A Brief Taxonomy of Sports that Were Not Quite American National Pastimes: Fads and Flashes-in-the-Pan, Nationwide and Regional Pastimes, the Pastimes of Other Nations, and Pan-National Pastimes

Abstract

Several sports have served as American national pastimes over the course of the nation's history. Horse racing, hunting, prize fighting, baseball, football, and basketball have waxed and waned in a long series of debates over what constitutes ‘true' national pastimes. Unlike some nations that have declared national pastimes by governmental fiat, US national games emerge from organic and sometimes chaotic cultural processes. An alternative history of sports that have become popular and widespread national habits but have not quite become national pastimes sheds important light on what national pastimes are and how they have developed in American history. A variety of pretenders to the title of national pastime have come and gone. These challengers can be categorised as fads and flashes-in-the-pan, nationwide and regional pastimes, the pastimes of other nations, and pan-national pastimes. An examination of why they have failed to become US national pastimes reveals important clues about why other sports have succeeded in that endeavour.

Keywords::

• national pastimes
• American identities
• American exceptionalism
• nationalism
• alternative histories

Notes

^1. While the prose and organisation of this essay – and the resulting academic brickbats for offering them – belong to Mark Dyreson, the intellectual debates that sparked it as well as some of the research are the product of a collaboration with the esteemed co-editor, Jaime Schultz, and our excellent group of graduate students enrolled in our 2012 National Pastimes Seminar at Pennsylvania State University, Dunja Antunovic, Adam Berg, Colleen English, Justine Kaempfer, Andrew Linden, Thomas Rorke.

In our efforts to delineate the concept we are aware that we have narrowed our analysis in ways that privilege what have been broadly labelled as modern sports and that we have neglected a host of other historic pastimes. For an essay that examines the dangers of such myopia, in particular for privileging men's pastimes in the construction of modern sport see Dyreson, ‘Sporting and Leisure Activities in the American Mexican Colonies of Texas’, 269–84.

^2.Herman, ‘Hunting and American Identity’, Riess, ‘The Cyclical History of Horse Racing’, and Roberts and Smith, ‘The Report of My Death’.

^3.Grundy, Nelson, and Dyreson, ‘The Emergence of Basketball as an American National Pastime’.

^4.Oriad, ‘Chronicle of a (Football) Death’, See also, Smith, ‘American Football’.

^5.Nathan, ‘Baseball as the National Pastime’, For an erudite articulation of baseball as the nation's central national pastime see White, Creating the National Pastime.

^6.Hall, ‘What Is This “Black” in Black Popular Culture?’, 21–33.

^7. In its entry on ‘pastime' The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes the term first appeared in the late fifteenth century, originating from French. Pastimes referred to diversions of all sorts, particularly those that had a broad common appeal. The OED defines pastime as: ‘a. A diversion or recreation which serves to pass the time agreeably; an activity done for pleasure rather than work; a hobby; a sport, a game. Also: a practice commonly indulged in…. b. As a mass noun: recreation, amusement, entertainment (U.S. later use)'. www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/138603, accessed May 5, 2013.

^8.Cronin, Sport and Nationalism in Ireland.

^9.Gallico, A Farewell to Sport, 325. For an effort to define a time frame for the slow evolution of basketball into a national pastime see Grundy, Nelson, and Dyreson, ‘The Emergence of Basketball as an American National Pastime’.

^10. On baseball's ‘golden age' and the Great Depression see Alexander, Breaking the Slump; Crepeau, Baseball: America's Diamond Mind; Seymour, Baseball: The Golden Age; and Voight, American Baseball.

^11. For overviews of the Great Depression's impact on American culture see Kennedy, The Great Depression; Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark; Watkins, The Hungry Years.

^12.Dyreson et al., ‘American Sport in the 1930s’.

^13. The archives of the US government contain thousands of documents relating to the role of miniature golf in resuscitating the American economy in the 1930s. See Box 851 and Box 852, Records of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, General Records of the Department of Commerce, Record Group 151, National Archives and Record Administration II, College Park, Maryland (Hereafter NACP).

^14. Memorandum from Eric T. King, Chief of the Specialties Division, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, United States Department of Commerce, Washington, DC, to T.O. Klath, American Commercial Attaché, Stockholm, Sweden, November 7, 1930; File–Golf, Box 851, Records of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, General Records of the Department of Commerce, Record Group 151, NACP.

^15. ‘Tom Thumb Golf’, The Nation, August 27, 1930, 216.

^16. Among the many articles on the miniature golf craze see, especially, ‘Bobby Joneses of Vacant-Lot Golf Clubs’, Literary Digest, August 23, 1930, 32–4; ‘Half-Pint Golf’, Outlook, August 27, 1930, 656; ‘In Honor of a Short One’, Commonweal, August 27, 1930, 414; M. Evans, ‘Lilliput Putters’, Saturday Evening Post, September 1930, 27; ‘Miniature Golf Helps Many Kinds of Business’, Business Week, September 1930, 9; Grantland Rice, ‘Small Game Hunters’, Collier's, September 20, 1930, 19; George Trevor, ‘Battle of Lilliput’, Outlook, October 1, 1930, 194; J.F. Gelders, ‘That Giant, Miniature Golf’, American Review of Reviews, November 1930, 77–78; ‘Midget or Colossus?’ Survey, November 15, 1930, 197; ‘Ever Crazier Hazards on the Tom Thumb Links’, Literary Digest, January 24, 1931, 37; ‘Golf at the Fireside’, Literary Digest, January 10, 1931, 35; Sol Metzger, ‘Indoor Golf’, Country Life, March 1931, 68; C.F. Seibert, ‘Miniature Golf of the Playgrounds’, Recreation, March 1931, 662; and ‘All Thrills of Golf in a Twenty-Five-Foot Ring’, Popular Mechanics, April 1931, 533.

^17.Margolies, Garfinkel, and Reidelbach, John Margolies's Miniature Golf.

^18. Skeptics who quickly pronounced the miniature golf craze dead included, ‘Dubious Evidences of Prosperity’, Banker's Magazine, December 1930, 802; Elmer Davis, ‘Miniature Golf to the Rescue’, Harper's, December 1930, 4–14; Elmer Davis, ‘Happy Days Will Come Again’, Harper's October 1931, 513–522; John R. Tunis, ‘Changing Trends in Sport’, Harper's December 1934, 75–86.

^19.Gallico, A Farewell to Sport. The structure and methods of this collection of essays on American national pastimes are, in part, inspired by Gallico's fascinating work.

^20.Herman, ‘Hunting and American Identity’, Riess, ‘The Cyclical History of Horse Racing’, Roberts and Smith, ‘“The Report of My Death”’, Nathan, ‘Baseball as the National Pastime’, Smith, ‘American Football’, Oriad, ‘Chronicle of a (Football) Death’, and Grundy, Nelson, and Dyreson, ‘The Emergence of Basketball as an American National Pastime’.

^21. In addition to the essays in this collection on specific sports, the essays on broader dimensions of national pastimes attempt to wrestle with complicated processes of national pastimes and the construction of national identities. Dyreson, ‘American National Pastimes’, Schultz and Linden, ‘From Ladies Days to Women's Initiatives’, Wiggins, ‘Black Athletes in White Men's Games’, Fields, ‘Legislating Sport’, Andrews, Bustad, and Clevenger, ‘National Sporting Pastimes’.

^22. Margolies, Garfinkel, and Reidelbach, John Margolies's Miniature Golf.

^23. Some of the first American historians of sport chronicled the importance of these contests, though later scholars have mainly ignored them. Paxson, ‘The Rise of Sport’; and Betts, ‘The Technological Revolution’.

^24.Buchanan, Black Life on the Mississippi; and Patterson, The Great American Steamboat Race.

^25.Ross, The Willing Servant.

^26. ‘Beating the Lightning Train’, New York Times, January 23, 1871; BakerSport in the Western World, 157–8. On the wealthy elite as sporting trendsetters see Mrozek's classic, Sport and American Mentality.

^27.Berliner, Airplane Race.

^28.Paxson, ‘The Rise of Sport’.

^29.Rinehart, Inline Skating.

^30. Justin Pope, ‘Ultimate Frisbee Sheds its Hippie Roots, Attracts Serious Athletes’, Gaffney (South Carolina) Ledger, June 1, 2005. For a brief history of Frisbee fad see Malafronte and Johnson, The Complete Book of Frisbee.

^31.Herman, ‘Hunting and American Identity’; Herman, Hunting and the American Imagination.

^32. Merritt Ashmore, ‘Set Your Hook for the New National Pastime’, St. Petersburg (Florida) Evening Independent, May 29, 1985.

^33. For an overview of the sport's history see Hagen, A History of American Fishing.

^34.Herman, ‘Hunting and American Identity’, Herman, Hunting and the American Imagination.

^35.Hurley, Diners, Bowling Alleys and Trailer Parks.

^36. Gilbert Bailey, ‘20,000,000 Keglers’, New York Times Sunday Magazine, April 3, 1949.

^37.Cozens and Stumpf, Sports in American Life, 38.

^38. The International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame's website insists that bowling is the most popular participant sport not only in the USA but also in the world. www.bowlingmuseum.com. Accessed October 26, 2012.

^39. Cindy Stooksbury Guier, ‘Bowling Boasts Lengthy History as Popular Pastime’, Amusement Business, May 18, 1998, 20.

^40.Putnam, Bowling Alone. For a reconsideration of Putnam's thesis see Dyreson, ‘Maybe It's Better to Bowl Alone’.

^41. Volleyball awaits a comprehensive and analytical scholarly history. A few texts pitched at juvenile audiences have been published, as well as some histories by institutional promoters and an obscure biography of the game's inventor, William Morgan. See Sherrow, Volleyball; Smale, Volleyball; Fédération Internationale de Volleyball, 100 years of Global Link; and Dearing, The Untold Story of William G. Morgan.

^42. Peter Carbonara, Nick Pachetti, and Rob Turner, ‘All-Star Investors’, Money, September 2000, 66–80; Richard Baguley and Dave Johnson, ‘Digital Photo Superguide’, PC World, January 2006, 84–94; Thomas Geier, ‘Poll Position’, US News & World Report, October 28, 1996, 8; Ellen Goodman, ‘“Three Strikes” Should Apply to Baseball, Not Crime’, Chicago Tribune, March 28, 1994; J.N. Eller, ‘Kicking Congress as a National Pastime’, America, January 18, 1964, 70; ‘National Pastime, Looking over Cars’, Life, February 1, 1954,16–17; ‘Christmas Shopping–A National Pastime’, Current Opinion, December 1914, 439; ‘Marbles Upset a Town’, Chicago Tribune, May 30, 1907.

^43.Whitehill, Games.

^44.Orbanes, Monopoly.

^45.Anderson, Imagined Communities.

^46. J.F. Wilkinson, ‘The Play-Money Game That Made Millions’, Sports Illustrated, December 2, 1963, 54–57. Quotations from page 54.

^47. ‘The 100 Greatest Inventions: Recreation & Leisure’, Popular Science, June 1999, 15–19. Monopoly is listed on page 19. Also on the list were skis, bicycles, athletic footwear, cameras, tennis rackets and golf.

^48.Block, Baseball Before We Knew It; Goldstein, Playing For Keeps; and Kirsch, The Creation of American Team Sports.

^49. For an argument that it has already crossed that threshold see Andrews, Bustad and Clevenger, ‘National Sporting Pastimes’.

^50. ‘National Sport’,  <  www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_sport>. Accessed March 13, 2012.

^51. For histories of American rodeo see Fredriksson, American Rodeo; and LeCompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo.

^52.2011 PRCA Media Guide.  < www.prorodeo.com/media/2011/introduction.pdf##>. Accessed March 13, 2012.

^53.Beekman, NASCAR Nation; and Steve Odland, ‘NASCAR's Back!' Forbes Magazine, February 27, 2012, < http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveodland/2012/02/27/nascars-back/>. Accessed November 5, 2013.

^54.Ownby, ‘Manhood, Memory, and White Men's Sports’; Pierce, Real NASCAR; and Beekman, NASCAR Nation.

^55. Ferguson, Empire, xxiii. Ferguson's list of nine includes:

• The English language,

• English forms of land tenure,

• Scottish and English banking,

• The Common Law,

• Protestantism,

• Team sports,

• The limited or ‘nightwatchman’ state,

• Representative assemblies,

• The idea of liberty.

^56. We are indebted to the sports historian John Nauright for bringing this point home forcefully in at the ‘The Lives (and Deaths) of American National Pastimes’ Workshop, October 12–13, 2012, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.

^57.Goldstein, Playing For Keeps; and Kirsch, The Creation of American Team Sports.

^58. Watterson, College Football; Oriard, King Football; Oriard, Reading Football; and Smith, Sports and Freedom.

^59.Collins, ‘Unexceptional Exceptionalism’.

^60.Adair and Vamplew, Sport in Australian History; Birely, Land of Sport and Glory; Brailsford, Sport and Society; Holt, Sport and the British; Jarvie and Walker, Scottish Sport; Johnes, Sport in Wales; Mason, Sport in Britain; Nauright, Sport, Culture, and Identities in South Africa; Tranter, Sport, Economy, and Society in Britain, 1750–1914.

^61.Foer, How Soccer Explains the World; Markovits and Hellerman, Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism; and Szymanski and Zimbalist, National Pastime.

^62. Bruce Kelley and Carl Carchia, ‘Hey, Data DataSwing!: The Hidden Demographics of Youth Sports’, ESPN: The Magazine, July 11, 2013, < http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/9469252/hidden-demographics-youth-sports-espn-magazine>. Accessed November 6, 2013.

^63. Soccer history and current development. Murray, The World's Game; Foer, How Soccer Explains the World; and Wangerin, Soccer in a Football World.

^64.Oriard, Brand NFL; and Smith, Play-by-Play.

^65. F.C. Lane ‘Ice Hockey, The King of Winter Sports’, Baseball Magazine, February 1912, 6–13.

^66. On the role of US franchises in the rise of professional hockey see Wong, Lords of the Rinks. On hockey and Canadian identity see Buma, Refereeing Identity; Dryden and MacGregor, Home Game; Dowbiggin, The Meaning of Puck; Gruneau and Whitson, Hockey Night in Canada; Holman, Canada's Game; Howell, Blood, Sweat, and Cheers; Metcalfe, Canada Learns to Play; and Robidoux, Stickhandling through the Margins.

^67. The juvenile literature, including a graphic book, reveals the enduring depth of nationalistic resonance of the event in contemporary American culture. Joeming, Miracle on Ice; and Pierce, Miracle on Ice.

^68.Fisher, Lacrosse, quotation from page 26.

^69. Robert F. Kelley, ‘Sports of the Times’, New York Times, December 17, 1929.

^70. Albert R. Karr, ‘Kids Spark Lacrosse Boom’, The Wall Street Journal, May 29, 1985; Elmer Loetz, ‘The Original National Pastime’, The Buffalo News, March 13, 1994; Chris Ballard, ‘Lax To The Max’, Sports Illustrated, June 7, 2004, 21; ‘High School Participation Rates’, < http://www.laxpower.com/common/ParticipationRates2012.php>. Accessed September 26, 2012.

^71.Hofmann, Turnen and Sport.

^72.Allen, The Culture and Sport of Skiing; and Coleman, Ski Style.

^73. The historical roots of the Dutch passion for speed skating remain to be uncovered by historians. Stokvis, ‘Belgium and the Netherlands’, 353. On the nineteenth-century American craze see Lambert and the National Museum of History and Technology, The American Skating Mania.

^74.Heinrich, Why We Run.

^75. For a broad view of the historical development of sports see Guttmann, Sports.

^76. For an interesting discussion of that debate see Martell, The Sociology of Globalization.

^77.Dyreson, ‘Globalizing the Nation-Making Process’; Giulianotti and Robertson, Globalization and Sport; Guttmann, Games and Empires; Horne, Sport in Consumer Culture; Keys, Globalizing Sport; Mangan, The Games Ethic and Imperialism; and Maguire, Global Sport.

^78.Gorn, The Manly Art; Griffin, Blood Sport; Manning, Hunters and Poachers; Struna, People of Prowess; and Vamplew, The Turf.

^79.Kirsch, Golf in America; Baltzell, Sporting Gentlemen; and Dear, The America's Cup.

^80.D'Antonio, A Full Cup.

^81.Herlihy, Bicycle; Marks, Bicycles, Bangs, and Bloomers; Nye, Hearts of Lions; and Ritchie, Bicycle Racing.

^82.Armstrong and Jenkins, It's Not about the Bike, 51.

^83. The USA has won 767 track and field medals to 194 for Great Britain and 193 for the former Soviet Union. www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_Summer_Olympics. Accessed October 30, 2013.

^84. The USA has won 655 swimming and diving medals to 190 for Australia and 99 for the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany). www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swimming_at_the_Summer_Olympics##Nations, accessed October 30, 2013; www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_at_the_Summer_Olympics, accessed October 30, 2013.

^85.Dyreson, Making the American Team; and Dyreson, Crafting Patriotism for Global Domination.

^86.Bale, Running Cultures; and Bale and Sang, Kenyan Running.

^87.Dyreson, ‘Imperial “Deep Play”’.

^88.Phillips, Swimming Australia.

^89.Wheaton, Understanding Lifestyle Sports.

^90. Savre, Saint-Martin, and Terret, ‘From Marin County's Seventies Clunker to the Durango World Championship 1990’; and Dyreson, ‘World Harmony or an Athletic “Clash of Civilizations?”’

^91. , ‘The Republic of Consumption at the Olympic Games’; Dyreson, ‘Crafting Patriotism–Meditations on “Californication” and other Trends’.

^92.Dyreson, ‘The Republic of Consumption at the Olympic Games’; Savre, Saint-Martin, and Terret, ‘From Marin County's Seventies Clunker to the Durango World Championship 1990’.

^93.Watts, The Magic Kingdom; May, Golden State, Golden Youth; Osgerby, Playboys in Paradise; Starr, Golden Dreams; Starr, Coast of Dreams.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jaime Schultz

Jaime Schultz is an assistant professor in the Departments of Kinesiology and Women's Studies at the Pennsylvania State University.

Dunja Antunovic

Dunja Antunovic is a doctoral student in the College of Communications at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research examines the relationship between gender, sport and media.

Adam Berg

Adam Berg is a doctoral student in the Department of Kinesiology at the Pennsylvania State University. His research explores philosophical and historical dimensions of sport, with particular attention to ethical theories and the Winter Olympics.

Justine Kaempfer

Justine Kaempfer is a master's student in the Department of Kinesiology at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research concentrates on the intersection of sport and public history.

Andrew D. Linden

Andrew D. Linden is a doctoral student in the Department of Kinesiology at the Pennsylvania State University. His research explores sport and social politics with an emphasis on American football in the twentieth century.

Thomas Rorke

Thomas Rorke is a doctoral student in the Department of Kinesiology at the Pennsylvania State University. His research explores various aspects of the transnational migration of Anglo-American sporting traditions.

Colleen English

Colleen English is a doctoral student in the Department of Kinesiology at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research explores philosophical and historical dimensions of sport, with particular attention to gender issues.

Mark Dyreson

Mark Dyreson is a professor of kinesiology and an affiliate professor of history at the Pennsylvania State University.