Due to the current baseball strike,
the World Series was canceled in mid-September. Not to be denied
their addiction, fans were given alternative baseball programs
by the American networks, ESPN and the Labbats Sports Network
(TSN). These included the very real and very international Junior
League World Series, as well as the Triple A Pacific League that
would have garnered scant attention from TV otherwise. Even with
all the big budgets and big advertising bucks backing them up
none of the networks or cable channels could compete with the
ne plus ultra production of Baseball that aired on PBS.
Planned to coincide with the World
Series, Baseball a 9 part documentary on the Social History of
the sport ran in place of the series it documented. Produced by
Ken Burns, who also did the social history documentary on the
Civil War for PBS several years ago, Baseball painted a picture
of the roll of the sport in the social history of the United States.
Using original photos and film, Burns narrative swept with broad
brushes across the canvas of American culture in the 19th and
20th centuries.
Burns' series did something no sports
commentators had managed during the entire strike, explain the
relationship of the game and the continuing conflicts between
the players and owners as part of the conflicts of an emerging
capitalist society in America. And make it damned well entertaining
as well.
While it's hard, even for trade unionists,
to give much sympathy to the current crop of players who are twice
over millionaires, not all players are so handsomely rewarded.
Those salaries are the result of the struggle of players over
the past 150 years to maintain control of the sport and to get
a fair deal from the owners who took it away from them. The history
of baseball, as Burns amply documents, is the history of the American
working class.
In nine two hour episodes, based
on baseball innings, the game is documented as it rose from the
fields in small towns and behind factories to a sport riddled
with controversy. Controversy between greedy owners trying to
monopolize the sport and wages of the players by creating competing
leagues, gamblers buying off poorly paid players to through the
World Series of 1919. A sport that saw barely literate native
American farm boys and newly immigrated millhands, become household
names. Ty Cobb, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Babe Ruth. If boxing was
the sport of African American workers trying to get out of the
ghetto, baseball was the sport of American factory workers trying
to get out of the company town.
Baseball depicts the importance the
game had in shaping American cultural values. And it pulls no
punches. It shows the early owners as ruthless greedy and paternalistic,
under paying their players, controlling and dominating all aspects
of the game. Chicago White Sox owner Cominsky is a case in point,
he not only owned the field but he bottled the pop sold in the
stands. Like other owners, Cominsky was willing to make big cash
promises to his players and then renege on them.
As depicted in John Sayles excellent
movie about the 1919 World Series scandal; Eight Men Out, Cominsky
virtually forced his players through poverty into the hands of
quick witted New York gamblers. As Burns documents even the sports
reporters of the day knew that 'the fix was in' as the Sox threw
game after game to the Cincinnati Reds. Yet the wags never said
a word till a year later.
Sort of reminds one of the way the
Canadian media protected Allan Eagleson as he ripped the pension
fund of the National Hockey Players Association. As part of the
sport business, the media didn't want to tarnish the 'national
image' by either revealing what it knew or invetigating the rumours
it had heard.It wasn't until last year when Eagleson was indicted
by the FBI for fraud that what had been known to all the sports
media became truly public knowledge.
With a potential lock out of NHL
players pending, we could be looking at a long hot winter of labour
disputes in sports. While it's hard to be sympathetic with millionaire
baseball players or hockey players, not all of them make that
much.
The press likes to pretend that both
the owners and players are equally to blame. I think not. Players
like Gordie Howe, had to go to court to fight for decent pension
plan. A plan that Eagleson ripped off and the owners wanted to
cap.
Sports team owners reap record profits
with tax concessions from cities, TV contracts, advertising contracts,
concession stand and parking monopolies, clothing franchises,
and yes exorbitant salaries for some players. The average player,
the kid coming up from the minor leagues playing for the first
time gets forgotten. Sport is a business so why should the workers
in that industry be seen any differently than workers in other
industries.
Sports reflect the political as well
as business culture of a country. In the US baseball represents
the democratic aspirations and traditions of the American working
class. Football on the other hand represents the political and
military strategies of the American ruling class.
Burn's Baseball is tribute to both
the democratic and working class traditions that many American
scholars would like to white wash. Now if only the NFB would do
as good a series on Canada's national sport; Hockey.
Originally published in Labour News
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