Evolving in an urban landscape, professional baseball attracted a dedicated fan base among the inhabitants of major cities, including ethnic and racial minorities, for whom the game was a vehicle for assimilation. But to what extent were these groups welcomed within the world of baseball, and what effect did their integration--or, as in the case of African Americans, their ultimate inability to integrate--have on the culture of a pastime that had recently become a national obsession? How did their mutual striving for acceptance affect relations between these minorities? (In deep and long-lasting ways, as it turns out.)

This book provides a carefully considered portrait of baseball as both a sporting profession--one with quick-changing rules and roles--and as an institution that reinforced popular ideas about cultural identity, masculinity and American exceptionalism.