Joy in Mudville: Essays on Baseball and American Life (review)

Historian and baseball enthusiast John B. Wiseman has brought together a fine collection of essays, personal reflections, and interviews that provide a history of the game of baseball, as well as a reminder of why it has remained popular despite its many setbacks. In fact, one of the great joys of this collection is the candid treatment of the social, financial, and other problems faced by the leagues, the various teams, and individual players. Far from a romantic paean to the national pastime, Joy in Mudville provides astute criticism as well as careful analysis, sure to be of interest to both the casual reader as well as academic historians, to say nothing of baseball's devoted fans.

Organized so that the reader can follow baseball's development from its early years to the contemporary era, the single unifying theme of the collection is "baseball as Americana," exploring how baseball has served as a marker for the larger American society. Parts I and II, "Baseball's Rise and a Cast of Characters" and "Beyond the Majors," provide a thoughtful balance between the history of the sport and focused attention on specific players. In both cases, the essays connect the game of baseball to American culture at large. Even if at times these essays overlap in subject matter, such occurrences are a welcome reminder that players and events can be read in different contexts. More importantly, these essays include discussions of groundskeepers, radio broadcasters, and leagues (such as the West Virginia Coalfield and Negro National League), all of which help remind the reader just how enmeshed baseball was in the daily lives of various communities, as well as how the development of the game depended on more than just the players and fans. Ultimately, as Peter Morris persuasively argues in his contribution, baseball is America's game precisely because America as a whole shaped its development; in both its style of play and its history, baseball is a truly democratic endeavor.

Part III, "Transcending Race," is, in the opinion of this reviewer, the gem of this collection. Bringing together three pieces about Jackie Robinson and one on Minnie Minoso, this section reminds its readers just how important racial integration was to the survival of baseball in an America that witnessed rapidly changing racial demographics and significant social upheaval over questions of racial equality. Sandwiched between excellent essays on Robinson and Minoso are a pair of interviews by Ted Patterson, one with Jackie Robinson, and the other with Robinson's teammate and friend, Carl Erskine. Previously unpublished, these interviews provide an important personal dimension to "baseball's great experiment" and remind readers that the participants in this experiment were friends and teammates, and not just actors on a national political stage. Further, the Robinson interview is followed by Robinson's speech, transcribed for this collection, upon being named Sport Magazine's athlete of the past twenty-five years in 1971. In both his interview and his speech, Robinson shows both his superb character as well as his commitment to social justice; such honest assessment from one of the game's greatest players reminds the reader how far we as a nation have come, as well as how far we have yet to go. These pieces are, in a word, invaluable.

Parts IV and V, "Those Damn Yankees and the Rebellious Curt Flood" and "The Glory Years in Baltimore and the Game's Decline," finish out this collection with histories of two of the game's great franchises, the New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles, during their respective periods of dominance. The histories of these two storied franchises include discussions of their decline, as well as the decline of baseball generally—a sport now in competition with football and basketball for attention from Americans. Though the reasons for the teams' declines differ, the basic argument is the same: the game of baseball is one of ups and downs, where franchises always have a chance...