Baseball and Cultural Heritage

Book excerpt: The influence of baseball heritage in society and culture Baseball’s past has been lauded, romanticized, and idealized, and much has been written about both the sport and its history. This is the first volume to explore the understudied side of baseball—how its heritage is understood, interpreted, commodified, and performed for various purposes today. These essays reveal how baseball’s heritage can be a source of great enjoyment and inspiration, tracing its influence on constructed environments, such as stadiums and monuments, and food and popular culture. The contributors discuss how its heritage can be used to address social, political, and economic aims and agendas and can reveal tensions about whose past is remembered and whose is laid aside. Contributors address race and racism in the sport, representations of women in baseball, ballparks as repositories for baseball’s heritage, and the role of museums in generating the game’s heritage narrative. Providing perspectives on the social impact and influence of baseball in the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, the Caribbean, and the United Kingdom, Baseball and Cultural Heritage shows how the performance of baseball heritage can reflect the culture and heritage of a nation. A volume in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel