Baseball in particular grew to be a National Pastime and big business. She describes the efforts of Baseball Club owners to modify the rules of the game, establish a National League, and attract a broad middle class audience. The class is about an hour and 15 minutes. Professor waugh good morning ucla students. Good to see you for my lecture baseball becomes professional. It wasnt too long ago that these subjects were controversial, if you can can imagine. Sports and consumerism, they werent important enough. It would have raised eyebrows. Like i am raising my eyebrows now. Sports, Department Stores buying stuff, will not anymore. Sports and consumer culture our research and written about, made boring like every other topic by historians. Now theyre even professors of sports history. Why . Because professors have found that we cannot ignore sports. Why . Because it represents money and big power, big business. We cant ignore sports for another reason. Its also cultural and emotional. There is this tension between professionalism, big business, and the emotional tie that is exemplified by this letter, written by a baseball fan and published in a newspaper sports section. Let me read a quote. These modern ballplayers care about nothing but money. They dont care about their team, or their city, with their fans. In my day, things were different. Oh, that sounds familiar. At least it does to me. This lament, this complaint is quoted from a letter written in 1859. If it sounds familiar, it is. We do well to listen to baseballs major philosopher, a mr. Yogi berra, who said its deja vu all over again. That is kind of the motto for historians as well. I will say this as i begin the sports lecture, as a sports fan myself, a ucla fan, a dodgers fan, i could go on but i wont your life is to experience a broken heart on a regular basis. Depression, anguish, and hope, this is a time of hope for baseball fans. And occasionally thrilling moments that you will never forget if you are lucky. The outline for todays lecture is this. Were going to talk about baseball, baseballs origins, amateur to professional, capital labor, the strikes, the fans, something were going to quote that i call heads up. Before that we are going to look at sports mania in the gilded age. I want to begin my background by making the point that between the civil war and the turnofthecentury, america went sports crazy. Baseball became vague knowledge national game, boxing exploded in popularity. Football became a College Mania and basketball took firm root in the urban athletic club. Croquet, polo, tennis, golf, swimming, and bicycling swept over the middle class, including women, in successive waves of popularity. Before i get to baseball then, my main topic of this lecture, i want to briefly discuss this background by selecting two previews and examples of the enthusiasm at work for sports that really encapsulated and symbolized the gilded age that would be sports for women, and College Football. Im going to show you a series of slides that shows this. If you could advance the slides. Another one. This is croquet. How many of you have played croquet . More than i thought. In my backyard when i was growing up, we had a croquet set. And here you can see that women are participating in this. Well dressed, fully dressed women in the victorian age, and yet they are engaging in physical exercise. If you could advance to the next slide. This is a tennis game. You see the tennis togs these women are wearing, they are very fulsome, fully covered, not the way we are used to seeing tennis players. This is coney island beach, you read about that in your essay. Coney island is a pleasure park, so to speak. Again, these swimming togs are not the ones we are used to, but you see that it was for men and women and children. Another one. These are bicyclists and one of my Favorite Places in the world, general grants tomb in manhattan in new york city. Men and women participated in the bicycle craze as well. Very, very popular. One more. And here are women Baseball Players. This happens to be a team named the vassar resolutes, which was a womens Baseball Team. You might notice their uniforms look a lot different than our excellent ucla womens softball team, which is advancing to the finals, they play at easton stadium, our own beloved campus here. And i want to take just a minute to expand the slides. At first, women were only supposed to bring to be spectators. To bring refinement any given sport. But it was found that you can keep them out. They wanted to join exercise clubs. They wanted to go boating and swim, became very popular among young women in the 1860s, and 1870s, 1880s, 1890s. The gilded age. Baseball and other sports flourished at the new womens colleges, like vassar, which you see here, where freshmen women in this depiction, formed a Baseball Team. And they really loved it. They really loved it. However, you should note that tragedy ensued, and that is because their mothers complained to the college. They complained that baseball was too violent for young ladies. And it was disbanded, only to be reformed when those mothers saw their daughters graduate, and there was no other concern about it. There were also from this point on, ladies Baseball Clubs. These were professional Baseball Clubs, women participated in them, as you can see, ladies Baseball Club presenting this lizzie arlington, the famous lady pitcher. These are the bloomer girls with appropriate costumes. Truthfully advertised and honestly conducted, very important. A highclass organization suitable for the most fastidious, and one can hardly imagine an advertisement like that today. But then, we are studying history, arent we . This is basketball, if you could advance the slides. Basketball also took root all over the country. And especially Womens Basketball teams were popular in the midwest. Where they still are very popular today. How can you explain this mania for sports . Well, there were two things that we are studying in this class in the period of the gilded age that speak to us in this. First of all is that the rise of big business, and with it, the rise of productivity, which led to a rise of the standard of living. In other words, everybody had more money in their pocket. Obviously, the working class didnt have as much money as the middle class and the middle class didnt have as much money as the extremely wealthy, but it brought an interest in a possibility of engaging in various leisure activities. There was also something else, anxiety about the kind of society, the kind of life, the kind of culture that was emerging in these decades. Would young men and women live up to the standards of their parents . Would they would they be able to be patriotic americans . And what they develop the character that americans like to think that they had, and they would put in their children . So all of these concerns and changes were part of the explanation of why sports became so popular. Lets look at my second example of the enthusiasm for sports in the gilded age before we get to baseball. And look at College Football so we can have some basis of comparison. Look at this. The rise of College Football, and what at this time was a sport of the elite. This is a depiction of a Football Game between yale and princeton in the time that we are speaking about. Now on campuses like ucla, when ucla wasnt exist and then come but ucla wasnt extent then, but on campuses across the country, there were all kinds of sports the became popular. I already mentioned baseball, but boxing, wrestling, rolling, swimming, sailing. As the popularity of College Sports arose, intercollegiate competition group. It grew especially prominent and important, and sporting events became serious things, especially when it came to football. Can you go to the next slide . This is a picture of a game between army and navy again in this period. Football originated in informal matches or games between intraclass intercollegiate at colleges, and football was originally played with the rules of two games sort of combined. Rugby and soccer. Football became so popular that it almost immediately grew into more formal contest matches. And the first allegedly formal game between colleges was played by rutgers and princeton in 1869. Harvard and yale played in 1875. In 1876, four Ivy League Institutions formed the Intercollegiate Football Association to standardize the rules, and rugby won out. Football followed more the rules of rugby rather than soccer. The new rules might be familiar to some of us in this class. Blocking, alternating ball possessions, and fixed numbers of downs that made american football unique. By the 1880s and 1890s, football was a central feature of college life. And it had become a really important sport. The ivy league and western conference that was established, bringing in such Public School universities as the university of michigan, they were wellestablished, rivalries had formed, and teams traveled long distances for games. As footballs popularity increased, the alumni gained more and more power over College Sports. Universities saw that football was a machine for making money. For example, yale football receipts average 100,000 a year, almost 1 8 of that institutions total income in the gilded age. The annual thanksgiving day championship, a game that was wellestablished during this time, featured a contest between the two best teams, usually yale and princeton. And it drew as many as 40,000 spectators. The ivy league schools, the schools of the elite were the powerhouse football teams during the gilded age. College football, even though it was accepted and popular, did generate some controversy. It was considered a brutal sport, causing frequent injuries. In a 19 year period, 50 College Players died from injuries sustained on the field. In 1905 alone, 18 died on the gridiron. Can you imagine that happening today . Or that kind of casualty rate, as we call it when we speak of war . Lets look at one of the rules that came under scrutine, because this wasnt acceptable. One of the rules that was common during this time allowed one player to hit another three times with closed fist before being ejected from the game. You had to do it three times though. Three times and you are out. Obviously, it was beginning to develop a winning at all costs mentality that invited corruption. I know youre going to be shocked, but colleges in the gilded age began to engage in shady, dishonest reporting recruiting practices. For example, a player named Martin Thayer performed for 13 years at nine different schools. What a career he had. As the century came to a close, University Officials looked at this, and began to denounce football, the sport. And they were led by harvard president charles elliott, who, for posterity, said this about football. No honorable sport, he said, embraces the barbarism of warfare. Football is a boy killing education prostituting editorial sport. Added the president of columbia for good measure, football is nothing more than madness and slaughter. In 1905, as i mentioned before, so many players that died that College Season that president theodore roosevelt, a huge champion of football and the manly sports called a white house conference of footballs leadership that led to the establishment of the ncaa. And now every thing is all right, no more scandals. Happily ever after. That football survive these early controversies is largely due to the effort of one man, yale football coach walter camp. Let me just tell you a little bit about walter camp. This is walter camp, appearing in his football togs at yield yale university, where he was a star football player. Walter camp went to medical school but dropped out of medicine to take a position with the new haven connecticut clock company. Ultimately becoming the president of this clock company. In his off time and unpaid, he coached yales football teams and builds it into a powerhouse program. Walter camp was a brilliant innovator, organizer, and tactician. He transformed rugby style football into american football. He explicitly links football with business principles. This is a portrait of walter camp towards the end of his life, and it is currently hanging in the National Gallery in washington, d. C. Walter camp, from the very beginning of his career, explicitly links football with business principles. By the way, football was the first major American Spectator sport in which the clock played a major role. In any case, he links football with business principles, and the battlefield. That is, organized violence, focused on the capture of territory, with bureaucratic efficiency of training and practice. And he said this. American business puts down american College Football, the epitimization of presentday business methods. He defended the game, and made its controversial style of play into a virtue, returning boys into men. Walter camp was the Games National spokesman for decades. He articulated the ideals of student athletes, and of football, in speeches published essays, and in over 30 books. He wrote and published a classic on the ideals of the studentathlete, which even if you are a student athlete and you have never heard of walter camp, that is what you aspire to. Like any set of ideals that we have been talking about in this class, or throughout history, they are seldom lived up to, but worthy of aspiration. By the way, football was mostly amateur in the 19th century, although an early professional organization was established in 1895, the nfl was not founded until 1921. But football was not the National Sport in the gilded age. It was not americas pastime. For that, we turn to todays case of study and focus, baseball. It was not a natural occurrence anymore than the rise of the Steel Industry or the transcontinental railroad, or the meatpacking industry was natural. Dare i bring up human initiatives . Human ingenuity, and human energy . The three important ingredients that explain the surging economy in the late 19th century. It took all of those three things and much more to bring baseball into the lives of millions of americans, where it remains more or less today. I love this quote. Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of america had better learn baseball. And i would add whoever wants to know the history of america had better learn baseball. Why . Baseball writers have often claimed that the 19th century game embodied the best and worst of american character. And in claiming so, they point to the fact that baseball was much more than a game, it was more than entertainment. The best of america is found in baseballs expression of 19th century rural origins, and its adjustment to a new urban scene. The best of america is found in baseballs expression of a unique individualism, the batter versus the pitcher. As well as in the expression of teamwork in baseball, each side, each team taking an equal turn. The worst is also part of baseballs story, as it is the part of americas story. And that is racism. There was jim crow, or jim crow laws and terrible discrimination in the south. But there was also jim crow baseball. It didnt start out that way. But but what happens is in the 1870s, a few africanamerican stars emerged such as Moses Fleetwood walker. And their presence bother the white players to such an extent that they threatened to boycott against any owner that employed africanamericans. And by the 1880s, they were shut out of the white leagues. But they had their own leagues and clubs. And this is the bristol Baseball Club. As far as i have been able to determine, i dont know the names or the information regarding this team, but it was on the circuit and played baseball games, they were very popular. We have a heritage here at ucla that i do want to talk about. And that heritage came in the mid1940s, on the left, wearing the bruins uniform is Jackie Robinson. And Jackie Robinson was a starred in four sports at ucla in 1945. Our mens Baseball Team plays in Jackie Robinson stadium. Both our womens and mens teams are doing very well this year, we are excited for them. We hope they continue the shining example and add to uclas recordbreaking ncaa championships that we have won. Heres a closeup of Jackie Robinson. Jackie robinson is famous for many things. But we do know, or you should know that he broke the color line in professional baseball in 1947. And if you could just this is a picture of Jackie Robinson in a dodgers outfit. Now you might note that there is a b on his cap. And that is part of dodgers history you dont really have to know. Its a very unimportant part when they were in this place called brooklyn, new york. Their real history and achievement came when they moved to los angeles in the mid1950s. [laughter] professor waugh just so you are clear on that. The game of baseball was a symbol of an earlier rural modern american pastime, innocent and fun. Its growing popularity brought both professionalism, and with professionalism, with the idea that it was a business, it made it a symbol for the growing tension between capital and labor, between black and white, between fun and profit. And between business and pleasure. Lets go back to the origins of america in baseball. This is a painting that was completed in 1845. Like so many portraits, in the 19th century, especially of children no real boy ever looked like that, so neat. Especially when he was going to engage in sports. But thats what it is. Thats what we should know right now, that baseball started as a childrens game. And it became