it was a small gesture that pointed to a larger pattern: in popular culture the things often regarded as the most quintessentially American were most enthusiastically adopted by the children of immigrants. Baseball was the sport where the tangled ethnic, racial, and social tensions of urban American played out most obviously. Like virtually all other team sports, it was a male game, but it had a wide geographic and social reach. Indians enthusiastically adopted it. It was played along the Mexican border and spread across it. But mostly, particularly in its professional form, it was an urban
...more
