It’s the second half of the 1900’s. The United States Empire is expanding its invisible borders all over the world. Its a new form of imperialism, quite different in structure and sugar-coated in humanitarian rhetoric, but imperialism nonetheless. Perhaps the most notable expansion occurred to the South: the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. As the nation’s imperial reaches were growing, the people at home needed a distraction from the personal miseries of working nine to five’s and the capitalistic corruption both domestically and globally. A distraction, what can distract an individual, even a whole society: entertainment. So under this label of bliss was born the industries of film and professional sports. Maybe not born, but definitely nurtured through funds. Specific to this era, America’s pastime: baseball.
Alas, the Americans weren’t the first masterminds to come up with sports as an imperialist art form to influence millions. Look to their polite, well-mannered cousins across the Great Pond called Atlantic. The British fashioned in their own image the British Empire Games, which was an athletic competition with representatives from multiple regions of Britain’s global empire. In essence it was a show and tell of the empire’s reaches and subjects. The games were rebranded with a new name, thrice, and was referred to last as the Commonwealth Games in 2014. Even before the Brits, Mussolini’s ancestors, the Romans, were strategic in their implementation of sport into imperial culture. Among the great sports inherited from the Greeks, the Romans were remembered for their gladiator games. Games, in which many of the competitors were political slaves, foreign specimens [subjects], and sentenced criminals.
To be fair, we have become much more civilized than the Romans. I’m sorry let me rephrase, we’ve become near gods in appearing more civilized and fine tuned than our imperialistic ancestors. We’ve traded our temple altars for digital ones, namely eighty inch screens with surround sound and smaller portable versions that fit in our hands. We devote hours to studying, praying [demanding], and listening at the feet of digital statues that speak to us from these devices. One of these gods: sports. We’ve taken the concept of sports as an imperial art form and clothed it in the garments of virtuous competition. But even in the basic structure of America’s pastime, we failed to be rid of the imperialistic layout.
Having developed in North America as early as the late 18th century, baseball began to take shape in American society as a pastime. Literally: an activity done or watched to pass time. Now, it is pointless to argue if the inventors of the sport were imperialist pigs who cooked up a conspiracy to capture innocent subjects in cultural binds. However, it is worthwhile to examine: 1) the basic characteristics of imperialism in the game itself, and 2) the imperialistic-style in which the game exploits the third world of its athletes.
In the game of baseball the batter starts at home plate, where he/she is thrown a ball by a pitcher, a variable. The ball must be hit, if not the batter is out. When made out, another individual from one’s team will get the opportunity to represent the collective at home plate. When three outs are made the pitching/defending team and the batting/offensive team switch roles. This represents the cycles of capitalistic international relations on an economic and political level. In such societies we are given opportunities to go up to bat. When we cannot accomplish the objective, another will replace us. If we do make it on base, another will build upon the work we have done and push the agenda of the team forward: score. When the team fails three times, another team takes over at the expense of the first team to attempt to accomplish the same goal.
When the ball is hit the batter magically transforms into a runner and the bloke runs from home to first base. The objective being to get around the bases, and ultimately return home. The runner conquers first, second, and third base before returning to home plate to score. I cannot help but see the imperialistic undertone of this structure of the game. Start at home, conquer bases abroad, and return home with a score. Many a runners return to their respective dugouts failing to reach home; they settle for first, second, and even third. Those who return home do so proudly and to great praise. The outfield is a green sea of unknown beyond the boundaries of the imperial colonial bases and the motherland itself. The farther we hit the ball into uncovered [by the outfielders] the frontier plains, the higher the chance of advancing on the bases and scoring. A metaphor for expansion. Intriguing is it not? So simple a game with such hidden meaning. The stepping of each base, equivalent of imperial conquest.
But what happens when a region of the world is conquered by an imperial force? Well, avoiding a long winded answer, simply put these regions are exploited. Exploited of their raw resources, economic production-marketability, and human beings. When it comes to sports, not just baseball, the third form of exploitation is most clearly seen. America’s pastime employees far more players of Latin American descent than any other sport in the U.S. today. Ball players come from all over the globe, but the numbers being extracted from the Caribbean, Central America, and South America are unrivaled. Even so nations such as Japan and South Korea have become not only sources of exploitation but also consumers of the imperialist art form. In the image of American baseball the sport has been shaped and molded in the two East Asian tigers. Would it be coincidence to point out that these two nations are ranked above many Asian nations as advanced and Western. But back to Latin America… players are trained from childhood to possibly become a baseball player in the big leagues at the heartland of the empire. The periphery is the breeding grounds for contributing talent for the empire. Hundreds are brought to the U.S. to attempt at playing the imperial game. So is the nature of empire.
Much more could be expounded from this thought, particularly of other sports where we see a great number of caucasian team owners and large percentiles of African American athletes, but I will refrain because it does little to go deeper into things that won’t change at the core. However, being aware of such things give us new lenses to see human nature and human relationships within the structures that humans have established. Many a people have asked me “what do you do with a history major?” Nearly everyone who asks such a question is trapped in a supply and demand perception, curious how such studies will result in a job/career and payment. Essentially, the question is… is history productive, or at least, do others find it productive enough to pay you a wage for it. My reply is simple: I did not study history to get a job; I study it because it widens my mind and heart, which in turn I can apply to the creation of meaningful products. Our era is not in its own vacuum, and it should never be seen in such ways. Thus, whether it be baseball or another medium, there are connections all around us to our systems and history.
