from web site
Butchers, typesetters, draymen, bricklayers, and even clergymen organized baseball clubs. So did Irish Americans, German Americans, and African Americans. Did you see this? nourished and deepened city identities. "If we are ahead of the huge city [New york city] in absolutely nothing else," crowed the Brooklyn Eagle as early as 1862, "we can beat her in baseball." Fans invested their emotions in their expert representative nines.
Louis (Missouri) Brown Stockings. "Pals declined to acknowledge buddies, enthusiasts became separated, and organization was suspended." Even in the late 20th century, in an age more offered to cynicism, the successes and failures of professional teams continued to stimulate strong feelings among local citizens. For example, throughout the 1990s, after having actually experienced city decay and demoralization in the previous 2 decades, Cleveland experienced a terrific civic revival fueled in part by the success of the Indians baseball group.
The New York Yankees, who in the very first half of the 20th century were the essential representatives of the huge city, of the East, of urban America with its elegance, and of ethnic and spiritual heterogeneity, became associated with supernal success, while the St. Louis Cardinals emerged as the ultimate champs of the Midwest, of villages and the farms, of rural America with its simplicity, rusticity, and old-stock Protestant homogeneity.
To those toiling on assembly lines or sitting at their desks in corporate administrations, Ruth embodied America's continuing faith in upward social mobility. His mighty house runs supplied brilliant proof that men stayed masters of their own destinies and that they might still increase from mean, repulsive starts to fame and fortune.