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This article examines the factors behind a story of racial accommodation in an unlikely space, one formerly renowned for racial violence and exclusion. The space of boys’ baseball provides an opportunity to understand how class and racial changes in a formerly White, working-class neighborhood of Philadelphia, unfolded over a 30-year period. With gentrification, came new class and racial encounters on the local baseball field. The author’s research included participation as a “bench Mom” over a decade, 2 years of ethnographic fieldwork involving observations of more than 100 games in two boys’ age divisions, and 40 in-depth interviews with coaches and parents of players. Factors identified as central to the smooth racial integration of the space are the centrality of baseball to neighborhood “character,” a demographic shortage of White neighborhood children, the “racial sponsorship” of the first Black middle-class children, a growing external accountability toward new Black politicians, and the unique character of baseball itself.

The youth athletic backgrounds of professional baseball players were assessed to determine whether there was early specialization in baseball, and to determine the influence of both their high school baseball coaches and parents on their baseball careers. Players were also asked to comment on the ideal activities for aspiring young baseball players. Questionnaires were administered to 152 players from six teams in the Northwest Rookie League. Players were generally multisport athletes during high school. Specialization by playing position appeared to be delayed until the professional level, with most players playing several defensive positions during their elementary, junior high, and high school years. Players generally concurred with the advice they had received from their high school baseball coaches, that young, talented baseball players should practice and train for baseball on a year-round basis and should also participate in other school sports.

A salient feature of professional baseball is the absence of minority members serving in managerial positions. Traditionally, it has been argued that minority players did not occupy the playing positions from which managers were generally recruited, thus accounting for their lack of career mobility in baseball. However, examination of the distribution of minority players in major league baseball reveals that they generally appear in high interactor positions in proportion to their general percentage representation among all players. Although managers continue to be selected from high interactor positions, minority players are disregarded by ownership for managerial selection. This study generates an expected frequency of minority representation among managers, based on the positions from which managers are selected and the proportion of minority players occupying those positions.

Using data on the salaries of 212 nonpitchers appearing in team lineups on major league baseball’s 1977 Opening Day, this article explores how rewards to veteran professionals are influenced by race. Multiple regression analyses and separate comparisons of regression coefficients for returns to performances by blacks and by whites reveal a single indication of salary discrimination against blacks. White infielders are apparently paid more for each home run they hit than are their black counterparts.

The restrictive covenants contained in the professional baseball player’s standard contract can be justified on grounds of being the most efficient solution to the problem of transaction costs in an industry where the difficulty of selecting and managing talent is acute. Contract law legitimates these restrictive covenants. Closer scrutiny of the history and sociopolitical context of the employment relationship in baseball underlines the role of power differentials in determining the parameters within which transacting for labor takes place. Not only the reserve clause but also the negative covenant in the player’s contract has been important in providing the conditions for the efficient trading of players.

This study replicated Christiano’s inquiry on race and salaries in major league baseball in 1987. However, instead of merely dichotomizing the independent variable into black and white, the data were trichotomized into white, black, and Hispanic categories. Unstandardized regression coefficients (after disaggregating the observations by race / ethnicity, position, and free agency status) revealed several instances of salary inequities but no systematic patterning. The conclusion: The salaries of baseball players varying in race / ethnicity were not consistently different even while holding other theoretically relevant variables constant.

The purpose of this paper is to determine how the collective memory of a baseball player’s contributions to his sport changes posthumously. We seek to examine if levels of veneration accorded to an athlete depend on whether he is alive or deceased, the timing of his death, and type of death he experienced. Building upon theories of cultural valorization, we propose that collective efforts to remember retired athletes are greater if those athletes have passed on. More explicitly, we argue that a player’s death supplements his lifetime achievements in posthumous efforts to construct and maintain his memory. We analyze the history of voting conducted by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) on players eligible for induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The results suggest that a variety of performance and recognition measures affect the amount of votes a player receives. As predicted, dying and age of death exert a powerful influence on votes received toward entry into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. However, when hitters and pitchers are analyzed separately, we find partial support for our propositions.