SPORTS FOR ALL
Vincent, Ted
BOOKS SPORTS FOR ALL MUDVILLE'S REVENGE: THE RISE AND FALL OF AMERICAN SPORT by Ted Vincent Seaview Books. 346 pp. $12.95. The television sports fan nursing a beer on his pot belly has been a...
...events ranged from sack races for children to the stand-one-hop-two-strides-one-hop-two-strides-and-a-jump event in which local favorites challenged touring "world" champions...
...Thus, it is to be expected that the organization of the big leagues shut down top-ranked basketball teams in Fort Wayne and Sheboygan and formerly successful baseball franchises in Altoona and Keokuk...
...In New York City, for example, there was no National League baseball team for many years, not out of lack of interest in the game, but because New Yorkers preferred to see community or political club teams vie for the championship...
...But by 1890, the pedestrian scene had changed...
...Track and field, or pedestrianism as it was then called, was the most popular sport in the country between 1865 and 1890...
...We are all familiar with the forces in our economy that have led to oligopolies in industries as diverse as fast food and automobiles...
...Most of us will not be surprised to read how the sports business was reduced to a handful of teams competing on the national level...
...He has contributed to Dollars & Sense...
...Jim Crow was not enforced nationwide until track and field was confined to the colleges and the national leagues were formed for baseball and basketball...
...Mark H. Maier (Mark H. Maier is an economist at the College of New Rochelle in New York...
...In his anecdote-filled book, Ted Vincent traces the origins of three sports, track and field, baseball, and basketball...
...So, when a strike appeared imminent, factory owners tried to channel worker energies in other directions by starting up a baseball or football team...
...Vincent tells how blacks once participated in all major sports when the teams were community-based...
...The Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears football teams owe their origins to such managerial shrewdness...
...The chief villain in Vincent's account is the Amateur Athletic Union, which put an end to these Sunday revelries...
...sports scene until a small group of men decided that female sweat and feminine cheers degraded sports from its proper place as a "gentlemen's" affair...
...In each case he describes a golden age when that particular sport was the "national game in the United States, not just because of its widespread popularity, but also because it actually belonged to the people...
...Weekend pedestrian meets consumed the attention of big city and small town residents alike...
...Instead, Vincent argues that, under the guise of "respectability," sports were taken away from American working people by social elites who wanted to control the games for their own purposes...
...Vincent points out an interesting sidelight: Some capitalists realized that sports teams captured the interest of workers...
...Track and field was designated as an "amateur" contest, restricted for the most part to colleges and their upper-class champions...
...Vincent tells a similar story about baseball and basketball...
...The television sports fan nursing a beer on his pot belly has been a staple for social critics, at least until the baseball strike...
...Jogging and women's basketball are two examples he mentions of the changing nature of sports...
...At one time these sports were community based and the line between amateur and professional was indistinct...
...Just about anyone could enter the competition...
...Similarly, women's athletics and women spectators were common in the U.S...
...Perhaps we can use Vincent's book as a guide to keep these sports from coming under the domination of corporate elites...
...Drink flowed freely and gambling occupied not a few...
...But according to Ted Vincent in his new book, Mudville's Revenge: The Rise and Fall of American Sport, beer-drinking spectators and money-making athletes are not to blame for the sorry state of sports in the United States today...
...Less well known, however, is the effect that corporatism in sports had in promoting racism and sexism...
...The typical affair was rowdy, halfway between a circus and a horse race...
...Vincent begins and ends Mudville's Revenge by pointing out that sports may yet be reclaimed by working people...
...Because teams arose out of local organizations—unions, community centers, and political groups—many people participated and even more came out to root for their friends or co-workers...
Vol. 46 • January 1982 • No. 1
