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FEATURE
How America used baseball to make the world one giant strike zone
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ajor League Baseball has managed to weather Bronx cheers over steroid use, collusion by team owners, ballplayer strikes, antitrust reviews and the cancellation of a World Series, but it may not be able to hold up against university professor Robert Elias. In his latest book, The Empire Strikes Out, Elias rips the tarp off longstanding myths about our “national pastime” and its peculiar place in American foreign policy. The Mill Valley father of three once played shortstop for the semipro Altoona Stars in Pennsylvania, holds a doctorate in political science from Penn State University and has written nine books—three on baseball—including a mystery, The Deadly Tools of Ignorance. He teaches a course on Baseball and the American Dream at the University of San Francisco and is married to USF provost Jennifer Turpin. Elias, 60, was on his way to speak at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown when I caught up to him just before he left home plate. At one point his cell phone interrupted us with a ring tone of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” ●
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them a gift. Play our game and you’ll become eye would be good for rifle marksmanship, and American just like us and that’ll be good. knowing how to throw a baseball correctly would So then, during your research, what was be good for throwing hand grenades. the most profoundly shocking discovery Your book debunks a lot of long-held you made about baseball and its impact on beliefs about organized baseball, the most foreign and military policies? prevalent being—steroids aside for the Unfortunately, there’s almost nothing that moment—the myth of baseball as a carrier shocks me about U.S. foreign policy. I would say of American values, both here and in other that one surprise would be in how much sincere countries. And yet there are numerous exfaith was placed in the game by many people, amples of arrogance, hypocrisy, manipuboth in baseball and the foreign policy eslation, greed, disloyalty, racism. tablishment, that the sport could prevent Yes, and one of the best examples is the war between the U.S. and Japan, battle the major leagues had with by M al Karm an leading up to World War II. [In the Mexican League after World 1934, when millions jammed the War II when Jorge Pasquel, who streets of Tokyo to see Babe Ruth on tour, was the head of that league, started raidthat did a lot to dispel virulent anti-Ameriing players from the major leagues claiming, canism, at least temporarily.] “Well you’ve been raiding our players, why can’t I guess I was also surprised about how seriously we do it in return? We’re happy to have your playbaseball skills were taken by the U.S. military. In ers if they want to play for us and, by the way, we’ll the early- to mid-20th century, as America began pay them more money than you will. And then, at emerging in the world, taking on a more imperial the end of the season, we’ll have a true World Seorientation—the creation of the great fleet, the ries, or at least a semblance of one.” But the major Navy going abroad and announcing that America leagues wouldn’t have anything to do with it. In was a world player—many, including Theodore fact, they started pressuring U.S. sporting goods Roosevelt, thought football, with its virility and companies to stop selling equipment to the Mexiviolence, was the sport for America. So basecan League. The commissioner [Happy Chandler] ball did everything to establish its own military created a blacklist and banned [18 jumpers] from or martial credentials. It became important to Major League Baseball for five years. develop baseball skills for youth because that Major League Baseball thought they were would translate into skills for soldiers. The batting disloyal? The same bunch of snakes who 14 >
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What was your motivation for writing The Empire Strikes Out? I was thinking through what I was covering in my [USF] course, looking at American history and American politics over a long period of time using baseball as a lens or mirror on society. But I began to realize I was leaving out how baseball operated outside the country. It wasn’t just that baseball happened to be played in Japan and Cuba and the Caribbean—it had been carried there, usually by the military. Baseball had been in a relationship with the way that America had extended itself abroad. The more I looked, the more I kept finding baseball in relation to U.S. military policy, foreign policy, globalization policy. There are numerous incidents of American imperialism and insensitivity to other cultures. And, in reading your book, I discover Major League Baseball often seems to be a mirror of that. Yes, there is a lot there that is troubling. But, at the same, there were a lot of true believers that America really was special and, if we were aggressive or tried to impose our values, that was actually going to be good for the people on whose lives we were intervening. Many actually believed we were giving
Baseball’s flirtations with jingoism reached new levels in the march toward war following the 9/11 attacks; at top left is the sheet music to a 1919 ditty that billed itself as ‘the great baseball war song.’ OCTOBER 22 - OCTOBER 28, 2010 PACIFIC SUN 13