Communications and Media

The term baby boomers was only a label used to refer to a particular generation. But as the usage of the term grew prominent, it already served as a historical landmark which guides people in analyzing the economic, political, and social trends during that point in history.

This paper will be subdivided into several discussions in order to address the different issues and questions that must be incorporated. In the end, the ideas will be tied into a coherent whole to paint you a picture of how the baby boomers worked (knowingly or not) to influence the American sport baseball past, present and future.

Significance of the Baby Boomers
Before we can even assess the contribution of the boomers to sportsparticularly that of baseballit is a must to first establish the significance of their generation in relation to the whole of America. This generation is comprised of people who were born between year 1946 and 1961, the product of post-World War II servicemen and women returning to civilian life (Sage Publications). According to one definition, In the 1990s, approximately 76 million people in the United States were born in the baby boom years, representing approximately 29 of the countrys population. (Answer.com) And having 29 of your population in the same age group makes them a priority target of advertisers and businessmen, because of the magnitude of returns once this market is catered to.

Besides benefiting businesses, this big a population will definitely have an effect on the different aspects of a country. As mentioned above, the baby boomers generation has an immense influence on the political, economic and social trends of the country. One of the most obvious effects of this generation is the number of people who will retire or shift careers upon reaching retirement age. For companies, this will mean that they will divert company assets to providing healthcare services and pension to the retirees. In relation to this nearing retirement, obviously the boomers will have more time to focus on their extracurricular activities or hobbies. And watching baseball leagues are among the top ranked hobbies among this generationespecially among men.

The Role of the Sport
Whether motivated by a shared desire to participate in competitive physical activities or enticed by the opportunity to root for a favorite team or athlete, people from a wide range of social groups are attracted to sport. In fact, one of sports most powerful features is its potential to draw people together and to express their common sentiments, interests, and emotions. For this reason, it is commonly assumed that sport contributes to social integration and community building. (Schimmel)

Like a tradition or some national holiday, sports have a special way of keeping a society intact. In this particular instance, we are talking about baseball. And luckily, there is something very American about baseball that when we hear about it, people already start to gather and cheer for their favorite teams while wearing uniforms or the paraphernalia of that particular team. Playing baseball is deeply embedded in the culture of Americans, that there would exist a void in the American way of life if the sport will suddenly disappear.

The reason why people are deeply engrossed with sports, baseball in particular, is because of the three-pronged benefit it poses. According to Kimberly S. Schimmel, these are the three reasons why people are attracted to sports

The first is by the creation of a distinct sport-based community, in some ways separate from the other groups that people belong to, but nonetheless a meaningful part of their everyday lives
The second way that sport contributes to community is by its ability to promote a particular place and to foster a sense of solidarity based on territory at local, national, and even global levels.

The third way that sport contributes to community is closely connected to the secondthe belief that sport contributes to community regeneration, especially in urban communities where sport is believed to regenerate a sense of civic pride, contribute to the health and safety of the community, and provide financial benefits for area residents.

Another thing is that it is important to analyze how rooting for a particular team which represents your city becomes significant in forming your self identity. Becoming a fan of the team representing your city identifies you as a proud member of that community. Also, the interactions with the team you are rooting for and the rest of the teams in MLB constructs a sense of shared history for community members and maintains the community as an active part of individuals identities (Schimmel). Therefore their sense of immediate community is considered as that of the team which a person is supportingwhile the bigger community which encompasses all teams is the MLB community.

But if you think these are the only cultural differences which are bridged by baseball, think again. While inter-team communities are great examples of how different communities come together for a similar interest, the different generations themselves are being united in every game. When there is a game, the audience is composed by people from boomer generation, Generation X and Y. So people come together not only in terms of the team they support but also according to what generation they represent.

Counter-history
But, going back to history, we can see that baseball played a far greater role than simply entertaining millions of people in America. It has much greater significance than just taking a spot of the TV schedule or keeping the children busy during summer time baseball has played important roles in indoctrinating working-class men into industrial society and, by excluding women and people of color for many decades, reaffirming the dominance of white middle-class men. Even after racial barriers fell, baseball remained a contested site in which minority players continued to have to prove their worth and their manhood by complying with white standards.(Santo)

While this sounds like a lecture of masculine studies, this passage can be used in order to prove the influence of the boomer generation in the sport of baseball. We all know that the boomers were born to veterans and that they are confined to the strict standards of their veteran parents. We can see during this time that there was a greater effort in achieving league titles and in winning against every participating team in the league. Due to the hard work and perseverance that were the prevailing ideologies among boomers, baseball indeed became a test of manliness as players work hard and train hard for each game.

The veterans were able to impose the masculine ideology on the boomer generation (hence, because of marital misunderstandings, there was also an increase in divorce rate during both generations) and sexism was boosted. Partly, the boomers were the ones who reinforced the notion that baseball is a man game because they were also reared believing in a patriarchal ideology.

The Individualist Baseball Player
Baseball was supposedly a team sport but because of different reasons, baseball players were led to prove their manhood less through teamwork than through the attainment of individual records. (Santo)

It was believed that this individualistic stance proved better and faster in helping baseball players market themselves and play in better teams or higher leagues. Somehow, the boomer ideology of being individualistic rather than working as a team rubbed off on the baseball leagues for quite a while. It might be an indirect influence of the boomer generation but does have enough warrant. In fact, the marriage status of baseball players in the boomer generationmight also be useful in analyzing why players were rooting for individual glory.

Tara Rodgers explains this using the case of Mark McGwire saying that McGwire is a home run king who participates in psychotherapy to cope with the trauma of his divorce, and whose androstenedione-enhanced body is frequently problematized for being as much a product of medical science as old-fashioned hard work (Santo)

Conflicts in the boomer household, such as patriarchal ideologies going against the female insistence of control, requires the baby boomers to release the emotional stress and frustration into another activity lest they want to suffer psychologicallymentally. And as many boomers enter the world of baseball, they have to deal with emotional stress by getting prescription drugs such as androstenedione (a steroid), which boosts the physical performance of the players. It was, of course, illegal for athletes to use steroid to enhance their performance but it was then prescribed for a different purpose and was alloweduntil sports officials discovered the anomaly and banned it. It has long been banned but since the drug created baseball superstars like Mark McGuire, therefore it again paved the way for another boomer influence on the sport.

Culture of Individualism among Fans and the Notion of Baseball Community
According to Alexis de Tocqueville, individualism is an ideology which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends (Tocqueville). It is made clear in this statement that the person who aims to isolate himself would still withdraw to another social circle. The culture of individualism should not halt people from realizing that individualism in itself pushes people to create communities.

Not all people may be interested in baseball. So those who do know the sport will be pushed to look for other people who are also interested in that sport, therefore creating a faction between a nation of baseball lovers and non-lovers. In the same manner, having different teams in the baseball league breaks up the bigger community into smaller ones which then pushes for the creation of team communities. Thought it is a smaller circle, it is still a community, nevertheless.

While individualism led people to find their own beliefs within themselves, this isolation was at the same time compatible with conformity , because people are constantly looking for affirmation of those beliefs in the people around them (Waters).

In relation to baseball, while baseball fanatics are being isolated from the rest of the population who do not have interest in the sport, they are continually searching for affirmation from those who have similar interest on it, and are therefore creating a special community within that circle of baseball fans. Moreover, this leads to more specialized factions, as the baseball community is further divided into different teams and the supporters of each. Therefore, if you will establish a notion of community and citizenship within this particular sport, then it is broken into the different participants of the MLB or Major League Baseball. While they are united under one nation, when it comes to baseball, New York (Yankees) goes against Boston (Red Sox). This example reinforces Tocquevilles assumption that individualism inevitable still leads to conformity in one way or another.

Our Pluralistic and Multi-cultural Heritage
 One good analysis of the effects of pluralism on the concept of national community (in relation to Bostons book) is that it all the more encouraged the proliferation of cultural pluralism---but still united them under one common interest, which is the love for baseball. Cultural pluralism in baseball exists not only within the baseball players themselves but also extends to those who are watching the games at the benches and at their respective homes.

Baseball fans come from all walks of life, from different ethnic origins, from, different economic classes. Business executives watch the same games that middle wage earners watch. Seats may vary but it is still the same game, anyway. Americans, African-Americans, Blacks, Asians, all of them convene in the same stadium to support a particular team they are rooting for. The years of discrimination and apartheid are over and the barriers between people from different ethnic origins are now softenedif not at all abolished. It might be hard to erase discrimination and racism but at least a black man can now sit beside a white man during a game.

There is no question of race of class or social status. There are no particular baseball patrons who can claim they alone sustain the sport because it is a collective effort of the hybrid population of baseball fans. And speaking of hybrid, the players themselves are a hybrid population. Gone are the days when baseball leagues are all composed of white American players. In fact, gifted Asians are already penetrating the major leagues such as Ichiro Suzuki who is 36-year old Japanese playing for Seattle Mariners. The same is true with Kurt Suzuki who plays for Oakland Athletics. Nowadays, if you have the capability to play in the major leagues, the officials would not bother to ask about your nationality anymore.

Somehow, we become accustomed to seeing our baseball leagues being seasoned with the players from different cultural backgrounds. It helped the American society become more open-minded about multi-culturalism since this land is in fact a melting pot of cultures. It is hardly one mans own land because America is constituted by many migrants and more displaced natives. And baseball can indeed be a good venue to promote a sense of multi-culturalism and lessen the number of xenophobics in the land.

Conclusion
The game of baseball is the national past time of the United States (Leung). As the boomers retire from their careers, they divert their attention to other activities and hobbies. And sports will definitely cater to this freed-up time that the baby boomers have. Now they could simply attend all the major baseball leagues they ever wanted to watch or just sit back and relax in front of the TV. Inevitably, the sport will have to make sure that they will keep the attention of the boomers since they constitute a large market for the baseball leagues.

But even before that, the offspring of the veterans generation were already very active in imposing what kind of sport they wanted to see when they go to a baseball stadium or when they sit in front of the couch to watch sports TV. They are the ruling social faction and it somehow rubbed off to the sports community to continuously cater to the needs of this generation. Sadly, having to cater to the boomers meant reinforcing patriarchy and individualism among baseball players.

But despite all the shortcomings of the boomer generation in developing a near-perfect template for the baseball leagues we now have, it is still a great legacy to leave behind a national sport that has remained popular through the years. It is up to the succeeding generations to improve the kind of games now being conducted in order to improve the way Americas most popular sport is being played.