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back when taunted. But “time” diminished the hatred of Germans, especially as the Soviet Union became the greater threat, and for me, sport became a potent assimilator. When I played sandlot and organized sports—be it football, basketball, and baseball—it did not matter to my teammates or opponents

earliest passion, one that endures to this day, is baseball, which sealed a close bond with my father. He and my mom initially came to America in the late 1930s to flee the Nazi invasion in Central Europe. Immigrants were not welcome in America during this time (post-Great Depression), so when their visas

run by the International Olympic Committee (IOC; Carpentier & Lefèvre, 2006 ; Leigh & Bonin, 1977 ). In the mid-20th century, Jackie Robinson broke the color line and ended racial segregation in professional baseball when he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson’s overt challenges to racial

defining an individual based on their disability and how the disability is a problem can lead to outright discrimination by health clubs, recreation programs, and sports. Imagine a mother taking her son who is blind to sign up for Little League Baseball. Do you think the league director will view the child

three such “hard” cases, two of which come from Russell’s important essay, “Are Rules All an Umpire Has to Work With” ( 1999 ), and one of which comes from my own book ( Morgan, 2007 ). The first hard case Russell discussed in his 1999 essay involved a turn-of-the-20th-century baseball game, in which a

( Szymanski, 2020 ), but that the overall mindset in contemporary discussions regarding the place of records and data in sport boils down to “full speed ahead.” Journalist Travis Sawchik ( 2019 ) exemplified this mindset in his article “Do We Even Need Minor League Baseball?”: MLB’s approach to the minor

pervasive to a certain extent in American culture. I am reminded, for instance, of the owners in Major League Baseball during the first half of the 20th century who controlled a sport always classified as America’s National Pastime and the great leveler in American society based on democratic principles

experiences. I was born during the latter stages of World War II into a conservative Lutheran family. I was raised in a small town in Ohio. My father, a physical educator and baseball coach at Oberlin College, was my role model. He died of cancer when I was in high school. It was probably the single most

. Significant Others in My Socialization Fortunately, I enjoyed the benefits provided by the children of Oberlin College professors who were friends and classmates. Some were coparticipants on school-sponsored and community-based football, basketball, and baseball teams. These friends comprised my social

” societies devoted to particular forms of physical activity, from every variety of football (association, rugby, American, Canadian, Australian Rules, etc.) to baseball to cricket to the Olympic Games sponsor academic gatherings ( Booth, 2005 ; Delheye, 2014 ; Pringle & Phillips, 2013 ; Stone et al., 2015