The Rise of Sports in New Orleans, 1850-1900 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS353 Whatever the book's interpretive deficiencies, they don't essentially lessen its value. What Ames presents is a political chronicle uniquely rich in material and implicit suggestion about the values of moderate Jeffersonians and Anti-Jacksonians who clung to the belief that democracy and natural aristocracy were compatible concepts. David Grimsted University of Maryland The Rise of Sports in New Orleans, 1850-1900. By Dale A. Somers. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. Pp. xiv, 320. $10.95.) Before 1850 organized athletic activity in New Orleans was largely limited to such upper-class amusements as horse racing, yachting, cricket, and hunt clubs, monopolized by those who had the time and wealth for such "conspicuous leisure." During the next fifty years participation in city sports grew increasingly democratic as rich and poor, white and black alike, began to occupy their idle hours with such diversions as baseball, bowling, cycling, billiards, roller skating, tennis, golf, and football. During the same period sports grew increasingly professionalized and promoters developed spectator sports into a new form of big business. New Orleans became the turf capital of the South and, for a brief time, the boxing mecca of the United States. Toward the end of the period intercollegiate football and professional baseball came to the city. By 1900 organized sports had come to occupy a central role in the recreation and entertainment of New Orleanians. Its evolution is the theme of Dale A. Somers' The Rise of Sports in New Orleans, 1850-1900. Too many studies of sports fall into two unfortunate categories. Some portray athletes as Olympian super-heroes engaged in titanic struggles that give new meaning to the manly virtues of fortitude and fair play. Others tend to dismiss them as overgrown adolescents who might have spent their time more wisely at work or prayer or the thinking of great thoughts. Somers' study, however, defies such simplistic classification . It recaptures much of the excitement of such legendary encounters as the 1854 races between Lexington and Lecomte for American thoroughbred supremacy and the 1892 fight between John L. Sullivan and "Gentleman Jim" Corbett for the heavyweight championship. It recalls the spirit of an impromptu baseball game at a Sunday outing, an afternoon under sail on Lake Pontchartrain. On the other hand, it exposes some of the more venal aspects of athletic competition—paid "ringers," crooked jockeys, victory-at-any-price college football. The end result is a judiciously balanced account of sports and sportsmen during an era of fundamental transition. According to Somers, the evolution of organized sports in New Orleans was closely related to simultaneous developments in the city's 354civil war history demography, economy, ideology, and social priorities. A crowded environment made organized activity mandatory and spectator sports possible. Industrialism expanded leisure time and its regimentation created a need for vicarious fulfillment. The spirit of competition fostered by sports was embraced eagerly in a business cidatel imbued with Darwinian notions of "survival of the fittest." Sports contributed to the liberation of women and offered new opportunities for oppressed minorities, especially the Irish. The study devotes careful attention to the role of Negroes in New Orleans sports. By demonstrating that black athletes competed against whites in many activities until the color line tightened after 1890, Somers has offered convincing support for the Woodward thesis in an area heretofore largely ignored by the Woodwardians . All in all, The Rise of Sports in New Orleans soundly upholds Somers' conviction that sports can provide an excellent mirror to society. In March, shortly after publication of his book, Dale Somers succumbed to cancer in Atlanta. His friends and fellow students of American life will miss this talented, tough-minded young man very much. He has left us with a challenge that cannot be ignored, that professional historians abandon their inane belief "that such a lowbrow topic scarcely merits highbrow consideration." Roger A. Fischer University of Minnesota, Duluth The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 1827-1861. By Ronald P. Formisano. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. Pp. xii, 356. $12.50.) Formisano has written an important book. Skillfully blending descriptive sources with quantitative correlations, he has reached beyond earlier studies to give us a new...