Democracy at the Ballpark , livre ebook

DEMOCRACY AT THE BALLPARK
DEMOCRACY AT THE BALLPARK
SPORT, SPECTATORSHIP, AND POLITICS
THOMAS DAVID BUNTING
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Bunting, Thomas David, author.
Title: Democracy at the ballpark : sport, spectatorship, and politics / Thomas David Bunting, author.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781438485676 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438485683 (ebook)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of Richard C. Post, a good ballplayer and citizen.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 Why Sport Spectatorship Matters
Chapter 2 Communities of Spectatorship and Fandom
Chapter 3 The Politics of Equality and Exclusion at the Ballpark
Chapter 4 From Little League Virtues to Big League Spectacles
Chapter 5 Technology, Sabermetrics, and Democratic Minds
Conclusion: Baseball and Everyday Politics
Notes
Works Cited
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I first want to thank my wife, Ann Sojka. Without her, this project would not exist. She supported me in graduate school, read way too many drafts of these chapters, and helped me believe in myself on many a hopeless day. I hope I have been able to return some of the favor and look forward to our next adventures. Thank you for your courage, intelligence, kindness, and for pushing me to do more. I love you.
I also want to thank the rest of my family. My dad, Dave Bunting, spent countless hours playing baseball with me and came to all of my events near and far, from games, to concerts, races, and beyond. I know you died inside a little when I quit baseball in tenth grade, and I hope this book is sufficient atonement. It would be hard to imagine a more supportive person than my mom, Sue Godbold. I am forever grateful for all of her love, support, and understanding as I went on my ill-advised academic journey. You helped me find a reason even in the seemingly terrible things. Thank you to Val and Mike Krist for bringing me to Tigers games and to Elliot for brightening a difficult year just by being there. I am grateful for my stepparents, Tom Godbold and Ann Bunting, who treat me like their son. I am also thankful for my expanded family, including Janice Kritchevsky, Chris and Ellen Needham, Jasper, Miriam, and the Sojkas, Karole, Paul, Abbie, and Phil.
I have been lucky to have a great group of friends to support me throughout this project as well. Thank you to Joey Costanzo for listening to me try to translate democratic theory into language normal humans use. Thank you to Tyler Klifman for being the best roommate and friend a guy could ever want. I also want to thank John and Ayanda Crispin along with Leah, Olivia, and Noah for giving me a family in graduate school. Thanks to Jacob Ahern, Griffin Bohanon, Andrew Borgman, Keegan Boyle, Marcus Breidinger, Lakin Brown, CJ Holmes, Luke Klifman, Krista McCoy, Chris Reznich, Kareem Seifeldin, Kyle Vaughn, Dave Walsh, Annie Wildfong, Jim Yost, and others for years of friendship and giving me a life outside of academics.
Thank you to my many friends and colleagues who helped at various stages of this project. Thank you especially to Brianne Wolf for being a friend every step of the way during our parallel journeys. Thank you to Meg Rowley for being immediately on board with a project bringing together political theory and baseball. Thank you to Evan Crawford, Sean Dunne, Rob Gingrich, Katelyn Jones, Richard King, Rebecca LeMoine, Michael Promisel, Jeff Rice, Rachel Schwartz, Christine Shea, Ben Toff, and Logan Vidal. Thank you also to the great community of folks over at Bless You Boys on SB Nation who helped rekindle my baseball fandom and supported my writing.
I owe a debt of gratitude to the many great teachers who helped me on my way. Thanks especially to Rick Avramenko for all his help through the years with this project and others. I will never be able to repay the time, energy, and support he gave me. He encouraged me to do the stupid brave thing instead of the boring safe thing, and I will never forget that. Thank you to Daniel Kapust for all of his support and advice through grad school, this publishing process, and for paying me to watch Maple when I was a broke kid. Thank you also to the other great faculty at University of Wisconsin, especially Helen Kinsella, Michele Schwarze, and John Zumbrunnen. Finally, thank you to all the other wonderful teachers who helped shape my academic journey, including Tobin Craig, Ron Dorr, Kristina Eggenberger, Waseem El-Rayes, Folke Lindahl, Sue Nichols, Eric Petrie, and too many others to list.
I will be forever thankful to SUNY Press for giving this project a shot and their constant professionalism and helpful feedback throughout the process. It has been a joy working with SUNY, and they have been invaluable in shaping this book into its final form. Thank you especially to Michael Rinella for his work ushering this project forward. Thank you to Diane Ganeles for all of her work as production editor. Thank you to Michael Campochiaro for marketing help. I owe a great deal of thanks to John Wentworth for copy editing this book and providing the illusion that I am a better writer than I am. And finally, thank you for the work of the anonymous reviewers and their essential feedback.
An early version of chapter 3 originally appeared in the journal Democratic Theory as an article titled “Breaking Barriers and Coded Language.” Thank you to the editors at Democratic Theory for allowing me to re-print portions of that article here, and thank you to their readers for their valuable suggestions.
I am grateful to my many students throughout the years, especially students who took my sports courses at the University of Wisconsin, at Shawnee State, and with KIIS in Greece. Students are what makes this job worthwhile, and the countless conversations in class no doubt shaped the direction that this project ultimately took.
Thank you also to everyone in the discipline who gave me helpful feedback at conferences on different chapters of this project. There are far too many to name, but those conversations and words of encouragement made a difference and justified the airfare.
The final years of this project were marked by loss. While I have dedicated the book to the memory of my grandfather, I want to acknowledge the other loved ones my family lost and to honor the memories of Robert and Cora Joan Bunting, Dick and Beverlee Post, Louise Godbold, Jeff Godbold, Evelyn Kritchevsky, and John Sojka. They are desperately missed and live on in our memories.
Last but never least, thank you to Humphrey and Yanni for being perfect, judgment-free companions as they watched me write this book, occasionally reminding me it might be time to take a walk. You are both good boys, always.
INTRODUCTION
T his project began in 2014, and by the discontented spring of 2020, when colleagues would ask about the project, I would quip that the book made more sense back when we had democracy and baseball. That spring, it looked like the baseball season could be cancelled amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the botched response by an impeached president and administration that demonstrated a constant disregard for both laws and norms. As of this writing in November 2020, we saw the conclusion of a shortened baseball season riddled with indifference toward the health of the players and spectators. Joe Biden is President-elect, yet President Trump and many of his Republican colleagues refuse to acknowledge this defeat. It seems we do have baseball and democracy, each flawed and facing uncertain futures.
The main argument that I advance in this book is that our politics and our everyday pastimes are not separate. It should not be surprising, then, that both of these institutions, baseball and American politics, face similar problems. Wealthy baseball owners and elite politicians (who often receive donations from said owners) view their power as a means to wealth and more power. However, American politics is not primarily about leaders, just as baseball is not primarily about owners. Nearly 160 million people voted in 2020, and baseball derives its meaning far more from fans than owners, or even players. Nobody is compelled to follow baseball—they do so freely. Consequently, America’s pastime is democratic, shaped by the people and not the few. However, saying that baseball is democratic does not necessarily mean that baseball is always good or healthy for democratic life. If, in baseball, democracy shines its clearest, we must admit that we do not always like what we see shining.
To understand a concept like democracy at the ballpark, it is imperative to keep these tensions in mind. Democracy is fundamentally about possibility. As a regime built on equality and liberty, democracy is a goal and a promise that is often unrealized. The history of American democracy is largely a history of failing to live up to the founding ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Inherent in the democratic world is the possibility that democracy undermines itself, whether through the tyranny of the majority or the selection of a populist or authoritarian leader. 1 True moments of democracy can be rare, and people