardships, and oppressive nature of that same social order. Recognizing the alienation of industrial labor, not to mention life in an impersonal and often grimy urban environment, the game’s early proselytizers touted the ballpark as a space where city dwellers who spent their days toiling long hours in boring, repetitive jobs, could work off their anger and frustrations (Riess, 1999). At the same time, and much more significantly in terms of the game’s socialization functions, baseball was presented as an activity which provided both players and fans opportunities for individual achievement often denied them in their daily working lives, as well as participation—if only vicariously—in a democratic, egalitarian community in which the values of hard work, moral virtue, and commitment to the team/community are rewarded. As Riess (1999) and others have noted, much was made in the Progressive era of the democratic nature of baseball. The game was said to be open to anyone who wanted to play. Presumably, any boy with the talent and dedication could grow up to become a major league ballplayer. (Baseball’s ideologists, obviously, did not let the realities of racial segregation stand in the way of a good story.) Additionally, the ballpark itself was described as a place where fans of all social and economic classes could come together on an equal basis, to join in one united community rooting for the home team.
As Jhally (1984) observes, these two functions—the providing of an escape from the realities of the social order, and the socialization of individuals into that same social order—are related. The ability of sports in general to simultaneously serve both of these purposes, suggests Jhally, lies in their idealization of the dominant values and structures within American society. According to Jhally, sports mask the true nature of capitalism’s authoritarian structures by making them appear as personal and human. Sports, and the mediated images of sports, present the dominant values and processes of social life in a preferred light, emphasizing the human and positive dimensions of modern social life, while deflecting attention away from the threatening and alienating characteristics of those same social, political and economic structures. Through sports, suggests Jhally, the cultural values and social processes that characterize and dominate American social life are portrayed as rewarding, fulfilling, and desirable. The institutions which dominate American culture are represented through sports as offering a true, human community, and as benefitting all who are members of that community. By celebrating idealized, rather than existent, structures of reality, by reflecting dominant values in an idealized way, sports, according to Jhally, have served to distort the realities of life in modern industrialized American society. And, in the end, the use of sports such as baseball as a means of establishing a sense of community, the linkage of sports with the development of good citizenship and democracy, the promotion through baseball of such values as teamwork and hard work, all serve, in this view, to promote the interests of contemporary capitalist society.
The hegemonic functions of baseball’s ideology, and baseball films, is undeniable. At the same time that we recognize the hegemonic function of baseball ideology, however, we should also recognize that is not necessarily its only function. While it is clear that baseball’s ideology was grounded, in part at least, in an effort to support and normalize the social relations of urban, industrial capitalism, it is important to keep in mind that opposition to the threats to community, to fundamental moral values, and to traditional ways of life posed by the new economic order were also part of the Progressive movement, and central concerns of many proponents of the “sporting republic” discussed in the first chapter of this book; a vision which helped to frame the construction of the ideology of baseball in later years. Fierce opposition to the new social order which came to dominate American culture is also a part of the heritage of baseball’s cultural vision. Thus, while it may be that the audiences for baseball and baseball films accept as real these idealized images of social life, and are thus unlikely to challenge a social system which actually exploits, rather than engages, those same values, it may also be that these same audiences are, in fact, critically aware of the contradiction between baseball’s idealized cultural vision and the world in which they live their daily lives. Viewing baseball films as part of the ideological project of dominant social, political and economic institutions and interests is clearly one, but only one, legitimate reading. Viewing them as an oppositional vision to the social order those interests have created, we would argue, is another.
“People,” writes Sut Jhally, “choose and interact with social institutions that reflect their objective needs” (1984, p. 52). We believe that the popularity of baseball films is reflective, not of a blind, naive acceptance of the way society is, but of a desire for the way society ought to be. Baseball’s cultural vision, as reflected in films from the 1930s into the 21st century, is one of an ideal community characterized by diversity, equality, tolerance, and nurturance; a community in which the individual, through commitment to the larger community, is able to achieve individual success and fulfillment at the same time that he or she contributes to the success and achievements of that community. It is a world in which individuals are motivated by a commitment to their team, family and community, and by a love of and devotion to the work they do for its own sake, rather than simple material greed. It is a world in which individuals work hard, but derive enormous joy and fulfillment from the work they do. It is a world in which people willingly adhere to a shared vision of morality. And it is a world in which these values are rewarded, rather than exploited; in which those who flaunt these values, whether they be baseball superstars or corporate executives, do not come out on top.
The popularity of baseball films and their heroes reflect a longing for a culture in which people such as Roy Hobbs and the cinematic Babe Ruth really do win; in which not only superstar athletes, but also the culture in which they perform and live, really do reflect the values of hard work, humility, and commitment to the greater good of the team/community. These cinematic portrayals of baseball and its heroes enable us to continue to hang on to a symbolic vision of what we would like our culture to become. It is a vision of the America that was meant to be. The challenge, it would seem, is not to make the ideology of baseball conform to reality, but to make reality conform to the ideology of baseball.