THE OTHER "AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM":
WHY IS THERE NO SOCCER IN THE UNITED STATES?
by Andrei S. Markovits Associate Professor of Political Science Boston University &
Research Associate
Harvard Center for European Studies
Commentary by Charles S. Maier, Professor of History, Harvard University,
and Senior Associate, Harvard Center for European Studies
1
Introduction
Once again,
the world's
most important media event which undoubtedly captured
the uninterrupted attention of most of
month of
June 1986,
barely left
Although the quadrennial
Mexico,
this
event
World
failed
the world's
the realm
Cup
to
was
of esoterica
hosted
capture
male population
the
by
in the United States.(l>
America's
imagination
southern neighbor,
of the American public.
Interest in the United States was strikingly minute in comparison
in
every
virtually
economically
most
country
similar
in
to
the
the
world,
United
including
States,
for the entire
to that exhibited
those
the
i.e.
politically
and
liberal capitalist
democracies of Western Europe, as well as those quite different, i.e. members of the
Communist bloc or that loose conglomerate
though American
television coverage
before, this major global event
sports
life,
let
alone
of World
remained
public
continue to be so aloof with
known
life
regard to
as
-Third
World".(2)
Even
Cup '86 was more extensive than ever
outside
in
the
of
the
general. (3)
the world's
mainstream
of American
Why does the United States
most popular
sport?
Why has
soccer played such a marginal role in the public consciousness of this sports-crazed
society?
What are the origins
Excepti onali sm"?
This
paper
and ongoing
purports
mani festations of
to
this other "American
shed some light on these interesting-
perhaps even important - questions.
SqIb.rt 8.yill'td ADd Am.rie"1
el.rt fic.tionl
Socc.r
IIExctpUon.U1,",
So..
cOlp.r.tly.
Werner Sombart, li ke virtually all European observers of the "New World" before
and after him, was
ambivalence
both fascinated
reflected
generalizations based on
extension with
the
the
by and
invariable
ambivalent .towards
combination
"uniqueness"
of
certain puzzling peculiarities. (4)
these IIAmericanisms" was the absence of a large,
class movement
the
headed by a political party.
of
this country.
The
both negative and positive
United
States
as
a European
To Sombart, the most puzzling of
well-organized, mass-based working
Among the realistic aims of this party
2
would be
the improvement
of conditions for its members and voters, who hailed from
the working class and
thus
industrial societies,
including the
would
first
and
attain
represented
then
majority
state
power
Sombart's concern,
title
for
A far more
Sombart's
organized, working class movement
in all
through
the
channels
of
"Why is there no
Socialism
did not
exist in
book
appropriate
would
led by
have
a social
though definitely less
been
"why
is there no large,
democratic party
in the United
One could think of few more corroborating compliments to the validity and
States?"
originality of the study's central observation though, than
as one
population
of his time either, thus making the United States quite unexceptional to
any country in the old world.(S)
elegant
the
his question
socialism in the United States?" is rather misleading.
the Europe
of
To achieve its aim, the party
United States.
exercise
t3iven
parliamentary democral:Y.
the
its continued relevance
of the most intellectually exciting bodies of literature in American history
and social science.(6)
The parallels to soccer are striking.
what he
called "socialism",
we too
Just
can observe
as Sombart
This
is not
has been completely absent
to say
from the
absence of
a basic absence of soccer, as the
dominant participant and spectator team sport, in the
twentieth century.
noted the
United States
throughout the
that soccer - like Sombart's "socialism"­
American experience.
Both
appeared on these
shores virtually concomitantly wi th their respective "inventions" in Europe and both
continue to flourish in various guises.
existed in
twentieth century
Socialist parties and movements have always
America, just like the game of soccer has been played
virtually without any interruption in this
the
nineteenth
century.
(7)
vast country
"Socialism's"
since its
introduction in
fortunes have ebbed and flowed in the
larger context of American politics and intellectual life without ever
to
attaining
a
dominant,
Comparatively soccer has never
three" featuring
let
alone
posed any
baseball, football
hegemonic,
position
serious challenge
like
coming close
in
to America's
Europe.
own "big
and the somewhat distant third of basketball.
3
can
On~
saf~ly
in
disapp~al"
th~
thought,
that
will
Th~ir
~xists
a
a
assum~
dir~ct
that
som~
of
th~
socc~r
among
That
th~ r~st
of
know only
th~
as
is
the
world, with
"socc~r".
countri~s
sport
or
"socc~r'·
such as
wh~r~
is used.
of
insignificant to
th~
of
I think not for
is
us~d,
th~
local
its~lf
of
"Fussball" or
Association
Among
th~
countri~s,
to an
l~d
subordinat~
th~r~
th~
try to
Am~rican
plac~
of
th~
is
Do~s
this
th~
following two
th~ Unit~d Stat~s,
should
not
detract
to conform
a
prid~
to
t~rm
"football"
British
case for "American
th~ conc~pt
First,
as
from
socc~r's
w~ll
th~
as
of
plac~,
translation
It is only in
describ~s anoth~r
that
th~ t~rm
of South Africa,
complicat~d cas~
form~r
th~
cousins, most notably
b~~n Am~rica's
and the
of
by
th~ sp~lling,
lit~ral
s~condary importanc~,
validity of
r~asons.
sport has
or
Am~ricans
~vid~nc~d
Hungarian "labdarugas".
of
r~fut~ th~
"football",
"football" is
languag~,
in that what
appar~nt
calls
modifi~d
th~s~ countri~s hav~
States -
sports topography of
sp~aking
that
I will
Rath~r,
is
Am~ricans
wher~ th~
Football
thus confining
th~
~v~n
and "socialism" in
th~
sp~aking countri~s wh~r~ th~
Unit~d Stat~s,
immigrants.
socc~r,
p~rhaps
arguing
which
for
th~ t~rm
English-sp~aking,
to
not
SOCC~l"
~xc~ptions,
all - like the
r~gard
pl"~dict how~v~r,
tol~rat~d,
p~culiari ti~s
N~w Z~aland
Whit~
plul"alism in
th~ Unit~d Stat~s ~ith~r.
am
of
to
will
ph~nom~na
Am~l"ica's
d~mocraci~s.
Australia and Canada, but also
by
I
abs~nc~
industrial
Th~ pr~-~min~nc~
th~ G~rman
Unit~d
in
b~ing
continu~.(8)
virtually rio
term "football"
such as
to
~qually saf~
promin~nc~
Am~rica
Am~rican
r~lativ~ly
orthography and pronunciation
th~r~of,
It is
"socialism" also account
fact that in most non-English
~ith~r
"un-Am~l"ican"
sports.
Am~rican
socc~r
in
oth~r
sam~
"~xc~ptionalism" r~garding
sports.
b~tw~~n th~
to
two
fUl"th~r t~stimony
will thus
l"~lationship
th~s~
of national
l"ol~
Unit~d Stat~s wh~n compar~d
show
l~nding
plac~
~cc~ntriciti~s
of
n~ith~l"
politics and
traditional
alr~ady
appr~ciat~d,
thus
futur~,
int~ll~ctual
n~ith~r
that
pl"~dict
coloni~s dominat~d
~xc~ptionalism"
with
only to "socialism"?(9)
subordinant position in
th~s~
uniqu~n~ss
of
oth~r
English­
th~
Am~rican
4
situation, in which soccer's potential for eminence as a mass sport was preempted by
the creation
of three
indigenous team
sports.
Baseball, football and basketball
have continued to enjoy unrivaled 'popularity among the
respective
introductions
national sport.
provided the
Having
as
mass
sports. (10)
successfully
United States
with yet
American public
Ice hockey developed as Canada's
exported
it
south
another, though
of
the
border, Canada
regionally confined, popular
team sport and gave many countries of the globe's northern
favorite winter activities.
since their
hemisphere one
of their
The rest of Canada's popular sport "space" is dominated
by America's "big three" though, with baseball and basketball exact replicas of
the
American games, and Canadian football showing only very minor modifications from its
American cousin.
two
most
Interestingly, Canada is among the handful of
parochial
and
idiosyncratic
exceptionalism" - football and
outside of
the United
baseball
States.
the Caribbean
have
responsible for America's "soccer
attained
a
respectable presence
Cricket occupies a major portion of New Zealand's,
Australia's and South Africa's sport
Pakistan and
factors
countries where the
"space",
islands, i.e.
as
it
the West
does
Indies.
in
India,
Sri Lanka,
The remainder of the
sport "space" in these countries is filled by field hockey <India, Pakistan
Lanka),
rugby
(Australia).
(New
Zealand
and
South
Africa)
Common to all of these countries
and
Australian
then is
Rules
the presence
and Sri
football
of cricket as
the national sport, the marginal existence of soccer, and the existence of a second,
rather obscure and somewhat modified British team sport.
States,
none
of
these
countries
In contrast to
developed three virtually new team sports which
consumed almost all the existing sport "space" of their society, as the
have
in
the
United
States.
exception of basketball(11)
Curiously,
have
the United
remained
these
-big
almost
"big three"
three" - with the notable
completely
confined
to the
borders of their creator despite the latter's preeminent position as the uncontested
global leader in the politics, economic affairs and popular culture of the twentieth
century.
5
This
brings
me
to
the
second
reason why America's soccer "exceptionalism"
di ffers from the ones briefly mentioned in the
Unites States'
referred
often
American century"
almost
beyond their actual
reality.
By
virtue of the
economic and cultural hegemony throughout much
militaYy, political,
of the twentieth century
preceding lines.
all of
to
with
some
justification
as "the
America's actions (or inactions) attain meaning
The
concept
of· "Americanism"
has
few,
if any,
parallels in the twentieth century, thus denoting the uniquely nodal position of the
United States in the modern world.
immediate orbit
of the
This
country's
hegemony
Zealand.
the
matters more
or
specialists.
at
best
Crudely
put, the
in the world's affairs than do Canada, Australia or New
Important issues within these
world
beyond the
liberal democracies of industrial capitalism and is equally
significant to the countries of the Second and Third Worlds.(12)
United States
extends
become
countries remain
esoteric
items
unnoticed by
gaining
the
the rest of
attention
of a few
Newsworthy issues in the United States though are of both national, as
well as international, importance.
Thus, the editors and sport writers of Sovietski
Sport have probably never wondered why New Zealanders or South Africans seem unmoved
by soccer.
Along
with the rest of the world's soccer fans however, they have most
certainly asked themselves why soccer plays
States. (13)
a
marginal
role
global
position.
attention
Whereas
in
good
part
because
world.
the United
of America's
the "socialism" debate has generated much
impressive scholarship though, the question of soccer "exceptionalism"
confined to
in
American soccer "exceptionalism" like the absence of "socialism" in the
United States has received so much
predominant
such
has remained
the oral tradition of stadium debates and bar room chatter allover the
Clearly the two "exceptionalisms" and their consequences for
human existence
in the
United States
the quality of
can not be construed as equally significant.
Soccer, while like all major sports a multi-billion dollar business, still remains a
game, whereas
"socialism" would, at. a very minimum, most certainly diminish, if not
alleviate, the misery of
the American
poor by
its creation
and maintenance of a
6
well-functioning wei fare
state.
Thus, Sombartian "exceptionalism" has rendered the
United States, far and away the richest country in the world, to
industrial
democracy
without,
comprehensive national
importance
health
among
insurance
for
its
which has
since the beginning
of
this
Nothing
sick.
of comparable
"exceptional ism".
"exceptionalism" isolates the Uni ted States from
involvement though,
only major
things, a compulsory, state-involved,
soccer
American
accompanies
other
be the
a leisure
This
second
acti vi ty and collective
captured the rest of the world's undivided attention
It
century.
is
to
the
common
origins
of both
"exceptionalisms" that I now turn.
Am.r!c. - !h' rir.t Ntw Nation
The most important common denominator for both "exceptionalisms" and the single
most pervasive
society
is
underlying variable
for an
quintessentially
bourgeois
the
understanding of
nature
of
American politics and
this
country's objective
development and subjective self-legitimation from its very inception to the present.
This
"natural",
hence
all
the
more comprehensive,bourgeoisificati-on of American
politics and society created certain structures and an accompanying atmosphere which
definitely distinguished
this country
from all
others in the "old world" and from
the latter's mere colonial extensions overseas (as opposed to "new
world" which, as
a
for
concept,
remained
States). (14)
was to
tellingly
reserved
almost
exclusively
Central to this burgeoning "Americanism" was
attain his
fulfillment by
being an
religion or the army.
be
they
actor in a free
the
state
or social
In short, bourgeois America created a new
identity which prided itself on being explicitly different from that
in aristocratic Europe.
United
individual who
independent, rational
market unfettered by any oppressive collectivities,
classes, organized
the free
the
found anywhere
Only by separating church from state could this new society
develop a politically unchallenged secularism which in turn could be viewed as being
among the
most religious
in the
advanced industrial world. (15)
Moreover, only by
establishing an unprofessional military under strict civilian control
- in addition
7
to
the
continued
presence
"American exceptionalism ll
heavily armed
-
of
the
could
"frontier ll ,
the United
yet
another major ingredient of
States develop
into one
societies among advanced industrial countries.(16)
of the most
By establishing a
broad concept of equality which, however, was to remain in a permanently subservient
position to the individual's freedom by merely providing him with equal access to an
abundance of opportunities, this new country created an ingenious system
participation which
was at
once mediated
created a framework for
the development
limitless opportunities,
which became
yet also
comprehensive.
of powerful
myths of
of popular
Above all, it
unbound freedom and
one of the most attractive ideologies of the
modern world.
Indeed, as Leon Samson has persuasively argued, Americanism carried a
veneer
with
laden
terms
movements of the left,
"crowded
out"
(Americanism
rather
due
from
the
= Socialism
to
so
the existence of the
franchise
those
above-mentioned
and
to speak.) (17)
by other
"pragmatic"
the
to
consciousness
further substantiated
ideological",
similar
used
myths.
praxis
The
by socialism and other
of
Thus
this
primacy of
socialism was
bourgeois
a bourgeois
America
order is
well-known components of "American exceptionalism":
for
and
white
males;
sel f-defined
highly centrist electoral system,
the
persistence
middle-class
have successfully
of
two "non­
parties who, aided by a
"crowded out"
any newcomers
and the crucial role of an integrating nationalism exemplified by the "melting pot".
America's soccer "exceptionalism" is also rooted in this bourgeois order.
Modern sports
Sport in
are inextricably
its organized
culture, goes
urbanization,
hand
in
hand
such
with
industrialization,
politics, production
growing
and consumption.
dissemination of modern sports
While most
the development
of mass democracies.
form of regulated leisure and, subsequently, of commodified
participation of a steadily
li fe.
tied to
components
of
education
and
constantly
number
citizens
of
the
in
"modernization" as
the
public
expanding
life of
The creation and - perhaps more importantly­
are thus
modern sports
major
part and
were actually
parcel of
a bourgeois
mode of
"invented" by members of society's
8
"higher stations" either of
they soon
became the
aristocratic or,
purvie.... of
more often,
quasi-aristocratic bent,
the bourgeoisie and the "masses", if they were to
gain any significance beyond that enjoyed by polo or croquet,
it
was
the
two
most
bourgeois
societies
of
for instance.
Thus,
the latter half of the nineteenth
century, Great Britain and the United States, which founded organized, professional,
play~d
team sports
case of
and
enjoyed by
Britain's "inventions",
The dissemination
of the
the masses in their own countries, and - in the
especially soccer
- everywhere
in the world. (18)
respective national sports correlated positively with the
two countries' global position.
Great Britain was still the
leading imperial power
and as such, the main opinion leader and cultural "hegemon" of the time.
over the world
emulated
relaxation and sports.
an isolated "new world"
presence was
British
ways,
which fascinated
This
derived much
of its
the European
non-European,
intern~l
huge empire during the latter half of the
mother
being a
country
new, sel f-contained
unlike
ambivalence towards
related
its
Australian
Great Britain,
public, but
perhaps
nineteenth century,
and
Canadian
cousins.
This
strong
manifesting itself in a clear affinity fostered
"special
relationship",
the latter
whose very presence
half of
the nineteenth
marked by both admiration and rejection,
proved particularly significant in the realm of sports. (19)
As
we will
soon see,
and baseball developed into American sports R2L excellence within the
framework of this ambivalent and largely one-sided dialogue
with Britain
independent of the
"new world's" identity formation, greatly influenced the development
This
both football
even anti-European.
America attained its
"frontier" society,
of public discourse in the United States during
century.
whose concrete
legitimacy from being the center of a
by a common language and a disdain for the old colonial master,
threatened the
to recreation,
isolation was in part self-imposed by America's
self-identification as being distinctly
legi timacy by
those
The United States, on the other hand, ....as still by and large
very marginal.
Whereas Britain
especially
People all
about its
ways.
which America conducted
Both sports developed out of largely pre-industrial,
9
II
eli te" British team acti vi ties.
adapted to
a new,
Through
complete bourgeoisi fication,
commercialized industrial
order in
a "new world
ll
they became
By the time
•
Britain's own mass sport, soccer, had been successfully exported allover the world,
America's sport "space
lt
was already occupied by former British imports now converted
into genuine American games.
Firstly,
the
American
Why
was soccer
bourgeoisie
had
"crowded out"
sport
in
6reat
Secondly,
Britain.
young
soccer's dissemination
elites
at
the
universities were keener on playing - and then altering - what had
British
"elite"
sport
rugby)
<i.e.
importing soccer which by that
baseball's
in
the
United
time
rather
had
States.
descriptions of the developments
soccer,
and Greece,
India and
round object
to and
a
football
"vulgarization"
and
similar to
baseball respectively,
from tts .lit. origins to th. world',
diverse precursors
disparate parts
the Americas,
away from
developed into a
sport~
The ancient and geographically
In
American
than expressing their anglophilia by
undergone
Th' D.v.lopm,nt "of Mod.rn Soccer in Br1ta1nl
lOst popular mass 'port
well documented.(20)
top
as a
In the following section, I will offer brief
of
tracing the "massi fication" of each
United States?
successfully established its own national
game, baseball, which largely paralleled the timing of
mass
in the
to the
game of
soccer are
of the world such as China, ancient Rome
men would
each other.
gather periodically
and kick some
Whether it was the skull of a defeated
Danish enemy, as some English legend has it, or the stuffed bladder of a slaughtered
animal, people
would somehow
periodic festivities,
centered
devise"a
around
"ball" with
a
which they
ball-like
object,
played. (21)
These
continued throughout
Europe's Middle Ages, occurring virtually everywhere on the Continent as well as the
British Isles.
sport" in
The game of calcio, hailing from Roman times, was
Florence around
1500. (22)
It was
,enturies, though - rather tellingly and in
modern soccer
the biggest IIteam
widely played in Italy in ,subsequent
tandem
with
the
re,t
of
the world-
in Italy stems entirely from the introduction of Association Football
10 by the British in the late
modern
soccer
resulting in
was
a
1BOOs/early
wild,
serious injuries
That authorities
the
and occasionally
order.
also to
crowds
Nevertheless,
or throwing
gather
annually
strict and dour days of Lent.
In Derby,
an
it, became
the "match"
intense
contest
Through the export of
to
As James
Walvin
has
to control
disorganized
the "ball"
by kicking,
on or around certain
on Shrove
Tuesday where
their last day of freedom before the
The contests in Ashbourne and Derby became legendary.
that
the
between
term
two
a
with what
pointed
"derby"
developed,
long-standing,
modern Association
became commonplace
to do
uncontrolled,
football games
celebrate
connoting
the
usually local, rivals.(24)
football, this
English term,
along with
in the contemporary vernacular of some continental
languages, such as German, Hungarian and
fact, little
these
danger in seriously
between the parishes of St. Peter and All Saints became such
tradition,
institutionalized
many others,
for some participants.
regular occurrences
Best known in England were the
would
even death
their potential
"matches" in which two opposing sides would try
festivals.
"precursor" to
more often than not forbade the playing of football attests to the
public
holding, running
medieval
disorganized free-for-all which often ended in riots,
roughness of these riotlike games and
disrupting
The
1900s.(23)
Rumanian.
These mass
happenings had, in
was to become modern Association football or soccer.
out,
this
pre-modern
form
of
mass entertainment
virtually disappeared from the lives of the common people during the early stages of
the Industrial Revolution only to re-emerge
circa
one
hundred
years
later (i.e.
during the 1880s) with a fervor and enthusiasm which was to conquer the entire world
with the exception of
period, the
structural
the United
upper stratum
changes
States 25
years later. (25)
In
the intervening
of the English bourgeoisie,aided by several far-reaching
particular
to
a
new
industrial
age,
turned
this
wild,
disorganized and dangerous medieval festival into the most popular modern team sport
on earth.
from the very beginning of its
development, modern
soccer became inextricably
11 linked to
the most
fundamental aspects
of "modernization":
discipline exacted by
regulated industrial life; the strict separation of leisure and work;
of organized
and regularized
recreation for the masses; cheap and efficient public
transportation by railroads (intercity)
widely available
mass communication
and
by
trolleys
(intracity);
radio, and
prompt and
via the press (introduction of the sport pages
in newspapers), to be followed by telegrams (crucial for the
wide betting>,
the necessity
then television;
and -
development of nation­
perhaps most
importantly - the
development and rapid expansion of modern education.
Though Wellington probably never said anything
on the
playing fields
of Eton,
the fact
about Waterloo
ha~ing
that generations of middle class Britons
cherished this belief conveys the centrality of the so-called public
dissemination of
1830s,
soccer and
English
educators
the new industrial order.
most efficient - but also
the
servants and
learning" as articulated by
various times
and
by thinkers
most
Charles
such as
became
Be they
Kingsley
concerned
formed the
Starting in the
with
a
complete
The goal was to produce not only the
well-rounded
scholars.
These public
as aristocrats",
rugby, the forerunner to American football.
intellectuals
education befitting
doctors, civil
schools to the
bourgeois culture in nineteenth century Britain. (26)
schools, "ideal training grounds for merchants as well
cradle for
been won
and
thus
the ideas
or
Thomas Carlyle,
similar
fulfilled
- lawyers,
of "godliness and good
concepts
put
forth at
Herbert Spencer and John Henry
Newman, the idea could best be summarized by that ubiquitous Latin phrase "mens sana
in corpore
sano''.(27)
Organized sports had suddenly attained a central role in the
proper education of Great Britain's young, male, bourgeois elite.
Best described in
the famous book Tom Brown's Schooldays published by Thomas Hughes in 1857, it was in
this atmosphere that modern soccer emerged.
The game of football was played at all prestigious public schools, at
old guard
of Eton,
both the
Harrow, Charterhouse, Rugby, Westminster and Shrewsbury, or the
new foundations of Cheltenham (1841), Marlborough (1843) and
Wellington (1853).(28)
12 Until
th~
of
middl~
1840s,
th~
football, an intramural
with almost
gam~
school's particular
t~rrain dictat~d
In schools such
Eton,
"pi tch~s"
by
confin~d
spac~
on
kicking and
"accurat~
Rugby,
r~strict~d.
to
w~ll-d~scrib~d
from
dashing
dribbling"
gam~ b~cam~
in which
With
gam~s
th~
adol~sc~nc~,
th~
clubs
and
of
th~
1850s.
A
gam~
s~t
sinc~
of
on a
pur~ly amat~ur
rul~s
of football had
b~gan
had
(29)
at Rugby in
d~v~lop~d
and
a
th~
th~
of
1830s is
gam~1I
split
into Rugby Football,
th~
"kicking and
Th~
syst~m
by
th~ mid-to-Iat~
int~rscholastic cont~st
in
and
larg~ly
b~com~
sev~r~ly
Th~ c~ntrali ty
to occur with
b~~n
sporadic
~ncourag~d
also
th~
som~ r~gularity.
gam~ b~yond th~ir
In addition to
pr~stig~.
public schools throughout
all having
basis
hands
on~
and Marlborough, was
into an
r~sp~ctability
disorganiz~d,
compr~h~nsiv~
th~ gam~
tim~,
only
aft~r
Winch~st~r
plac~d
(30)
school alumni
th~ pr~stigious
or
Football.
(socc~r).
"dribbling
football, not
This "running
d~v~lop~d
gam~ d~v~lop~d
of public
at this
r~main~d
~xp~ri~nc~
Rul~s
only narrow
so-call~d
th~
national railway
th~
attain~d gr~at~r
and
of
Ch~lt~nham
in 1863 and
Australian
had
air
th~
gam~" d~v~lop~d.
various public schools
involv~m~nt
~m~rg~d
use
th~
~ducational
gam~
which
di fficul ti~s, also
drainag~
of
th~ pr~mis~s.
Harrovian
of Tom Brown's Schooldays.
~xt~nsion
Oxbridg~
Oxbridg~ m~n
Still ,
though,
ov~rall
Association Football
th~
football
play at
first
and/or
among
continu~d
continu~d
"running
traditionally intramural
th~
with
on
the-
v~rsion
Th~ r~sp~ctiv~
play~d
Conditions at
by schools such as
Am~rican
gradual
th~
by
p~rmitt~d.
play"
Chapt~r Fiv~
to both
With
handicapp~d
th~ so-call~d
for~runn~r
W~stminst~r,
compl~t~ly ~liminat~d.
still
"kicking and dribbling"
th~
1840s,
was
th~ stud~nts'
in
of football
ball, although catching it in
th~
follow~d
main school at which
this sport
of hands was
ground,
th~
and
its own
rul~s.
spac~ r~strictions favor~d
1 imi tations but
on dribbling
pr~mium
bounce
th~ us~
kind
th~
play~d
fluid
compl~t~ly
Chart~rhous~
disposal,
th~ir
in which
gam~"
a
at
as
school basically
~ach
found~d
in
th~
south
s~rious
by
1850s,
~x-public-school
unr~gulat~d
nec~ssity
into a
by
th~
of England.
throughout
th~ ~arly
sport which
th~
1860s
r~ach~d
13 beyond the confines of England's public schools.
In 1862 J.C. Thring, assistant master
graduates to
form the
first football
team at
rules known as "The Simplest Game". (31)
Thring's
step
represented
al though
a
ubiquitously
major
applicable
game.
and one
Cambridge in
of two Shrewsbury
1846, issued a set of
Streamlining all the rules into ten pOints,
only
initially
development
of Uppingham
in
considered
making
A lively
football
for
an
use
at
easily
Uppingham­
transferable,
reaction and revision process followed
during which the 14 points of the Cambridge University Rules of 1863 originated.
Monday,
October
Freemason's
26,
Tavern
1863
on
the
Great
football's 13 "laws". (32)
Football
Queen
Street
shall run
in
<F.A.)
London
and
was
founded at the
proceeded
to decree
These "laws" - in notable contrast to the earlier "rules"
- govern the world's most popular sport
("No player
Association
On
with the
to this
ball.") and
day virtually
unchanged.
Rule 9
Rule 10 ("Neither tripping or hacking
shall be allowed, and no player shall use his hands to hold or push his adversary. ")
especially
dismayed
cleavage between
the
sti 11
these two
numerous
supporters
increasingly di fferent
of
the "running game".
versions of
The
football became so
pronounced during the 1860s that by 1871 the supporters of the "running game" formed
their own association.
secession from
Entitled the
Rugby Union,
it completely
finalized rugby's
Association Football and initiated the establishment of the "running
game" as an independent sport sui generis.
In the same year the F.A., which to
English soccer,
began organizing
this day
its first
is the
sole organizing
comprehensive tournament including all
English clubs and culminating in a final match between the last two
for
the
F.A.
Cup.
Held
in
London
body of
remaining teams
every year since 1872, the Cup final still
represents a highlight of the English soccer season and draws much attention
on the
Continent as well, due to the tremendous respect accorded there to the oldest soccer
tournament in the
invariably
played
motherland
of
between
two
this
sport.
strictly
Until
amateur
1882,
clubs
from
the
Cup
Final was
England's
south.
14 More-ove-r, most of the- playe-rs we-re- "ge-ntle-me-n" who
schools,
Oxbridge-,
profe-ssional te-am
Etonians for
or
both.
from
This
England's
the- Cup. (33)
was
had atte-nde-d
one- of
the- public
to change- for gO'Jd in 1882 whe-n a se-mi­
north,
the-
Blackburn
Rove-rs,
playe-d
the- Old
Won by the- southe-rn ge-ntle-me-n for the- last time-, the- Cup
move-d northward as of 1883 (won
by anothe-r
Blackburn te-am,
the- Olympic), re-gaine-d
only once- by a London club during the- ne-xt 32 ye-ars.
This he-ge-mony of the- North and
the- Midlands in English football signale-d the- de-mise-
of the-
e-ra" in
socce-r and
the- concomitant
arrival of
e-xclusive- "ge-ntle-me-n's
the- game-'s profe-ssionalization and
comme-rcialization - in short, de-mocratization.
"Among the- Blackburn playe-rs we-re- thre-e- we-ave-rs, a spinne-r, a de-ntal assistant,
a plumbe-r, a cotton ope-rative- and an iron foundry worke-r."(34)
and into the- 18805, socce-r rapidly de-ve-bJPe-d into a working
in particular,
se-e-ing socce-r
having by
Isle-s.
the-
game-
that timeLastly,
soon
Followe-d
by
de-ve-Iope-d
te-ams
schools,
into
also prolife-rate-d
some-
de-ve-Iope-d
as
This
ne-ighborhood
game-", socce-r's
to playe-rs and spe-ctators alike-.
ball
and
a
re-Iative-Iy
de-marcating the- fie-Id and
ce-rtain ways
still is)
flat
of the- British
de- facto "winte-r branche-sOl of alre-ady
sport se-ason
rapid prolife-ration
for the-ir
me-mbe-rs to a
of socce-r in little- more- than a
itse-If.
Priding itse-If as
rule-s we-re- inde-e-d fe-w, cle-ar and e-asily communicable­
In te-rms of e-quipme-nt, all that
surface-.
spe-cial are-as
not absolute-Iy
not only to be-
~n
was ne-ede-d
was a
Eve-rything e-lse- - goal posts, ne-ts, line-s
on it,
boots and
e-sse-ntial for
uniforms -
a socce-r match.
most important "de-mocratizing" factor was the- e-arly aware-ne-ss
attribute-s suffice-d
associations and
non-English parts
de-cade- was intimate-Iy re-Iate-d to the- nature- of the- game"the- simple-st
Churche-s
Bre-at Britain's most ubiquitous sport,
into the-
e-xisting cricke-t clubs, the-re-by e-xte-nding theye-ar-round involve-me-nt.
class sport.
as an ide-al ve-hicle- to combat urban proble-ms, spawne-d
clubs all ove-r the- country.
factorie-s,
Throughout the- 18705
was (and in
Pe-rhaps the­
that ave-rage- physical
ade-quate- socce-r playe-r but also a star.
as the- playe-r(s) with the- be-st physical attribute-s
could not
control the-
Just
flow and
15 outcome of
the game,
neither could the most intelligent, wily or wealthy_
it soon became evident
which
no
one
that successful
individual
completely by himself.
could
soccer always
ever
sufficient
exert
With the development
had to
of
the
be a
Indeed,
team effort in
control to decide a game
passing
game
in
the
1880s~
soccer's collectivist identity became irreversibly established. (35)
By the mid 1880s, many factors contributed to the rapid rise of professionalism
and the concomitant disappearance of amateurism in British soccer: regular newspaper
coverage
of
the
games;
increased
intercity
matches
among
clubs; expanded and
modernized playing fields, surrounded by viewin9 areas for a growing
who paid
admission fees;
and the
newly introduced
number of fans
work-free Saturday afternoons.
This shift from amateurism to professionalism entailed a sociological change
class
background
of
soccer
players
working class youth from some Midland
to
opportu~ity
make
a
better
to
as
as fans.
industrial
living
the
well
by
latter,
slum
being
a
in the
As to the former, a poor
would
clearly
seize every
paid for what essentially still
remained his hobby.
As
parallel
"downward"
composi tion occurred
during the 1880s, which led to a "crowding out" of the Engli sh
gentlemen by the working class from both the playing and
soccer world.
and
players
professional
Walvin
with
and
shift
in class
viewing dimensions
of the
claims that during this time quite a few English soccer fans
bourgeois
"vulgar"
backgrounds
sport
and
snubbed
then
soccer
pursued
as
their
an
increasingly
ambitions
as amateur
sportsmen in other games, such as rugby. (36)
With the establishment of the English
second division
in 1892,
the present
established in its essential contours.
of soccer
in 1888,
followed by a
structure of English professional soccer was
This format of league
play shaped
in every country where it became the central sport.
profits on the increasingly expensive
began to
Football League
investments
which
these
the game
The need to maximize
professional clubs
represent, was met neither by "friendly" matches on an irregular basis nor
by the potentially one-time involvement in the F.A.
Cup tournament.
Therefore the
16 football League
developed.
Its twelve original members - all from England's north
and the Midlands - would compete for the League championship by playing a continuous
round-robin tournament
in which
"at home" and once "away".
come to
each team
would play every other team twice, once
By the early 1890s, English football - as
know it - was fully established in Great Britain.
the world has
It was poised to conquer
the world, a hitherto unparalleled feat in sports history.
Soccer enjoyed a "national", i.e. class-transcendent, appeal in
late nineteenth
century in spite of its professionalized "vulgarization" during the
1880s and 1890s.
This fact
together with
presence throughout . the world
of soccer.
It is telling
sport was
British
workers
local
schoolboys
Uruguay);
following the completion of
Brazil, Portugal);
their
and members
introduced to
engaged
education
of local
in
England
English clubs
riding
Germany,
proliferation
Aided
by
a
in
bringing
activities from cricket and horseback
Argentina).
and prominence
of British
many countries
by an
visiting English sailors (france, Spain, Brazil>; British
embassy personnel (Sweden);
Poland,
the ubiquity
during this period help to explain the exportability
that the
eclectic group of people:
Rumania,
Britain by the
to
soccer
local
the
projects (Russia,
game
back with them
(Holland,
Italy, Spain,
which expanded their sport
(Austro-Hungarian Empire,
of coaches and other officials
imported from England and Scotland, and by frequent "missionary" vi si ts from English
clubs who
would tour
the respective country playing exhibition matches against its
newly founded teams, soccer quickly became
the
most
dominant
team
sport
European continent and in Latin America by the eve of World War 1.(37)
on the
Developments
in the United States, conversely, proved a good deal less fortuitous for soccer.
In America, soccer remained closely associated with immigrants,
proved fatal
world".
to soccer's
The
seventeenth and
in Virginia. (38)
game's
potential of
various
becoming a
precursors
were
popular team
played
in
the
a stigma which
sport in the "new
colonies
of the
eighteenth centuries, with documentation of a game as early as 1609
As
in England,
football was
played on
the streets
and in open
17 squares, often leading to riot-like disturbances which, in turn, led the authorities
to forbid the game on a number of occasions.
Again similar to England, the game did
not attain any social respectabi 1i ty until the fi rst hal f of the nineteenth century,
when the nation's top colleges started
playing
periodically
various
by
until the 1860s.
Boston
versions
university
accompanying roughness
led
by
of
Harvard,
football
administrators
Yale,
on an intramural basis.
because
schools
Game" exceptional
united
to
prominence in
- between
raucous
the
become a
nature
and
Charles
a number
of elite
1862 and
1865, lending
the "Boston
America's still small, diverse football world.(39)
River
in
Retrospectively, this synthesis may have
failure to
its
Outlawed
form the Oneida Football Club which remained
Allowing the use of hands and feet, the "Boston Game"
across
of
Early in this decade, students and alumni from
secondary
and Columbia­
both on and off the field, the game did not become organized
undefeated - and even unscored upon
sport
Princeton
major popular
soon became
Cambridge,
home
proved
early
an
of
the most popular
Harvard
harbinger
University.
for soccer's
sport at American colleges, and subsequently in
American society as a whole.
By the end of the decade,
uniformity to
allow for
the
had
achieved
November
6,
1869
well as the first soccer game in modern American history
Football. (40)
rules which
were somewhere
kicking
Columbia joined the original
game.
participants agreed
thrown or carried.
important
foothold
New
Brunswick between
Even
though
that the
two
Soccer
among
in
local
ball could
its
leading
since the
game was played
in between those of Association and Rugby
included Rutgers, Princeton, Yale and Stevens.
type
in
This event can be classified both as the first football as
Princeton.
according to
sufficient intercollegiate
the playing of the first college football game in American
history, which was held on Saturday,
Rutgers and
game
in
1870
by
1872
the group
These schools played an Association­
differences
not be
rudimentary
American
and
in
rules
persisted,
all
picked up with the hands, caught,
form
colleges.
seemed
to
have
assumed an
It failed to do so at the
18 country's oldest and
most
prestigious
institution
of
higher
learning
though:
Harvard persistently opposed the "kicking 'game", clinging tenaciously to its "Boston
Game" which it had perfected in the interim. (41)
adopted Association
due to Harvard's
institution
rules in
Indeed,
absence.
ultimately
1873, they
overturned
When
the other
schools uni formly
desisted from calling themselves a league
the
the
unique
"kicking
prestige
game's"
of
this
apparent
American college students of the early 1870s and led to the running
and ultimate triumph by 1877.
play two
matches in
the time.
The
As
the
the
encounter
game's complete
easily
two universities
1874, the first according to the rules of Harvard's
"Boston Game", the second following McGill's rugby rules.
first
victory among
In search of an opponent, Harvard turned north of the
border to McGill University which played rugby at
agreed to
and
was
poised
to
lose
expected, Harvard won
rematch
Surprisingly, the Harvard team played McGill to a scoreless tie.(42)
than this
unexpected and
respectable result
team's unanimous enthusiasm for
wholeheartedly as
their own.
very special
the game
for soccer's
of rugby
to
McGill.
More important
future, was the Harvard
which they
henceforth embraced
The "Boston ,Game", having been a hybrid between rugby
and soccer and thus still including more kicking and foot-involved ball contact than
rugby,
was
dismissed
as
sleepy
and
boring.
In its stead, the "running game"
developed in its then purest form as Harvard's unchallenged team
one
year
later,
in
1875,
Yale's
well-established
stronger than its membership in a loose association
few other
schools then
playing the
"kicking game".
rivalry
sport. (43)
with Harvard proved
with Columbia,
Princeton and a
In that year the first "Game"
between Yale and Harvard was played, with Harvard winning easily in a
never played until then.
Columbia and Wesleyan, but
rugby.
The other
Barely
game Yale had
That year Yale still fulfilled its "soccer obligations" to
by 1876
Yale had
universities followed,
dropped soccer
with Princeton
and replaced
it with
succumbing last in 1877.
Rugby's triumph over soccer at American colleges was so thorough that soccer did not
reappear on
American campuses on an intercollegiate level until 1902.
By that time
19 American Football - rugby's successor in the "new world" - had gained
prominence in
action due
American college life.(44)
to the
Three" American
relative paudty
sports, soccer
American
universities,
as
Stigmatized as slow, boring and devoid of
of scoring
has, since
languished in the giant shadows cast
in
an unshakable
to any
of the "Big
its re-introduction as a varsity sport,
on it
American
when compared
by football
society,
and later
basketball.
At
soccer has remained largely the
domain of foreigners and recent immigrants, both as players and spectators.
Let us
now look at the developments of football and baseball respectively, so we can better
understand what occupied the American "sport space" upon
shores and
how this
popular sport.
context of
"preoccupation" led
Since
we just
soccer's failure
on these
to the "crowding out" of the world's most
discussed the
in the
soccer's arrival
origins of
United States,
American football
it seems
in the
best to continue the
paper by looking at football before turning to baseball.
"Crowding ou' from .b oy'"'
Tb. c.,. of Am.ric.n footb.ll
What Harvard had started
by sticking
to the
running game,
Yale completed by
offering football its charismatic "founding father" and most influential modernizer.
Indeed, Parke Davi s, "the
Plutarch of
early college
football", expl ici tly equated
Walter Camp of Yale to George Washington by stating that "what Washington was to his
country,
Camp
father. "(45)
was
to
American
football
Attaining legendary
most formative years, Camp "was said
character 'Frank
Merriwell of
fame as
to
the
friend,
the
founder,
and the
a player and reformer during the game's
have
been
Yale''', America's
the
model
for
the fictional
first and greatest sports hero on
whom a whole generation of American boys was weaned after 1896.(46)
Camp's major and lasting contribution was to transform
aristocratic English
twentieth century.
Riesman and
game to
a quasi-
a quintessentially bourgeois American activity of the
Astute observers of
Michael Qriard
football from
have drawn
American sports
and culture
explicit parallels
such as David
between Walter Camp and
20 Winslow
Fred~rick
each
both
other,
were
systematization of their
w~r~
th~
undergoing
turn of
th~
th~
respectiv~
century.
in
the
modernization,
sport which,
d~scrib~d
as
unpredictable
English
offensive
became
and
the
awarding what was to become the
lin~s
on
measurable at
- set
domination
(yards
statistics
In order to
"block game"
it,
making
any time
stage
th~
p~r
regulat~
in which
teams
for
th~
delin~ated
confronted
tying up
to the
establish~d.
itself a Taylorist concept
yardage; etc.).
in
ball,
American
each
oth~r.
the ball
and thereby
Therefore further clarification was added by
"center snap"
was thus
the field by drawing. clear
location perfectly
figur~
however with both sides vying for the ball
continu~d
impeding the commencement of the game.
the ball
l~ading
scrambl~
clearly
defensive
simultaneously at the beginning of each play, often
counter the
and
following the successful conclusion of this
"scrum",
ambiguity still
by
of
as American football.
"scrimmage", in which the
possession of
regularization
the
Camp's leadership, rugby's ad hoc and free-for-all
Confusion and
ind~pendently
- football and factory production - which
fi~lds
Walter Camp could be
of a
cl~arly em~rged
Und~r
engaged
presumably
far-reaching changes of bourgeoisification (and Americanization) at
the "Taylorization"
process,
Simultaneously, though
Taylor. (47)
offensive team.
Undisputed
Camp and his' reformers "taylorized"
a
team's
of the' game.
progress,
movement and
The gridiron - in and of
for football's
subsequent and lasting
carry; total passing yardage; total running
and encourage movement on the gridiron, and to
each team would
k~ep
the ball for "i ts" hal f of
the game, Camp introduced a rule requiring a team to make five yards in three downs,
extended to ten yards in four downs in 1912.(48)
Camp reduced the number of players
per team from 15 to 11 and each player was assigned a specific position
was
expect~d
to
excel
and
specialize.
He devised the arrangement which became
standard - seven linemen, a quarterback, two halfbacks, and a fullback.
his "scientization"
of football
in which he
As part of
in which game plans, strategy, and tactics assumed
an increasingly central role, Camp also introduced a
rule which
permitted tackling
21 as low
as the
knees.
This maneuver to bring a man down was more efficient, though
also more brutal,than the earlier
The dangerous
method of
wrestling an
opponent to
"wedge" appeared, perfected by Harvard to become the more devastating
"flying wedge", only to be countered by Camp's Yale teams with the
Play
the ground.
became
violent,
routinely
resulting
"shoving wedge".
in major injuries and frequent deaths.
Finally President Roosevelt, having seen the photo of a mangled Swarthmore player in
the
newspaper
following
a
particulariy
Pennsylvania in 1905, personally
such obvious brutality.
savage
demanded that
encounter between Swarthmore and
the game
be reformed
to eliminate
Only thereafter did Camp and others institute changes which
eliminated overt and willful maiming without, however, compromising the roughness of
the game
which was
deemed essential by virtually every educator and opinion leader
in the country.
President Roosevelt's involvement led
Intercollegiate
Athletic
Pierce of West Point.
(N.C.A.A.> in
Association
It was renamed
1910.(49)
in
December
to the
establishment of the
1905, headed by Captain Palmer
the National
Collegiate Athletic Association
With Walter Camp in charge of the American Football Rules
Committee., the last substantial rule changes were undertaken yielding a
eve of
World War
I which
game by the
has basically remained intact on both the collegiate and
the professional levels to
this day.
One
of the
most important
reforms was the
forward pass which established the "aerial attack" as yet another weapon in a team's
offensive strategy.
expense
of
sheer
This reform fostered the honing of finesse and precision at the
physical
force,
thus
further contributing to what had already
become a highly "taylorized" sport.
Baseball had become the sport
prestige of
of
the
lower
classes,
"enjoying"
stage acting or gambling in Michael Oriard's words.
Football developed
into the most popular sport among America's middle class by the turn
when
soccer
America. (50)
football
made
its
triumphant
Initially dominant only
rapidly
spread
westward
conquest
in
the
of
the
elite
establishing
the social
of the century
European continent and Latin
schools
itself
at
of
the
places
East Coast,
such
as
the
22 University of
Chicago
(coached
by
the
legendary
Amos
Alonzo
Stagg), Oberlin,
Michigan and Notre Dame in the Midwest, Stanford and the Uniyersity of California at
Berkeley'::)n the West Coast.
The
1920s
witnessed
the
proliferation
of college
football in the South and the Southwest, with both regions producing major powers by
the 1930s.
football
That
underscored the
games on
remained
middle class
Saturday afternoons
essential ingredients of
a hegemonic
position
in
virtual
the
prerogative
of
collegiate
America,
Football
nature of football's first four decades.
in the
fall, especially
College football attained such
bourgeois culture.
Ame~ican
American
middle
class
around Thanksgiving, became
culture,
that
it
succeeded in
"crowding out" the professional game - as well as soccer - until the founding of the
National Football League in 1920, and arguably well into the post-World War
II era.
Professionalism did not however remain excluded from the world of American football.
One aspect of the mens-sana-in-corpore-sano ideology of the American bourgeoisie was
the
perception
of
football
as
a
bastion
professionalization of the college game had
century.
law,
in
set
the
in
divinity,
and
medical
football equaled
schools". (51)
professionalize its coaching staff and its
betrayal
clearly
amateurism,
by
fact
turn
though,
of the
Gate receipts provided welcome revenue even to the wealthiest universities
such as Yale, where in 1903 "income from
the
of
of
amateur
Staying competitive
ideals,
was
proceeded
critical
for
the combined
Yale was the first university to
rivals, initially protesting
to
hire
winning,
budgets of
this vulgar
their own professional coaches.
which
had
graduated
from being
everything to being the only thing.
The
explicitly
peripheries of
professional
America's
steel
football
and
surrounding areas of Allegheny County.
Ohio, professional clubs were
location
of
the
Professional
coal
game
regions,
originated
such
as
in
the
Pittsburgh
cultural
and the
Spreading later to the industrial regions of
established in
Football
Hall
towns such
of Fame).
as Akron
and Canton (the
Most teams were owned by
23 wealthy businessmen who liked the game, wanted to provide some
local population
(which often
included a
own employees) and make some money
disp~oportionately
in the
process.
entertainment to the
large number of their
Initially, most
players were
local working class members with an occasional college graduate hired as the special
star, as was the case with the legendary
Alonzo Stagg's
and its
teammate at
departure from
Yale.
William Walter
(Pudge) Heffelfinger, Amos
With the gradual growth of the professional game
America's hinterlands
into the
country's cultural centers
though, college graduates began to furnish the majority of the players.
A situation
developed where American universities served as' professional football's farm system,
a
function
which
institution of
football true
they
still
American
to its
perform.
bourgeois
legacy as
American higher education - an essential
life
continues
the cradle
its
and inventor
deep
involvement with
of this quintessentially
American sport. (52)
All those involved in
came to
view the
football (the
game not
only as
players, fans,
~oaches
and
team owners)
profoundly American, but also as fundamentally
modern contrasting it favorably to that other American sport - i.e. baseball.
led to
This
the erroneous but still powerful myth which continues to glorify baseball as
a rural game. Baseball having developed
country's masses,
Rather than
prided itself
cultivating
on replicating
and ultimately victorious side of American life.
the values
"pastime" populated
by the
seemingly lacked the vigor and drive of modernity associated with
football's 'tscienti fic" aura.
"pastime", football
into America's
central to
bourgeois capitalism
the
leisurely
image
of a
the tough, strategic, determined
rootball prominently
in the
United States:
featured all
British elite
origins to provide the necessary historical legitimacy coupled with American "robust
manliness"
to
distinguish
it
clearly
from
predecessor(53); individual effort combined
its
"soft", disorganized, Victorian
with intricate
team work; hierarchical
control in tandem with corporate cooperation; and equality of opportunity and access
accompanied by the survival of the fittest.(54)
24 Just like American capitalism, so too was football made bearable
of the
game".
In notable
contrast to
both soccer
and rugby, American football­
like baseball - developed a mass of intricate rules which served as
f.::>r the
sport in
a multi-ethnic
by the "rules
a lingua franca
and multi-cultural society dominated by bourgeois
values of individualism rather than the noblesse oblige collectivism of
aristocratized sports
world.
Whereas a common culture among players - and between
players and spectators - permitted British sports to
of policing,
a similar
upon
them
on
who
had
In
arrival.
the
a team,
as well
as of
importance
addition
understanding, rules also helped systematize
per formance of
develop with
and
advancement
or
written -
of
being
number one
quantify
American
sports.
The
the individual, could be more "objectively"
demotion
reward system in a Taylorized form
of
to providing a common ground of
measured than in the murky, collectivist British team
remuneration,
a minimal system
self-regulating approach was impossible in a country with a
constant influx of new immigrants,
impressed
the British
to
sports.
One could
thus tie
a player's IInumbers", analogous to the
industrial
production.
The
existence of
as opposed to culturally internalized - rules also fostered an atmosphere
in which a premium was attached to devising
"trick plays",
designed to consciously
mislead the opponent by staying just this side of what the rules permitted or indeed
by violating them outright in the
notice.
hope
that
the
policing
authorities
would not
"Trick plays", basically unknown to soccer, rugby and cricket, became woven
into the fabric of American
football
and
baseball.
Lastly
as
in politics­
clearly stated, written and universalistic rule had an equalizing effect on American
football by enhancing its attraction to
thereby enhanced
participation and
otherwise disparate
contributed to
less to the democratization - of this sport.
It
social groups.
Rules
the popularization - if perhaps
is now
time to
earliest popular sport. which helped "crowd out soccer from below".
turn to America's
25 Crowding out from b.low,
Tb. ,.,. of b.,.b.ll
Purportedly, Jacques
Barzun once
said, "Whoever
mind of America had better learn baseball".
away America's
most popular
sport.
wants to
Until the
1950s, baseball
very beginning
From the
know the heart and
of its development,
baseball's successful proliferation among America's maSSeS depended on
as "American".
was far and
its identity
Football never denied its British origins and indeed proudly pointed
to William Webb Ellis' alleged run at Rugby in 1823 as the inception of the game. In
contrast, baseball
went to
great length to deny having had any relationship to the
British game of rounders, all the
game's every
facet.
while stressing
the truly
"Americanness" of the
In this context, the still widely held myth of Abner Doubleday
having originated the game in Cooperstown,
New York
in 1839
was created.
To the
enthusiastic cries of "No rounders!", a group of 300 prominent baseball enthusiasts,
including Mark Twain and Chauncey M. Depew, gathered at Delmonico's in New York City
in
1889
to
hear
the
fourth
president of the National League, Abraham G. Mills,
declare that "patriotism and research" had established beyond any doubt the American
origin of
baseball. (55)
The creation
of the
squelch the British claim that baseball
"devotees found
it increasingly
pastime was of foreign origin.
native,
unsullied
already
during
by
English
baseball's
was a
difficult to
Pride
and
Abner Doubleday myth was to forever
descendant of
patriotism
period"
action-packed,
tougher,
requiring
defined
more
required
that
the
game be
Intense American natiVism, apparent
in
eventual success as "the American National Game".
denied and baseball was systematically
Baseball's
swallow the idea that their favorite
ancestry. "(56)
"take-off
rounders.
the
1850s,
ensured baseball's
Ties to rounders were consciously'
as
ingenuity
"anti-cricket":
faster, more
and individual initiative.
short, baseball was better suited to and more accurately reflected li fe in
In
the "New
Worl d".
The following analysis will focus on the evolution of baseball as a game and as
a national institution in
a curious
temporal parallel
to soccer's
development in
26 Baseball's
England.
tempestuous
era
- reflecting central conflicts in American
society of the late nineteenth century - came to a more or
less accepted conclusion
by 1903, at the exact time of soccer's conquest of the world.
America's mass sport and national pastime between the end of
Having developed into
the Civil
War and the
turn of
the century, baseball had successfully ensconced itself in America's "sport
space".
Thus little room remained for soccer to develop on the popular level, as it
did first in Great Britain, then on the European Continent and in Latin America, and
eventually in the rest of the world.
Baseball's precursors stretch back to America's
of games
with names
such as
"town-ball" and
greens primarily in New England and New York.
attested to
by such
colonial period
"round-ball" were
when an array
played on village
Completely regional in character - as
names as the "Massachusetts Game", "New England Game" and "New
York Game" - virtually all of baseball's forerunners hailed from the British game of
rounders in
which a
batter would
"round" the
"struck" the ball which was thrown to him
team.
In an
interesting and
part based on the fact that
were necessary
to enjoy
by a
bases -
or excel
was required. (57)
Any
to the opposite
to soccer, baseball success was in
equipment or
at the game.
special physical attributes
Like soccer, baseball thus enjoyed
"democratic access" in that the game was accessible to all
or locale
after having
"bowler" belonging
lasting parallel
virtually no
or "goals"
elongated bat-like
paddle or rifle, served adequately for hitting the ball.
and no
exotic equipment
object, be
it a broomstick,
Any vaguely
regardless of exact size and consistency - could serve as a ball.
round object-
Versions of this
game - involving hi tUng and throwing a ball and running "the bases"
- proli ferated
in the northeast of the United States in the 1830s and 1840s.
Like football (as yet undifferentiated into Association and Rugby), the initial
and all-important codification of baseball occurred in the quasi-aristocratic milieu
of
educated
gentlemen.
In
1845. a
group
of
(professional men, merchants, white collar workers
40
bourgeois
and several
male
New Yorkers
"gentlemen") joined
27 together
in
forming
baseball team. (58)
created the
the
New
York
Knickerbockers,
rules have provided the main contours of
base paths;
runners or touching them;
position; and
world's first organized
Under the leadership of Alexander Cartwright, the Knickerbockers
first written rules of baseball.
diamond; gO-foot
the
the
game
to
this
day:
the four-base
three out, all out; batting in rotation; throwing out
nine-man
the location
Despite constant changes since, these
teams
of the
with
each
pitcher's box
whole to mention but the most important ones. (5g)
player
covering
in relation
a definite
to the diamond as a
Cartwright and his reformers also
specified the weight of the ball as well as the circumference of the bat in order to
provide uniformity for competition.
Elysian Fields
19, 1846.
in Hoboken,
In
that
organized the
same
The Knickerbockers played
New Jersey
year,
J.C.
necessary to
win under
Thring,
New York
the rules".
one
Also
of
soccer's
major codifiers,
The baseball game lasted only four
Club had
scored the
21 'aces' (runs)
an elaborate social affair, the ensuing
dinner assumed almost equal importance to the contest on the field.
continued until
game at
against the New York Base Ball Club on June
first football team at Cambridge.
innings, "because by that time the
their first
This tradition
the end of the next decade as other teams joined the Knickerbockers
in New York (notably the Gothams, Eagles and
Excelsiors, Putnams,
Eckfords and
Empires) as
Atlantics) and
games held on an inter- as well as intra-city basis.
well as
competed in
In
in Brooklyn (The
a series of regular
1858 a
team of Manhattan
all-stars first played their Brooklyn counterparts and thereby inaugurated a rivalry'
which was to last exactly one hundred years.
Throughout the 1850s, baseball caught the fancy of people in all walks
leading
to
a
proliferation
of
of life
clubs organized largely along occupational lines.
Policemen, barkeepers, schoolteachers, doctors, lawyers and even clergymen had their
own teams.
This rapid "downward" dissemination led to baseball's development first
as "New York's game", then the
following the
"Nortneast's game"
conclusion of the Civil War.
and ultimately
"America's game"
Since baseball was most popular and its
28 rules most codified in New York, what
was
nationally
with
accepted
by
1860.
As
increased facility and expansion of
M.:;)reover, the
known
as
football
railroad
travel
the
in
"New
York
game" became
England at that time, the
fostered
intercity contests.
growing availabi l i ty of newspapers, in which the first regular sports
pages appeared, also
helped
the
game's
popularity
during
a
critical formative
period.
A fundamental transformation of the game accompanied this geographic and social
expansion.
which had
Though still dominated by amateurs, competition became keener.
been accorded
only incidental
developed into the game's raison d'etre.
batter to
have "hi s
hi til.
dictated a fundamentally
pitcher
and
the
Gone
structurally
The
"hittable" ball, but in fact do
difficult as
status during baseball's "gentlemen era",
was
the
view
which
allowed each
The central aspect of modern baseball developed, which
and
batter.
Winning,
antagonistic
pitcher
just
was
the
no
relationship
longer
opposite.
By
between the
to "serve" the batter a
trying
to
make
it as
possible for the batter to hit the ball, pitchers developed fastballs,
curves, sliders and various breaking pitches to confuse, mislead and basically trick
the batter
whose repeated failure to "strike" the ball would lead to his forfeiting
his role as a batter.
reach, the
To keep
pitchers from
throwing balls
"faulty" balls.
pitcher
exceeded
his
permitted
also evident
allotment
of throwing
Baseball's anti-English, anti-cricket self-identification increased
with the game's gradual distancing from its amateur" roots.
in certain
This nativist strain was
rule changes such as the elimination of making an "outU by
catching a batter's hit on one bounce, which
gentlemanly cricket.
was associated
with the
more serene,
"Surely, what an Englishman can do, an American is
as capable of improving upon", boasted a sporting paper (60) and
rule was
the batters'
system of "balls" was invented whereby the batter was allowed to advance
to first base in case the
slower and
out of
thus this "archaic"·
relegated to baseball's "muffins", as amateurs became known in the days of
the game's increased professionalization.
Gate receipts developed into an important
29 source of
revenue for the clubs,leading to baseball's "enclosure movement".
provided a clear separation between "ball parks" and the outside
helped
separate
spectators
arrangement for a rather
from
unruly
"enclosures" eventually
led to
players,
crowd.
providing
Last,
but
a
world.
more
certainly
the institutionalization
They also
orderly
not
Fences
spatial
least, these
of the "home run", one of
baseball's most exciting events.
With victory assuming paramount
amateurism
during
the
importance, professionalism
War
post-Civil
era.
While
every team had its share of
"rounders" (baseball's equivalent to football's "ringers")
team to
the next
following the
most lucrative
rapidly displaced
who "revolved"
from one
offer with reckless abandon of any
team loyalty or moral constraints, in 1869, the Cincinnati Red Stockings appeared as
the first
Two
official all-professional
years
later,
Professional
the
Base
first
Ball
team in
professional
Players,
was
baseball, indeed in any modern sport.
league,
the
established.
National
Association of
Lasting only four years and
representing 10 teams, this league was dominated by the Red Stockings who
from Cincinnati to Boston.
of baseball, the
Spalding, the
era.
was
Best described as the most unregulated capitalist phase
charismatic
pitching star
entrepreneur,
of the
best
represented
missionary,
modernizer
and
moneymaker
standardizing the game's equipment (balls,
develop the
States.
Albert Goodwill
all
bats,
burgeoning bourgeois society,
rolled
uniforms)
into one.
Spalding
By further
continued to
modern game of baseball while simultaneously helping his sporting goods
business become a flourishing enterprise.
and also
by
Boston Red Stockings, characterized this early
Spalding, typical of entrepreneurs in America's
a
had moved
the wares
Having
of his
returned
company from
a
His missionary
extended beyond
triumphant
zeal to
spread baseball­
the confines
baseball
tour
of
of the United
Canada, Spalding
"conceived the idea in 1837 of taking a baseball team over to England to. demonstrate
what the Americans had cooked up
conviction
that
the
superior
out of
American
rounders crossed
game
would
with cricket. "(St>
His
inevitably catch on with the
30 English during
illusory.
a
numbe-r
of
e-xhibition
matche-s
playe-d
in
1874
prove-d utte-rly
Base-ball did not e-xcite- the- British who found it dull and hardly a worthy
de-parture- from the- childre-n's game- of rounde-rs.
that spe-cial
bre-e-d of
Ame-rican e-ntre-pre-ne-ur,
faile-d mission clf 1874 and e-mbarke-d
on a
Conve-ying the-
unbound optimism of
Spalding re-maine-d
se-cond, e-ve-n
1888/89 to bring base-ball to the- re-st of the- world.
unde-te-rre-d by his
more- ambitious,
He- took an all-star te-am calle-d
"All Ame-ricans" to Hawaii, Australia, Egypt, Italy, France- and England.
we-re- e-ve-n
more- e-mbarrassing
than in Australia whe-rebase-ball was
the- te-am's othe-r stops.
uninspiring.
me-t with
Not
Fre-nch
still dismisse-d
though some- particularly be-ne-vole-nt
more- scie-ntific.(62)
a polite-
Japan -
but une-nthusiastic re-ce-ption,
spe-ctators
critics conce-de-d
until the-
found
the-
mid 1920s
that base-ball
and
its
the- e-xce-ption
faile-d abysmally once- again.
imme-diate-
ge-ographic
was faste-r and
of attaining positive­
Thre-e- e-xplanations se-e-m plausible­
orbit.
outside- the- Unite-d
Fi rst, its "Ame-ricanne-ss" not only
re-nde-re-d it incompre-he-nsible- outside- 5ts cultural conte-xt, but also le-nt
albe-i t
e-ye-s.
unjusti fi e-d
aura
of
whe-n the-se-
countrie-s
we-re-
not
ye-t
re-ady
for it.
be-cause socce-r was alre-ady we-II e-nsconce-d as theand "crowde-d
out" any
countrie-s we-re- still
to e-mbrace- a sport on a mass le-ve-l.
happe-ne-d with base-ball in the- Unite-d State-s and socce-r in
othe-r
it a re-al­
irumaturi ty and vulgari ty, parti cularly in Bri ti sh
Se-cond, the- 1888/89 trip occurre-d at a time-
insufficie-ntly bourge-oisifie-d
dull and
did base-ball's prophe-ts once- again
for base-ball's failure- to capture- the- imagination of sports fans
State-s
game-
it as the- Ame-rican ve-rsion of rounde-rs,
e-mbark on a prose-Iytizing mission which - with
re-sults in
Othe-r
a mixture- of disinte-re-st, de-rision and e-ve-n hostility on
Italian and
The- British
The- re-sults
for base-ball than during the- first trip though.
the- game-
gre-e-te-d with
journe-y in
se-rious compe-titjon.
base-ball mission actually proved rathe-I"
This had alre-ady
Gre-at Britain,
but the-se­
Third, the- 1920s e-xpe-dition faile-d
pre-mie-r mass
The-
~ucce-ssful,
sport in
the- world,
one- notable- e-xce-ption, whe-re- the­
was Japan.
Re-turning to base-ball's unregulate-d capitalist phase-
of the
e-arly 1870s, this
31 era witnessed
open gambling
during and after the games.
games in
and drinking
among the spectators and players before,
Players, as well as
full view of the public.
bribes to "fix"
The generally anarchic atmosphere was heightened
by the common practice of "raiding" players.
its top
umpires, accepted
A club had been
"raided", if
some of
players, whom it had barely signed a few weeks before, disappeared from its
roster only to show up in a rival team's uniform the next day.
involved saw
By the mid 1870s all
that baseball was in dire need of some sort of streamlining.
1876, this process lasted until 1903 when the
present organizational
Begun in
form of major
league baseball was established.
Led by
Spalding, baseball's "domestication" commenced with the founding of the
National League in 1876,
league, predating
the world's
Each was guaranteed "territorial
a
this important
from "raiding"
This
of
representative
addition to
each other's
cartel-like
agreement,
complete, quasi-feudal
city
which
had
in the
at
monopolistic market
players by
which
The National League
rights .. by
being the
least 75,000 inhabitants.
position, clubs
In
agreed to refrain
introducing the so-called "reserve clause i' •
lasted
nearly
one
century,
gave
each club
control over its players by giving it a continuing option to
rehire them each year and thus prevent them
highest bidder
functioning professional sports
the English Football League by twelve years.
was limited to eight clubs.
sole
oldest still
free market. (63)
from selling
Players
their labor
power to the
thus became a team's property, a
serf-like arrangement common to other professional sports with mass appeal,
such as
soccer.
With baseball having become America's most popular form of entertainment by the
early 1880s, other entrepreneurs saw the sport as an excellent venue to
make money.
Therefore the rival American Association developed in 1882, its eight teams charging
lower admissions than their counterparts
Sundays. (64)
in
the
National
League
and
playing on
Periodic trade wars, Qenefitting fans and players, ensued between the
two rival leagues.
The result was the eventual demise
of the
American Association
32 in 1891
and the
absorption of four of its teams by the National League, thereafter
comprised of twelve clubs.
In addition to trade wars, another occasional occurrence in the baseball of the
late nineteenth
century further
strengthens our
analogy with
there were numerous, destructive, peasant revolts
gains
f.;:)r
the
peasants
in
the
feudalism.
which brought
about few tangible
Middle Ages, so too did baseball players conduct
periodic costly "wars" against the owners leading only to minor
players' cause.
Just as
attainments for the
Efforts to unionize were invariably defeated and the owner-imposed
"reserve clause" successfully stymied the
players'
attempts
to
use
their market
power to gain better conditions and, more importantly, to enhance their control over
their own existence in baseball.
After a trade war at the turn of the century, the National
internal
strife
and
the
jettisoning
of
League, weakened by
four of its clubs, entered into a peace
agreement with the newly formed American League forming the pinnacle
henceforth the
cartel of "Organized Baseball".
of what became
The peace agreement between the two
leagues led to the establishment of the World Series(65) and an arrangement in which
the sixteen
major league teams (eight in each league) represented ten cities.
format lasted for fifty
transferred
to
years
Milwaukee,
until
the
thereby
Boston
sparking
a
Braves
of
the
period
of
relocation
establishment of new franchises which continued until the 1970s.
organizational
restructuring
in
the
wake
scandal, "Organized Baseball" was led by
The game
entered its
of
the
a single
the
"Yankee
dynasty"
meteoric
and
rise
and
the
hegemony
in
overwhelming popularity with the
introduction
in
the
American
commissioner beginning
in 1920.
With
1920s, the establishment
of night games in 1935, baseball
sports.
Not
until professional
1.960s was that hegemony challenged.
American masses
the
Following another
golden era which not even World War II could interrupt.
achieved an unchallenged
football's
National League
1919 "Black Sox" World Series
the gradual proliferation of radio broadcasting during the
of
This
proved sufficient
Baseball's
to "crowd out"
33
so.:cer "from below" in the Uni ted States.
Conclusion
This paper
argues that
the particular nature of America's development as "the
first new nati.)n" contributed considerably to the "crowding out" of soccer as one of
this country's
major spectator sports.
Specifically, it is this essay's contention
that some of the most salient social and historical constellations which led
absence of
a large
to the
working-class party in the United States, making it the world's
only advanced industrial country
to suffer
from this
considerable deficit
in the
conduct of its politics, also helped exclude the United States from the world's most
popular
mass
sport.
It
as
bourgeoisification
was
above
myth
and
all
America's
early
and
comprehensive
reality - which created both "exceptionalisms"
whose legacies are with us to this day.
Just as the literature on why there is no socialism
on the
period between
necessity
with
a
either
or
one
historical
the
approach
since
by and large remained in tact.
as
the
two
American
Thus,
era.
pre-1914
of
both
development that the overall stage was set.
such
mainly focuses
the Civil War and World War I, so too did I concentrate much
of this paper's empirical material on
concern
in America
it
As
such,
any serious
the two "exceptionalisms" demands by
was
at
a
certain
era
of American
The overall contours of this stage have
a thorough
"exceptionalisms"
historical exploration
not
of topics
only helps us understand their
origins but also their continued presence in our world.
This, of course, is not to
situation remains
sufficient as
soccer in contemporary America.
the
phenomena
say that
of
Stalinism
obvious cases - for a proper
based, left-leaning
party in
an understanding
of the
pre-World War I
an explanation for the failure of socialism and/or
Surely one would have to spend some
and
McCarthyism
analysis of
the United
time analyzing
just to mention perhaps the most
the continued
absence of
States of the 1980s.
a large, mass­
Similarly, soccer's
34
marginal
lot
of
~xist~nc~
mor~
th~
to do
major
as a major
fo.;)tball "from
abov~"
of
has
~ra wh~n
with a
public
th~n
~v~r
tast~s
with it
b~for~ th~
b~~n
cont~mporary Am~rica
turn of
sports
In that,
out" by
th~ c~ntury.
~xt~nd
w~r~
bas~ball
y~t,
form~d
all
ov~r
~v~n th~ Unit~d Stat~s
"from
th~ v~ry
such a contract
th~
has probably a
contract with
long-t~rm t~l~vision
b~ing IIcrowd~d
willing to
in mass
r~markabl~ ~nduranc~.
~xc~ption.
sport in
with its inability to land a
n~tworks,
th~ n~tworks
sp~ctator
and
b~low"
fact that
hark~ns
on~
back
world and
non~
to an
b~stow~d
cannot claim to
b~
an
35
Endnot.,
*1 would
lik~ to thank Micha~l Oriardfor his g~n~rosity in l~tting m~ s~~ his work
in progress and sharing his extensive knowledge with me. Special thanks once again
to Karen Donfried for h~r ~xcell~nt and ch~erful assistance in r~s~arching this
paper.
1. I would like to draw th~ read~r's att~ntion in this context to Paul Hoch's v~ry
useful term of "sexual apartheid" denoting the fact that sports often transcend th~
most rigid lines of d~marcation (be they class, status, ~thnicity or r~ligion) among
m~n only
to ~xclud~ women almost complet~ly. It is int~resting to note that this
ph~nomenon of "sexual aparth~id" is virtually
ubiquitous all ov~r th~ world. Se~
Paul Hoch, Ripp off th~ Big Gam~:
The Exploitation of Sports by the Pow~r Elit~
(New York: Doubl~day, 1972), pp. 147-66.
2. While it is very difficult to obtain reliabl~ data on how many peopl~ watch~d
the World Cups of 1978, 1982 and 1986 resp~ctively, th~re can be little doubt that
th~se events have hith~rto attracted more t~levision viewers
than anything els~ in
human history.
Mor~ than 2 billion p~opl~ watched the World Cup final in 1978 with
th~ figures being 3 billion and
3.5 billion for th~ sam~ ~vent in 1982 and 1986
respectively.
Over 5 billion p~opl~ watch~ the ~ntire tournament in 1982 and 8
billion followed it four years later.
(All these figur~s w~r~ obtained from th~
Secr~tariat
of th~ Federation Int~rnationale d~ Football Association (FIFA) in
Zurich.) In substantiating h~r point that soccer is far and away the world's most
popular spectator sport, Janet L~ver in h~r excellent study on soccer in Brazil
states the following about the final game of the 1978 World Cup:
"In oth~r words,
n~arly
half
th~
world's people shared a single event.
(Emphasis in th~
original) ••• To put this figure in p~rsp~ctiv~, th~ combin~d audi~nc~ for two w~~ks
of Olympic ~v~nts was on~ bi 11 ion p~opl~ in 1976.
S~~ Jan~t L~ver, SoccerMadn~ss
(Chicago: Th~ University of Chicago ~r~ss, 1983), p. 20.
II
3.
are som~ figur~s to· plac~ th~ marginality of this ~v~nt on Am~rican
in som~ p~rspectiv~. The Ni~ls~n ratings for th~ thr~~ World Cup finals
thus far t~l~vis~d by on~ of th~ major Am~rican n~tworks ar~:
H~r~
t~l~vision
of final
1966
1982
1986
Y~ar
N~twork
NBC
ABC
NBC
Rating
4.5X
6.6X
4.1X
Shar~
21X
22X
13X
If on~ looks at the NBC data for th~ six gam~s of th~ 1986 tournam~nt which th~
network t~l~vis~d in addition to th~ final, the figur~s b~come ~v~n mor~ r~v~aling.
Th~ op~ning gam~ with all the usual ey~catching
and colorful c~r~moni~s attain~d a
2.5X rating and a 9X shar~. Th~ r~st brok~ down as follows:
Dat~
Jun~
Jun~
Jun~
Jun~
Jun~
It
should
1 (Sunday aft~rnoon)
8 (Sunday aft~rnoon)
15 (Sunday aft~rnoon)
21 (Saturday aft~rnoon)
22 (Sunday aft~rnoon)
Rating
1.6X
1.4X
1.8X
3.4X
2.3X
~
5X
4X
6X
llX
8X
added that ~ach on~ of th~s~ gam~s includ~d at l~ast on~ of
soccer's major powerhouses such as Italy Brazil, Argentina, franc.,
Spain, G~rmany or England.
I also look~d at th~ tw~lv~ gam~s t~l~vis~d by th~
sports chann~l ESPN. As exp~ct~d, th~ numb~rs w~r~ far inf~rior to NBC's. Thus,
b~
int~rnational
36 only once - on June 3 - did the rating percentage exceed 1 with the share never
attaining 27..
To put all of this into perspective, I obtained the television figures for the
most recent major events in American sports:
Superbowl 1386; World Series 1985,
NCAA basketball final 1986 and NBA championship series 1986. They are as follows:
Event
Network
Ratinq
~
Superbowl 1986
NBC
48.37.
707.
World Series 1985
ABC
25.37.
397. (averaged over 7 games)
NCAA basketball final 1986
CBS
20.77.
317.
NBA championship series '86
CBS
14.17.
31.17. (averaged over 6 games)
The Nielsen system's two figures stand for the percentage of all T.V. households in
the United States in the case of the "rating", and for the households that have
their television sets switched on at the time of the measurement in the case of the
"share".
It is estimated that 99X of all households in the United States have
televisions, which translates into 86 million households.
In order to corroborate my hypothesis that soccer - at least as a spectacle­
continues to remain confined to immigrant subcultures in the United States, I
obtained data from the Spanish International Network (SIN) regarding its viewership
of the World Cup.
While the data are not comparable to those listed above since
SIN's programs are not measured by the Nielsen company, it nevertheless seems clear
that among the 4.3 million households receiving SIN World Cup '86 was a popular
event. The opening game attained a 557. rating with the final reaching 65.67..
SIN
constructed a six game aggregate composite to measure its viewership of the World
Cup which yielded some interesting results: the highest rating composite - 77.97.­
was reached by male viewers between the ages of 18 and 34 with the lowest figure for
adults over 18 being the 47.2X attained by women between 25 and 54.
The overall
composite for all male viewers over 18 was 677. with the corresponding figure for
women being 45.7X.
"Sexual apartheid" still seems to exist among America's SIN
viewers, though the excluded group seems to have participated in surprisingly large
numbers, at least as far as this event from Mexico was concerned.
4. On how the United States has from its beginning as an independent country
exerted a special, though very ambivalent, attraction on European - in this case
particularly German - intellectuals, see Andrei S. Markovits, "On Anti-Americanism
in West Germany" in New German Critique, Number 34 (Winter 1985), pp. 3-27.
America's fascination on European intellectuals such as Tocqueville, Martineau,
Bryce, Weber, Heine among many others is very well known and superbly documented.
5.
The original title of Sombart's work as published by the renown house of J.C.B.
Mohr (Paul Siebeck) from Tuebingen in 1906 was Warum gibt es in den Vereinigten
Staate'., keinen Sozialismus?
The Englisn translation is: Why is there no Socialism
in the United States?, first published by The Macmillan Press, London and by the
International Arts and Sciences Press of White Plains, New York in 1976. Alas I
would argue that the title continues to remain just as flawed in Europe as it was
when Sombart published his work.
By dismissing the Soviet Union's and Eastern
Europe's political economy as having little in common with socialism and by seeing
the welfare states of capitalist Western Europe also falling considerably short of
what socialism is supposed to be, I cannot help but conclude that Sombart's title
continues to convey a flawed image not only of the United States but of all the
major industrial countries in the world.
6. The literature dealing with "American exceptionalism", or at least certain
aspects of it, is vast.
H.r. 1 will list only those works which I have found
particularly important in my teaching and research over the years. Louis Hartz, ~
Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since
37 the Revolution (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955); rrederick Jackson Turner, The
rrontier in American History (New York: Holt and Co., 1947); John M. Laslett and
Seymour Martin Lipset (eds.), railure of a Dream? Essays in the History of American
Socialism (Garden City: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1974); Seymour Martin Lipset,
Political Man (Garden City: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1960); idem, The rirst New
Nation (Garden City: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1967); idem, Agrarian Socialism
(Garden City: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1968); idem, Revolution and Counterrevolution
(Garden City: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1970); the exchange between Sean Wilentz and
Michael Hanagan in International Labor and Working Class History, Number 26;
Gwendolyn Mink, Old Labor and New Immiarants in American Political Development:
Union, Party. and State 1875-1920 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); and
Jerome Karabel, "The railure of American Socialism Reconsidered" in The Socialist
Register (1979), pp. 204-227.
7.
ror the most thorough account of soccer in the United States see Zander
Hollander (ed.), ~Th~e~A~m~e~r~ic~anu--=En~c~YLc~lo~p~ed~ia=-_o~f__S:o~c~c~e~r (New York: Everest House
Publishers, 1980).
8. As to soccer's existence in the United States, the two following quotations seem
rather revealing: "Although various attempts have been made, soccer has obstinately
refused to take root in the United States. It has for many years been extensively
played at a minor level, particularly in Philadelphia, where there has long been a
proliferation of leagues, and in St. Louis, where it is very popular in schools,"
[John Arlott (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Sports and Games (London: Oxford
University Press, 1975), p. 381J; and "Soccer is a sport you play, but you don't
watch or follow," [An 11-year old girl on Boston television in the summer of 1986. J
Especially the latter item is highly revealing about soccer's recent fate in the
United States.
There is ample evidence that soccer has in fact increased as a
participatory amateur sport since the ignominious demise of the North American
Soccer League's major push to make the game an integral part of major American
professional sports and a lucrative spectacle comparable to soccer's presence in the
rest of the world and that of the "Big Three" (plus hockey, perhaps) in the United
States. Research has corroborated my hypothesis that soccer in the United States is
an important participatory physical activity, especially for the very young, while
at the same time continuing its marginal existence as a general cultural phenomenon
and as a preoccupation in the male population's involvement with spectator sports.
According to data obtained from the United States Soccer rederation, 1.2 million
American youngsters under the age of 19 played soccer on a regular basis in 1985.
20X of this group was female.
The youth component of this sport becomes rather
evident when one compares these figures to the 120,0()Q soccer players above 19, a
marked drop from the previously mentioned 1.2 million. In other words, soccer in
the United States is predominantly a game for middle class, suburban boys and girls
who then stop playing it as they grow older, never having seen the game as more than
a pleasant and "egalitarian" form of recreation.) It is striking, however - and in
notable contrast to soccer played virtually everywhere else in the world - that the
percentage of female players over the age of 19 still remains at 18 in the United
States, once again underlining the sport's "nonsexist" presence in this country.
The game, most popular in California and Texas, continues to grow nationally at an
annual rate of 10X for the under 19 group and at 5X for those over 19, with parts of
the discrepancy due to the unavailability of proper facilities for the more advanced
players.
Much of the continued growth in both groups occurs on account of the
increasing level of female participation in soccer.
Some interesting results about soccer's particularly "American" existence as a
participatory and relatively gender-neutral activity also emerged an my research on
the game's presence on America's college campuses.
According to the National
Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), out of its more than 900 members in 1985,
38 549 coll~ges fi~lded m~n's soccer teams with 200 colleges fielding women's. For
basketball, the figures were 757 for men and 764 for women respectively.
507
American institutions of higher learning belonging to the NCAA fielded football
teams, an all male sport at the varsity level.
It is also interesting to look at
socc~r's growth as a colleg~ sport during the late 1970s and early 1980s:
Among the
circa 750 NCAA members in 1975/76, 469 schools had football teams and 423 fi~lded
men's socc~r teams; by 1980/81 the numbers had shift~d in favor of soccer, with 487
colleges playing varsity football while 510 had m~n's soccer teams by then.
Under lining socc~r 's status as a participat.)ry rather than a sp~ctator sport, ~v~n
on the college, let alone professional, level (where, of course, it does not exist
in the United States), are the following figures: 36,312,022 people attende~
college football games at all 4-year colleges (not just NCAA members) in the Unit~d
States during 1985; for men's basketball, the equivalent figure was 30 million for
the 1985/86 season; in contrast, while no figur~s for soccer ar~ available (in and
of itself a t~lling fact), educated guess~s do not estimat~ viewers' attendanc~ at
college soccer games to be above the 700,000 level during the 1985 season.
A
European friend of mine once aptly described soccer's predicament in th~ United
States: "As long as young American children continue to collect baseball instead of
soccer cards, the game, which the rest of the world calls football, will never
emerge beyond its historically marginal status in the United States."
9. These countries - with the notable exception of South Africa
all have
Sombartian "socialism" in the form of a large, organized labor party which, in th~
case of Canada, has always been a relatively weak third party on the national lev~l,
though often dominant in some of that country's Western provinces. As to Australia
and New Zealand, both countri~s are governed by th~ir respectiv~ labor parti~s at
the time of this writing, i.e. the summer of 1986.
10.
It is very interesting that f~w, if any, countries have like the United States
in developing three major team sports, all of which attained national
significance in their professional version. Even in the United States, however, it
is somewhat erroneous to speak of the "Big Three"· in terms of popularity as
spectator sports.
As some of the following figures illustrate, it is quite cl~ar
that basketball is a distant third to football and baseball in terms of enjoying the
attention of the American public. Tellingly, soccer completely fails to appear in
one of. the surveys and is in a distant fourteenth - and last - place in the other.
To th~ question "What is your favorite sport to watch?" posed to Americans by
the Gallup Sports Audit in July 1985, the answers were as follows:
succeed~d
Football
Baseball
Basketball
Tennis
Golf
Wrestling
Hockey
Boxing
Gymnastics
Auto racing
Ice skating
Touch football
Other
None
26X
21X
lOX
4X
3X
3X
3X
2X
2X
2X
2X
2X
. lOX
101.
By comparison, in the 1981 Audit, football led baseball by better than a 2-to-l
margin, 38X to 16%, with basketball cited by 9%. Thus, baseball seems to be once
39 again gaining on football with perhaps having a decent shot at reconquering its
position as Americans' most favorite spectator sport which it lost to football
during the 1960s.
Here are some selected national trends of the "Big Three" between 1937­
Gallup's first Sport Audit - and 1981:
Baseball
Basketball
38~
16~
9~
36~
21~
8~
21~
34~
9~
17~
39~
26%
36%
10%
11%
Football
1981
1972
1960
1948
1937
As to the 1985 Audit, football has a disproportionate appeal to men, 34~ of whom
name it as their favorite, compared to 20% of women, among whom it is tied in appeal
with baseball. It also enjoys somewhat greater popularity among younger adults,
persons who attended college, the more affluent, and southerners as well as
westerners. In the Midwest, football and baseball are statistically tied for the
lead, while in the East baseball holds a modest edge. Among blacks, football,
baseball, and basketball have about the same number of partisans, with the latter
far more popular among blacks (20% named it their favorite sport) than with whites
(9~) •
N.B.: Gallup Sports Audit does not differentiate between amateur (e.g. college) and
professional sports.
It also does not distinguish between television viewing and
watching sports in person.
Source: George Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1985 (Wilmington: Scholarly
Resources Inc., 1986), pp. 223-225.
Here are the replies to the statement: "Let's talk sports.
Please tell me
which of these sports you follow" (multiple answers allowed) posed by the Harris
Survey in November 1984:
1984
1992
Pro football
59%
591­
Baseball
55%
62~
College football
46%
511­
College basketball
33%
32%
Pro basketball
31%
35%
Boxing
31%
35%
Tennis
28~
36%
Auto racing
25%
26~
Track and field
23127%
Hor se r ad ng
21%
23%
Bowling
20%
22%
Golf
19%
24%
Hockey
15%
18%
Soccer
11%
15%
Here are the very interesting results to the subsequent question:
to choose, which ~ of these sports would you say is your favorite?"
Pro football
Baseball
College football
College basketball
Auto racing
~
24%
2119%
77.
67.
1982
20%
231­
llX
6~
5~
"If you had
40 6X
5X
5X
4X
4X
47.
37.
27.
17.
Boxing
Pro bask~tball
Bowling
Golf
Hors~ racing
T~nnis
Hock~y
Socc~r
Track and
fi~ld
5X
6X
3X
47.
37.
77.
27.
2X
37.
It is int~r~sting that without th~ h~lp of coll~g~ football, football's oth~rwi5~
commanding l~adov~r bas~ball has b~~n all but ~liminat~d placing th~s~ two sports
at th~ prof~s5ional l~v~l virtually n~ck-and-n~ck at th~ top, way ah~ad of any oth~r
cat~gory.
furth~rmor~, it is
not~worthy
that within th~ small~st of th~ "Big
Thr~~", i.~.
bask~tball, th~
coll~g~ gam~
~xc~~ds th~ pro gam~ in popularity by a
small, though significant, margin.
Sourc~:
Th~ Harris
Surv~y, Ind~x
to Int~rnational Public Opinion 1984-1985 (N~w
York: Gr~~nwood Pr~ss, 1986), p. 517.
It
of a myst~ry to m~ why bask~tball b~cam~ th~ only
hailing from th~ "Big Thr~~". Ind~~d, its succ~ss can b~
m~asur~d by
th~ fact that, following socc~r, it constitut~s th~ world's s~cond most
popular t~am sport. Th~ f~d~ration Int~rnational~ d~ Bask~tball Amat~ur, found~d in
1932, had 133 m~mb~rs in 1982, with th~ f~d~ration Int~rnational~ d~ football
Association (flfA), ~stablish~d in 1904, numb~ring 147 m~mb~r nations (13 nations
mor~, incid~ntally,
than w~r~ h~ld tog~th~r by th~ multisport Int~rnational Olympic
Committ~~ - IOC).
S~~ Jan~t
L~v~r,
Socc~r
Madn~ss,
pp. 27, 33-34.
Thr~~ of
bask~tball's ~ss~ntial
charact~ristics could
p~rhaps account
- at l~ast in part­
for this sport's succ~ssful int~rnationalization in contrast. to th~ Am~rican
parochialism of football and bas~ball.
first, just lik~ socc~r, bask~tball is
bl~ss~d with having v~ry
simpl~
rul~s.
This m~ans that th~ gam~ was ~asily
transf~rabl~ to· th~ most
div~rs~ cultur~s,
sinc~ it was ~asily und~rstood and
appr~ciat~d.
S~cond, bask~tball
only r~quir~s fiv~ play~rs which has mad~ it
ch~ap~r
than bas~ball, n~c~ssitating littl~ ~quipm~nt, and a good d~al l~ss
~xp~nsiv~ than
football which r~quir~s much ~quipm~nt.
Lastly, unlik~ bas~ball,
football and socc~r, bask~tball was ~xplicitly d~sign~d as a wint~r, i.~. indoor,
sport. As such, it has n~v~r had any s~rious rivals, which could pos~ a major
chall~ng~
to its prolif~ration following th~ massiv~ bUild-up of indoor ar~nas
during th~ post-World War II p~riod in virtually ~v~ry country of th~ first and
S~cond Worlds.
11.
succ~ssful
r~mains
som~what
Am~rican ~xport
can b~ no doubt that Immanu~l Wall~rst~in and oth~r scholars of th~ $0­
"capitalist world syst~m" school hav~ contribut~d substantially to our
und~rstanding
of th~ Unit~d Stat~s as a "cor~ within th~ cor~". S~~ Immanu~l
Wall~rst~in, Th~ Mod~rn World Syst~m:
Capitalist Agricultur~ and th~ Origins of th~
Europ~an World-Economy
in th~ Sixt~~th C~ntury (N~w York: Acad~mic Pr~ss, 1974);
and Walt~r L. Goldfrank (~d.), Th~ World-Syst~m of Capitalism: Past and Pr~s~nt
(B~v~rly Hills: Sag~ Publications, 1979).
12.
Th~r~
call~d
13.
its
S~~:
"A
n~wspap~r
r~ad~rs inform~d
on
at
th~
top of its gam~s: Sovi~tski Sport works hard to
NBA, NHL..... , in Th~ Boston Glob~, July 20, 1986.
th~
k~~p
14. Thus, for ~xampl~, Antonin Dvorak's famous symphony in E minor, opus 95 known to
music lov~rs as "from th~ N~ World", want~d to captur~ and conv~y something
"typically Am&rican", not Canadian or Australian, to its Europ&an audi&nces.
The
compos~r
was fascinated by the United States as a multi~thnic and multicultural
41 society whose music he experienced as having original elements which could only
enrich that of the "old world".
See Friedrich C. Heller, "Antonin Dvorak: 9.
Symphonie 'Aus der neuen Welt' in Playbill of the Salzburger Festspiele 1985 (July
29,1985), n.p.
15. For the best comparative analysis on this issue, demonstrating a more ubiquitous
and serious religious involvement on the part of American population when contrasted
with inhabitants of other advanced capitalist societies, see Walter Dean Burnham's
superb essay:
"The 1980 Earthquake: Realignment, Reaction, or What?" in Thomas
Ferguson and Joel Rogers (eds.), The Hidden Election: Politics and Economics in the
1980 Presidential Campaign (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981), pp. 98-140.
It is
especially in Appendix A of the article, entitled "Social Stress and Political
Response: Religion and the 1980 Election" (PP. 132-140) that Burnham demonstrates
how in the United States religion is "very important" to a larger percentage of the
population than in countries such as Canada, Italy (still relatively high), the
Benelux countries, Australia, France, the United Kingdom already a good deal lower,
followed by West Germany, the Scandinavian countries and Japan at the bottom.
Moreover, in no other advanced industrial country would it be natural for all
politicians - even those to the left of the country's political center - to close
campaign speeches with "God bless you" as is still - or perhaps again - commonplace
in the United States among Republicans and Democrats alike.
16. The data about the United States being an "armed society" is nothing short of
seriously frightening. According to information obtained from Handgun Control Inc.
in Washington, D.C., there were 102 million firearms in the United States in 1968,
with the quantity increasing to 165 million by 1978 and 240 million by 1985.
One
out of every four U.S. households has some sort of firearm, half of which are
loaded. Contrast the 60 million licensed handguns in the United States to the
250,000 licensed pistols and rifles in the United Kingd.om with a population of over
50 million (1981 figures). It is not surprlslng than that the statistics for
accidental firearm deaths l ooks as follows:
Country
USA
Year
1982
Accidental Firearms Death
1,756
Israel
1982
1983
12
25
Japan
1983
1984
10
12
West Germany
1983
1984
29
Poland
1983
1984
43
34
Yugoslavia
1982
43
Australia
1982
1983
48
40
Norway
1983
6
Swi tz erl and
1982
1983
5
10
28
42
1984
6
Source: World Health Organization, World Health Statistics Annual - 1985 (Geneva:
World Health Organization, 1985).
17.
Leon Samson, Towards a United Front (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1933).
18. It is interesting to note that Great Britain and the United States dominated the
five Olympic Games held before World War I (1896, 1900, 1904, 1908 and 1912). Among
the total of 211 gold medals awarded in this period (with one event having been
voided out of a possible 212), the United States won 82 and Great Britain 36
bringing their total to 118 which amounted to 55.77. of all the gold medals obtained
by winners in these five Olympics.
If one adds the 4 gold medals won by
Australians, 3 by South Africans and 5 by Canadian athletes, the "Anglo-Saxon" total
of 130 gold medals yields 61.37. of all the gold medals awarded in these events. The
Anglo-American dominance becomes even more pronounced when it is contrasted to the
81 gold medal winners hailing from other countries among whom none achieved a
position of clear superiority. The countries belonging to this group of "others"
were Greece, Sweden, France, Cuba, Italy, Belgium, Finland, Hungary, Germany,
Switzerland, Netherlands and Austria.
[See Encyclopedia Americana, Number 20·
(1982); pp. 723b-723r.J
This is yet another clear manifestation of the fact that
the invention, development and practice of organized sports were very much the
domain of the most pronouncedly bourgeois societies at the turn of the century, i.e.
the United States and Great Britain.
19. Michael Oriard has superbly captured the essence of this "special relationship"
between Great Britain and the United States, highlighting the American side of the
dilemma:
"As former colonials, Americans looked to the mother country for
leadership in athletic matters as surely as they imitated British art, literature,
and other cultural expressions in the nineteenth century.
But it is equally
important to note our distinctive adaptations of English sporting customs. The
historical moment of America's colonizing, the rejection of monarchy and aristocracy
for an egalitarian ideal, and the consequent differences in American social,
political, and educational institutions had profound implications for the native
sports culture."
Michael Oriard, "In the Land of Merriwell: Fair Play and American
Sports Culture, Chapter Two of the manuscript of a forthcoming book, p. 87.
II
20. The word "soccer" is an abbreviation of Association Football.
More precisely,
it derives from "association" forming a linguistic parallel to "rugger" which in
turn became the vernacular for Rugby Football. Brian Glanville, certainly among the
foremost soccer experts in the world and one of the game's best chroniclers, tells
this interesting anecdote in connection with the origins of the word "soccer": "Why
soccer, though? (Emphasis in original.) The only plausible theory I have ever come
across is that the credit, or blame, belonged to Charles Wreford-Brown, a famous
center half for Old Carthusians and the Corinthians. Sitting in his rooms in Oxford
University, so it is said, he was visited by a friend who asked him whether he were
going to play 'Rugger' or Rugby football.
To this, in a burst of inspiration,
Wreford-Brown replied, 'No: I'm playing soccer,' the world being a corruption of
, Association' in the sport's correct name, Association Football."
See Brian
Glanville, A Book of SOccer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979>, pp. 4, 5.
21.
Hollander, The American Encyclopedia of Soccer, p. 14.
22.
Ibid.
23.
Calcio's only major contemporary legacy is, of course,
the fact
that the game
43 of soccer
referred to in most languages
"football" - is still called "calcio" in Italy.
by
a
variant of the English term
24. Glanville, A Book of Soccer, p. 4; and James Walvin, The People's
Social History of British Football (London: Allen Lane, 1975), p. 14.
Game:
A
25. See chapter one in Walvin's The People's Game entitled "Pre-Industrial
Football", chapter three "The Rise of the Working-Class Football", and chapter five
"England's Most Durable Export".
26.
Michael Oriard, "In th.e Land of Merriwell," p. 95.
27.
Ibid., p. 90.
28.
See Percy
1968), p. 62.
M. Young,
The History
of British
Football (London: Stanley Paul,
29. It is in this context that the name of William Webb Ellis means a lot to
American football fans.
According to a number of first-rate sources such as The
NFL's Official Encyclopedia History of Professional Football (New York: Macmillan
Publishing, 1977), p. 10; Young, The History of British Football, p. 63; and David
Riesman and Reuel Denney, "Football in America: A Study in Culture Diffusion" in the
American Quarterly, Volume 3, number 4 (Winter 1951), pp. 311, 312, it was in 1823
that William Webb Ellis, a Rugby student, picked up the ball in a match at his
school, tucked it under his arm and ran with it past the goalline. Walvin, in an
interesting departure, claims this whole thing to be untrue and maintains that this
myth was invented by Rugby fans and alumni in 1895 as a post-hoc reassertion that
the game of rugby had originated at their school.
(See Walvin, The People's Game,
p. 34.) If Walvin is right, then the origins of American football - via rugby - are
based on an equal myth to that of baseball's supposed invention by Abner Doubleday
in Cooperstown, New York in 1839.
It is interesting that baseball's Doubleday­
Cooperstown myth also arose at the end of the nineteenth century, thus paralleling
football's William-Webb-Ellis myth with respect to time of creation.
30.
On this point, see Walvin, The People's Game, pp. 42-43; Young, The History of
British Football, pp. 89-92; and Ph. Heineken, Das Fussballspiel. Association (ohne
Aufnahme des Balls):
Seine Geschichte, Regeln und Spielweise (Stuttgart: Gustav
Weise Verlag, n.d.), p. 15.
31.
Young, The History of British Football, p. 79.
32. Ibid., pp. 93, 94. Among the many commonalities between SOCCer and basketball
- team effort, both centered on collective strategies requiring constant on-the-spot
improvisation as opposed to the execution of clearly defined plans brought in from
the outside of the actual contest a la American football - is most certainly the
fact that both only had 13 rules at their respective founding which to this day
still form the core of each sport's essential existence. It is telling that Dr.
James Naismith, the founder of basketball, used a soccer ball when he invented the
new winter sport in 1892 in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Both sports are "simple
games", making them easily understandable and readily transferable across diverse
cultures.
Soccer, however, is even lIIore "democratic" than basketball. Not in need
of hoops and indoor arenas, soccer, above all, continues to be played by "normal"
people rather than giant-like athletes who have all but become de rigueur in any
kind of competitive modern basketball. For a nice analysis contrasting basketball
and soccer on the one hand with football and baseball on the other, see Robert W.
Keidel, "'The Soccer-Basketball Connection", Letter to the Editor, The New York
44 Tim~s,
July 17, 1986.
33.
Young, A History of British Football, p. 113.
34.
Walvin,
Th~ P~opl~'s Gam~,
p. 74.
35.
S~~ again
th~ comparisons
to
football - m~ntion~d in footnot~ 32.
36.
th~
th~
37.
bask~tball
- and
th~
contrasts to
bas~ball
and
Walvin provid~s a good analysis of disillusionm~nt with socc~r on th~ part of
English g~ntl~m~n onc~ th~ gam~ had b~com~ appropriat~d by th~ working class in
cours~ of th~ 1880s.
of socc~r's major missionari~s until 1939 was th~ famous Corinthians.
in 1883 by N.L. Jackson with th~ ~xplicit purpos~ of cr~ating a first-rat~
amat~ur t~am which could continu~ to
uphold th~ ~litist g~ntl~manly valu~s of old
y~t
at th~ sam~ tim~ play ~xc~ll~nt football, th~ Corinthians consist~d of
univ~rsity graduat~s among whom Oxbridg~ m~n pr~dominat~d.
Th~y w~r~ such ~xc~ll~nt
football~rs
that in 1904 th~y humiliat~d Bury by a scor~ of 10-3 following th~
latt~r's r~cord 6-0 victory in that y~ar's F.A. Cup final.
Always arriving in top
hats and can~s to th~ ballparks whil~ th~ir oppon~nts typically wor~ cloth caps, th~
Corinthians w~r~ an anachronism r~pr~s~nting socc~r's g~ntl~manly ~ra of th~ 1860s
and 1870s in a p~riod wh~n th~ gam. had b~com~ th~ mass sport par ~xc~ll~nc~ in th~
world. How~v~r, th~ fact that socc~r b~cam~ so popular all ov~r th~ world had at
l.ast som~thing to do with th~s~ d~dicat~ amat~urs.
Lik~ missionari~s, th~
Corinthians tour~d th~ world, playing ~xhibition gam~s ("fri~ndly" match~s) against
local clubs and all-star t~ams in a numb.r of countri~s on th~ Europ~an contin~nt.
Th~y mad~ such an impact in Brazil, that a t~am
in Sao Paolo was christ~n~d aft~r
th~m.
Corinthians .Sao Paolo r~mains to this day on~ of that country's l~ading
socc~r clubs.
Th~ Corinthians also tour~d th~ Unit~d Stat~s in 1911 routing all six
Am~rican t~ams
whom th~y play~d. This prompted th~ir pr~sid~nt, th. old Oxfordian
Charl~s Wr.ford-Brown - th~ all~g~d inv~ntor
of th~ t~rm "socc~r" as pr~viously
m~ntion~d to stat~ his disappointm.nt r~garding th~ stagnation he f~lt soccer had
exp~ri~nc~d in th~ Unit~d Stat~s.
Th~ Corinthians
w~r~ disband~d
in 1939, having
outliv~d th~ir
~ra by
n~arly half
a century yet proving to hav~ b~~n nobl~ and
important r~pr~s~ntativ~s of th~ wcrld's most popular mass sport.
On th~
Corinthians, s~~ Walvin, Th~ P~opl~'s Gam~, p.' 88; and Young, A History of British
Football, pp. 128-131. On th~ Corinthians' visit to th~ Unit~d Stat~s in 1911, s~.
Holland~r, Th~ Am~rican Encyclop~dia of Socc~r, p. 35.
On~
Found~d
38.
Holland~r,
39.
Ibid., p. 21.
40.
Ibid., p. 22.
41.
Th~ Am~rican Encyclop~dia
of
Socc~r,
p. 35.
It is unclear to m~ why Harvard r~fused so steadfastly to play th~ kicking
sticking t~naciously to th~ running-styl~ Boston game and th~n conv.rting to
rugby following th~ matches with McGill in 1874. On~ hypoth~sis might b~ that th~
univ~rsity's
anglophilia and strong pr~occupation with
imitating Oxford and
Cambridg~
as clos~ly as possibl~, l~d it to id~ntify with rugby as b~ing th~
"prop~r" sport
for stud~nts at Am~rica's oldest and most pr~stigious univ~rsity.
Th~r~ can b~ no doubt, how~v~r, that, it was ultimat~ly Harvard's uniqu~ pr~stig~ and
standing among Am~rica's coll~g~s at th~ tim~ which sway~ the oth~r univ~rsiti~s
away from a socc~r-style football, which th~y w~r~ alr~ady playing making them
~mbrac~ the Harvard-dominat~d running
gam~.
Thus, Harvard can be accord~d an
gam~,
45 important role in the development of America's "soccer exceptionalism".
42.
Hollander, The American Encyclopedia of Soccer, p. 25.
43.
It is faSCinating how the stigma of soccer as being a boring sport has
persisted among Americans. It is equally interesting to observe how Europeans in
turn label baseball, and to a lesser degree even football, as being boring. This
leads me to the conclusion that a lack of understanding and appreciation of any
sport easily renders it "boring" in the eyes of the uninitiated spectator.
44.
Hollander, The American Encyclopedia of Soccer, p. 26.
45.
The NrL's Offi~ial Encyclopedia History of Professional rootball, p. 10. In a
brilliant application of Max Weber's tripartite scheme of domination - charismatic,
traditional,
legal-rational
Seymour
Martin Lipset shows how the early
institutionalization of George Washington's charisma as this "first new nation's"
first president and foremost military leader helped create a smooth transition to
and a legitimate continuation of the legal-rational form of authority which has
regulated much of the public discourse and behavior in the United States for over
two centuries. See Lipset, The rirst New Nation, pp. 21-26.
46.
The NrL's Official Encyclopedia History of Professional rootball, p. 10.
47. Riesman and Denny, "rootball
Land of Merriwell," p. 112.
in America,"
pp. 318,
319; and
Oriard, "In the
48.
All of the preceding information is deri ved from Riesman and Denny, "rootball
in America"; The NrL's Official Encyclopedia History of Professional rootball; and
John Arlott, The Oxford Companion to Sports and Games, pp. 321-323. It is helpful
for the argument to furnish yet another detail concerning the orlgln of the
necessary yardage rule, since it conveys the difference between the myth of a
leisurely and gentlemanly activity on the one hand, and the reality of a .fiercely­
contested bourgeois game in which winning became all-important on the other. When
Camp and his colleagues devised the American scrimMage out of the British "scrum",
they assumed "that the chivalrous Ivy L~aguers would gladly give up 'the ball when
they could not gain ground during the scrimmage." (The NrL's Official Encyclopedia
Historyof Professional rootball, p.- 10.) This, however, was clearly not the case.
Worried about being outperformed and outwitted by its opponents, each team chose to
play it safe by simply maintaining possession of the ball as long as possible, which
in effect meant for one-half of the game. Trust in the opponent's honest intentions
and the simple desire just to enjoy playing a good game regardless of winners and
losers
so essential, to a
quasi-aristocratic, non-competitive, gentlemanly
atmosphere - had all but disappeared in American sports and society, even at the
nation's most elite universities.
49. Surely the involvement of a military man at the highest level of the country's
sports world
connoted some affinity between the "scientization" and strict
regulation of sports on the one hand, and very similar values expressed by the
country's military establishment on the other.
Tne common denominator between
sports and the military was furnished by the fact that both of them were perceived
by the eli tes as "modern".
SO.
Oriard, "In the Land of ,Merriwell, II p. 107.
51.
Ibid., p. 114.
46 52.
It is worthy mentioning in this context one of early pro football's most
significant legacies to America's sports world. It was in New York City's Madison
Square Garden that a "World Series" was played indoors between two professional
football teams in 1902 and 1903 giving rise to the same - and subsequently much more
popular
event in the game of professional baseball. See The Nfl's Official
Encyclopedia History of Professional football, p. 12.
53. In the context of discussing professional football's precursors, The Nfl's
Official Encyclopedia History of Professional football contains a passage which
provides an excellent example of the atmosphere underlying the formation of American
sports (especially football) which - if not explicitly anti-British - was clearly
conduci ve to separate the "new world's" sports from
those of
the "old";
"Pi ttsburgh' s first athletic clubs were the Allegheny Athletic Association and the
Pittsburgh Athletic Club.
Such clubs emerged after the Civil War, according to
researcher Thomas Jable, as an antidote to Victorianism. American men could through
competitive athletics at their clubs 'countermand the Victorian principles of
delicacy and refinement.'
football, aggressive and sometimes violent, served this
need especially well; it 'represented a significant triumph of robust manliness over
tender and fragile feminini ty'.
Ibid., p. 11.
II
54.
The link between American football and capitalism has often been made. for a
relatively recent comparison between "democratic" and "capitalist" American football
on the one hand and "socialist" European soccer on the other, see Congressman Jack
Kemp's following views as expressed in liThe old quarterback doesn't approve of that
other football game" in The Boston Globe, Hay 12, 1983: "In debate about a
resolution urging the United States to try to snare the World Cup games, up leaps
this ex-quarterback, a 13-year veteran of pro football, to snipe at soccer. first
he thinks there still may be folks out there who don't understand that what the rest
of the world knows as 'football' is not the football he knows and 10ves••• 'I think
it is important for all those young out there, who some day hope to play real
football, where you throw it and kick it and run with it and put it in your hands, a
distinction should be made that football is democratic capitalism, whereas soccer is
a European socialist ••• ' ••• 'He [Jack Kemp] believes that football is entrepreneurial
capitalism, it has a quarterback, someone who is in charge, while soccer is based
more on the European socialist tradition; no one's in command, it's more of a
sharing, cooperative game.' ••• Jack was speaking 'extemporaneously,'
the aide
continued, as if that alone should explain it.
'~e
tells that all the time to
little league footballers when he travels around the country, and their eyes glaze
over.' ..
55.
Harold Seymour,
1960), pp. 8, 9.
56.
Baseball: The Early Years (New York: Oxford University Press,
Ibid.
57. One of the reasons baseball and soccer developed into "people's sports" has a
lot to do with the accessability of both games. Just as stickball, for example­
availing itself of such urban props as fire hydrants or parked cars in lieu of bases
- formed an integral part of inner city dwelling in the United States, so has soccer
continued as a street game in the cities of Europe and latin America.
These
environments have created many a major star for both sports respectively. There is
yet another dimension to the "democratic" component of soccer and baseball. In
noticeable contrast to football and basketball, neither of the two previous sports
necessitates any special physical abilities such as exceptional height or strength.
Indeed, exceptional physical attributes which are the sine qua UQn for any
successful football or basketball player could in fact be detrimental to a career in
47 either baseball or soccer.
While excellent athletes, soccer and baseball players
look "normal". In the not so distant past, when both games were a good deal less
"athletic" and "physical" than they are today, one could observe a number of aging
and paunchy players who maintained their careers in baseball or soccer, something
they could never have done in major league football or basketball.
58.
Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years, p. 16; and Robert Smith, Illustrated
History of Baseball (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1973), pp. 18-22.
59.
Seym.:::>ur, Baseball: The Early Years, pp. 19, 20.
60.
As quoted in ibid., p. 65.
61. Smith, Illustrated History of Baseball, p. 44.
For a detailed biography of
Spalding and his role in baseball, see Peter Levine, A.G. Spalding and the Rise of
Baseball (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
62. David Q. Voigt, "Reflections on Diamonds: American Baseball and American
Culture" in Journal of Sport History, Volume 1, Number 1 (Spring 1974), pp. 18, 19.
63.
On Organized Baseball's "reserve clause" which ruled the game's capital-labor
until the courts struck it down as being unconstitutional in the early
1970s, see John Arlott, The Oxford Companion to Sports, p. 59.
relat~ons
64.
.
65.
Ibid •
The term "World Series", as previously mentioned adopted by major league
baseball following football's immodest claims in the same direction in 1902 and
1903, is very telling of America's "sport exceptionalism".
On the one hand, few
aspects of American culture seem more peculiar, incomprehensible and irritating to
European sports fans than calling the contest between two domestic teams for what
essentially is the United States championship "world series" as in baseball, and­
following that sport
"world championship" in both professional football and
basketball.
What better reflects America's self-contained, parochial yet at the
same time self-assured, even smug, culture than equating itself with the world, at
least as far as sports are concerned.
Contrast the three American "world
championships" to soccer's World Cup where virtually all 144 countries belonging to
FIFA play in lengthy elimination tournaments for the right to participate in the
quadrennial final event still comprising 24 teams.
The eventual winner can thus
legitimately bear the title of "world champion" during its four-year incumbency.
World championships in all team sports other than the American "Big Three" are
bestowed upon a country in this world of nation-states, not upon a club. Thus,
world championships, typically, are won by all-star teams whose members are all
citizens of the same state.
(It is interesting to note that in the never-ending
quest to make more money, a "World Cup" for clubs rather than countries was
introduced in soccer during the late 1960s, pitting the European club champion
against its Latin American counterpart on a yearly basis.
Tellingly, this
tournament has never really captured the imagination of soccer fans on either
continent, remaInIng an incomparably less important event than the "real", i.e.
"inter-national" World Cup.)
And yet, precisely because baseball, football and basketball are America's
games, the arrogance of calling the winner of the American championship "world
champion" enjoys not only a certain. logical consistency but is also supported by
empirical reality.
For there can be no doubt that the respective American champions
in football, baseball and basketball are indeed the world's best in their sport by
virtue of being almost the only ones.
No other country plays American football,
48 thus making the American superbowl champion the automatic champion of the world. In
baseball, the winner of America"s "world series" surely represents that sport's best
team in the world, though this champion's uncontested position may be a bit more
precarious than football's since baseball is, after all, being played in a number of
Caribbean countries, Mexico and Japan. What would happen if Tokyo's Yomiuri Giants
successfully challenged our "world champion" baseball team, beating it decisively in
a series of games? Would this then expand baseball's world to include Japan? Would
it eventually lead to the "nationalization" of the sport pitting American all-stars
fielding only U.S. citizens as players against the Japanese national team?
As for basketball's "world champion", the claim can again be justi fied. Though
basketball is the second most popular team sport in the world, the professional game
- with some minor exceptions such as the leagues in Italy and Spain - is exclusive
to the United States, thus arguably making the NBA champion the best in the world.
But the potential dilemmas delineated for baseball hold e fortiori for basketball.
What would happen if Dynamo Moscow, Real Madrid or Partisan Belgrade would beat the
NBA champion some day?
The fact that this hypothesis is not completely without
precedent is best demonstrated by the bursting of hockey's previously exclusive
North American world, following the first USSR-Canada series in 1972 in which the
Canadians barely prevailed after their smug and self-contained predictions that they
would demolish and humiliate the Soviets.
Ever since that series, no Stanley Cup
winner can continue to enjoy its "world championship" without a somewhat fr ightened
glance across the Atlantic.
1
Comment on Andrei Markovits, "The Other 'American Exceptionalism': Why is there no soccer in the United States?" Let me start by saying this is a wonderfully conceived piece, a delight
to read, one that unites serious concerns with playful research in the best
sense.
I do not wish to contest its major point, namely that each society has
a certain "space" for games, as it does for political parties.
Once that
sports space is filled, it is not easy to uproot the established choice, nor
to fit another game in.
outdoor games.
The American sports space could accommodate two major
Baseball was the first, and certain contingent, historical
factors made American football, not soccer the second.
Of course, as Andrei
Markovits recognizes, the problem is also: why is there no baseball in Europe?
But what then would be the parallel question for Sombart's inquiry?
Why is
there no Democratic Party in Europe?
My reflections, in fact, are prompted more by the question concerning
Europe than the one concerning the United States.
For the inability to export
baseball suggests that more may be at stake than the contingent circumstances
by which a sports space gets filled.
The key may be in the way given sports
reflect a national cultural configuration.
We can make more progress in
decoding this relationship, I believe, if we recognize that the social-class
categories proposed in the paper are not the most refined possible.
The paper
itself provides the clue for its own deconstruction when it refers to American
football ("the running game") as Taylorized.
Precisely -- but Taylorism
represented a revolt of the engineering mentality against class
2
categorization.
It allegedly transcended classes and was not a simple
imposition of bourgeois norms.
Obviously it reinforced capitalist class
hierarchies -- but did so in the name of a technical intelligence that denied
the relevance of social class and insisted on a functional division of labor.
To my mind, the point is that in America baseball is an "artisanal"
sport, football, its Taylorized supplement.
As an artisanal support (replete
with craft rituals, premodern methods of production -- i.e. assignments by
position, not by function) baseball could cut across the class hierarchies of
capitalism.
The paper might think further about the games themselves.
I
bring up several distinctions that Dan White painted out to me many years ago.
The first was the one just mentioned: baseball anchors its men to places,
football has increasingly gone from designation of positions according to
place to designation according to function.
the left end.
The wide receiver has replaced
What the player does, not where he lines up is crucial.
Football restricts players from certain options: only certain players can
receive passes.
It has pushed specialization to the two-platoon system.
Its
stadiums are in the suburbs and attract a less raffish, far more managerial
crowd.
The general point is that baseball has remained popular because it
appealed to a rural myth of pre-class society.
It has overtones of Masonic­
like rites: what outsider could possibly understand the game?
freemasonry in which all of small-town America could share.
But it is a
The analogue in
American history is more the community of the elect than the working class.
Baseball is the generalized extension of John Winthrop's covenant.
This raises the issue of American exceptionalism in general.
comparativist I find the concept over-used.
As a
On the one hand, the idea was the
creation of an unsuccessful American Communist Party that needed a social
theory to explain its frustrations; on the other hand, it elaborated that
,
3
Partisan Review-type celebration of American values precisely during the
period of the late 1940's and 1950's, when a generation of academics, neo­
conservative avant la lettre, were renouncing the socialist enthusiasms of
their City College or Columbia youth.
American exceptionalism, like Turner's
frontier hypothesis, has been largely a myth.
The reason that an American
Socialist Party was weaker than the SPD, but hardly negligible in 1912 -- was
less the absence of a feudal past than the ethnic divisions among recent
immigrants.
However, it is all the more fitting that American exceptionalism
is a myth, because I would argue that the importance of baseball is as a
mythic sport.
It is the game of the exceptionalism we like to believe we have
enjoyed.
The confirmation of this I find by thinking about the sport that Andrei
Markovits's essay inexplicably does not cover: cricket.
English pre-modern equivalent of baseball.
archaic in its gentlemanly aspects.
Cricket is the
Indeed cricket is even more
Consider the test matches that go on for
days without heed of time, one team's voluntary but strategic decision to
renounce batting, the provision of an indefinite turn at the bat for the
individual, the primitive homogeneity of playing space with batter and pitcher
in the middle of an elliptical field (think of the progression from cricket
oval to asymmetric baseball diamond to football gridiron in this sense), in
its white flannel uniforms.
In contrast to soccer, which became big-time in
the industrial north, cricket could unite village communities and serve as
game of an elite and laborers simultaneously.
Labour in its collective sense.
Of laborers, mind you, not of
It could persist at Oxbridge and in the
country, but it, too, presupposes a pre-industrial community.
Indeed its
community can embrace the spectrum from colonial masters to dependent people:
recall C. L. R. James's great cricket memoir, Beyond a Boundary, which shows
4
how cricket as a game might overcome the gap between masters and colonized.
Thus if this essay included cricket, I think, it would find the pre­
industrial/industrial axis more relevant.
Of course it has implications about
class: for in a sense baseball and cricket must represent a somewhat utopian
denial of the class divisions of industrial capitalism.
their power.
But that is precisely
Might one of the reasons that we had no socialism be because we
had baseball instead?
In this regard I find the paper could profitably have taken up another
issue, which is precisely that of what any game or play represents.
In a
sense game playing is the activity that the society uses to counterpose
against the workplace, just like the Carnival turns society upside down.
It
is, in Victor Turner's sense, a liminal or anti-structural experience: an
anthropological program that might be thought of as the logical playing out,
so to speak, of James' polyvalent title, Beyond a Boundary.
Hence a serious
game should not be simply a reflection of the dominant class structure, but a
utopian counter-structure.
It incorporates an idealized vision (or
alternative construction) of society's principles of hierarchization, which
still remains in some sort of dialectical relationship to the dominant
structure.
But how then, it will be asked, do the pre-industrial aspects of
baseball retain their vitality even when the forces of production and class
formations have moved way beyond baseball's archaic arrangements?
They do so
precisely because they serve as the liminal rite that invokes the community of
an earlier era.
structure:
In effect, we can envisage
~
sports forms of anti­
the one, football, is contemporary and merely reworks current
social-structural divisions.
This will yield a sport that
i~
quite as
ruthless as the social structure it counterposes: indeed the game must take on
5
the function of giving full expression to the agonistic relationships of the
contemporary social order.
In this sense Vince Lombardi served as the Carl
Schmitt of the game world.
But the other game, baseball, must evoke a now archaic pre-industrial
social formation to play its anti-structural role.
Competition can be less
ruthless since the game embodies an idealized image of now vanished artisanal
or village relationships that were less stratified than industrial capitalism.
Indeed, the effect of temporal displacement is even greater, because baseball
and cricket were codified precisely as the pre-industrial community was
already being displaced.
Baseball's heroes are the game equivalent of Hegel's
owl of minerva, rounding the bases of the village green as dusk falls.
redolent with nostalgia and probably was from the days of its birth.
It is
We
preserve that nostalgia with the mania for statistics and trivia, which now
can be enhanced by the almost infinite storage capacity of the computer that
creates new statistical categories as each man comes to bat.
We enhance the
nostalgia further by surrounding the game's origins, as this essay shows, in
myth.
So too baseball's current literature will be suffused with an elegiac
quality that purely contemporaneous anti-structure cannot take on: I have not
read The Boys of Summer or Christopher Lehmann-Haupt's recent Me and Dimaggio,
but from all descriptions this is the literature of Heimkehr.
Let me conclude by pOSing a question.
If baseball was the anti­
structural game that evoked the pre-industrial order, and football is the
sport that has served as anti-structure for the postwar industrial age
the
carnival of managerial capitalism, as Jack Kemp has recognized -- what will be
the sport for what Sabel and Piore have called "the second industrial divide?"
Tennis remains the aristocratic game, the jeu de paume born in the medieval
courts of France, preserved like some scarab of sport.
Basketball is an
6
indoor alternative.
outlet.
Ice hockey will continue to preserve some regional winter
But football already finds the class structure it inverts fading into
some future we only dimly discern.
game image of a mythic past?
Can it survive as baseball thrived, as the
Can each prior social formation preserve its
respective game inversion as new productive forces come into being?
Or does
society have room for only one atavistic game and must the other be crowded
out?
It seems to me that the new sports which offer the anti-structural
alternative for the computer era are the individualized, participatory ones:
namely running, aerobics, and fitness.
They allow the collectivized, but non-
team, individualized testing that is characteristic of a society built upon
networks and circuit boards.
With these thoughts and queries we turn from Sombart -- who asked
Markovitz's original question -- to Sombart's contemporary, Simmel, who asked
an even more basic question: "How is Society Possible?"
He answered by
explaining that it is possible only because its constitutent members are
inside it and outside it simultaneously: their social roles are possible only
insofar as they are granted by individuals who are not totally socialized.
That refusal to be gleichgeschaltet, which ultimately is the foundation of our
sociability, is also expressed in play, as Simmel himself explicitly
recognized.
So when we run our 10k races, and when, nurtured by hope and
illusion, we focus on Fenway Park once again, let us recall that we both
affirm sociability and insist on our individuality.
Charles S. Maier
Senior Associate,
Center for European Studies
I
The Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies
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