Q&A: 250 years of sports in the United States

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Sports in the United States look very different than they did when the nation was founded 250 years ago, according to Mark Dyreson, professor of kinesiology and of history at Penn State. But one thing has remained constant — sport has played a vital role in shaping and reflecting the country's culture and values, he said.

Dyreson has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and several books on the history of sport and culture in the modern world. In this Q&A, he discussed the history of sports in the U.S.; how baseball, football and basketball emerged, evolved and became popular; the relationship between sports and gambling; and why sports are unavoidably political.

Q: What did sports look like after the American Revolution?

Dyreson: When the nation was founded, three sports dominated the public’s attention — horse racing, prize fighting and hunting. Although they are all still a part of American life, people no longer consider these to be our national pastimes.

In colonial America, there was plenty of open land to hunt in, and everybody had firearms for protection and hunting. Arguably, this was our first national pastime, and it was an important source of food, as well. It is not much of a spectator sport, though, so that limited its attraction as the nation became wealthier and people had more leisure time for watching sports.

Horse racing was also embedded in colonial society, particularly in Virginia where it marked differences between social classes, with the wealthy gambling on the races. Meanwhile, members of lower social classes, including African Americans, were allowed to participate as jockeys, as horse trainers or in the workforce that took care of the horses.

Prize fighting — boxing — developed such a sordid reputation for thrown and fixed fights that the English Parliament banned the sport in 1750. After that law passed, the heartland of prize fighting became the colonies and — after the Revolution — the United States.

These early pastimes were all individual sports, and gambling was a huge part of the appeal for both prize fighting and horse racing. There are still vestiges of these sports in our culture, but they are not nearly as central as they once were.

As the middle class emerged and grew during the 100 years after the Civil War, people gradually turned away from the violence of prize fighting and hunting or the gambling associated with horse racing and prize fighting. Instead, they gravitated towards a trio of team sports that remain at the center of our culture today: baseball, football and basketball.

Q: How did baseball entrench itself as our national pastime?

Dyreson: Baseball emerged in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic during the 1820s and 30s. During the Civil War, soldiers from those regions spread it to the rest of the nation. Within two or three years after the Civil War, baseball games on the Fourth of July symbolized reconciliation between North and South. For example, a team from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, would play a team from Richmond, Virginia.

Similarly, one of the first great national events after the Civil War was the tour of the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869 on the new transcontinental railroad. They went from Washington, D.C. to the West Coast and back, barnstorming as a baseball team. So, baseball quickly became entrenched as America’s favorite game, which it was for almost 100 years.

As factories and cities became more common in the second half of the 1800s, baseball fit our national values. It was a team game, more suited for an urban industrial society where teamwork was more important than pure individualism. In a factory or company, you need to leverage your talents to elevate the company, and the same is true in a team sport. Hitting two home runs only matters if it helps your team win the game.

Q: How did football and basketball develop?

Dyreson: Football was played by the rules of soccer until 1874, when a team of rugby players came down from McGill University in Toronto, Canada, and introduced rugby to Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Early American football would have looked like rugby to most of us. For example, there were no forward passes until the early 1900s.

At the turn of the 20th century, there were widespread concerns about football injuries — especially concussions and fractured skulls — which led to rule changes to make the game safer, like the introduction of the forward pass and the use of helmets. Some of those safety concerns persist around the game to this day.

Basketball, on the other hand, was invented in a physical education class by James Naismith in 1891, in Springfield, Massachusetts. This was the first invention on American soil of a true national pastime, even though Naismith was Canadian.

Q: How did basketball and football become more popular than baseball?

Dyreson: Baseball is thought of nostalgically, and when you go to a baseball game, it has a slower pace than basketball or football. Unlike those sports, it does not rely on a clock. But recently, baseball added a pitching clock. Clocks are coming for baseball as people's attention spans shrink. For both visual reasons and the speed of the game, baseball doesn't translate as well to TV, and most of us would rather watch baseball in person.

Football and basketball are better sports for TV. Football stole the crown from baseball as America's national pastime in the 1950s and 60s, when televisions became ubiquitous.

Basketball’s popularity rose with television, but it exploded in the 1980s as the league was able to leverage its star rivalries, culminating with the formation of the Dream Team at the 1992 Olympics. The Dream Team helped popularize basketball, not just in the U.S., but around the world.

At next year’s Olympic Games, flag football will be played for the first time. This is a clear attempt by the National Football League to imitate the success of the Dream Team and spread American football around the globe. American football is not frequently played in other countries, however, and basketball was already played around the world in 1992.

Q: How has the relationship between sports and gambling changed over time in the U.S.?

Dyreson: Three activities — gambling, drinking and sport — have been linked for many centuries. When societies evolved and people had time to relax and party, they often did it by consuming alcoholic beverages, watching sporting events and gambling on those sporting events.

In the 19th century, sports were so corrupt due to gambling that part of the design of baseball was to eliminate gambling. This was done to appeal to middle class families who have more money and saw gambling as a vice. In a sense, gambling is the original sin in baseball. And this firewall between baseball and gambling was adopted in basketball and football as well.

After working for a century and a half to keep gambling out of our national pastimes, sports and gambling have been remarried in the span of a decade. Today, gambling is an integral part of the NFL, college football, baseball, basketball and most other sports.

Q: How are sports and politics connected?

Dyreson: Some people want sport and politics to be separate, but sport is inherently political. It always has been. We've used it as a mechanism to train good citizens. Every account of youth sports in American history is about how it will build virtuous and democratic citizens.

Also, we have used sports — and still do — to debate race relations, social class and gender. I think it's an essential language we all can speak when we don't know how to discuss delicate issues in polite conversation.

Sport has been the place where the Civil Rights movement flourished for African Americans in our society, where they've been able to demonstrate equality with whites and change attitudes towards race. Arguably, Jackie Robinson is one of the most important figures in the Civil Rights movement. He was just a second baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers, but he debuted before much of American society was integrated, and his excellence changed people’s minds.

Sports are a really important communal building ground, as well as a place for disputations and arguments.

It is inarguable that sports have been a part of the fabric of this country since its inception. In early July, 1776, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail and suggested that sports should be part of Independence celebrations for centuries.

Adams wrote, "I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."