By Chuck Arning
Baseball is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming 19th century.
—Mark Twain, Speech in New York City, April 1889
During the spring of 1907, Big Bill Haywood, secretary-treasurer for the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) and a leader of the International Workers of the World (IWW), went on trial in Boise, Idaho, for planning the assassination of former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg, a strong supporter of mine owners. The long and contentious trial brought world-wide recognition to the Snake River Valley. Newspaper reporters streamed into town. The famous Clarence Darrow was the leading defense attorney. The trial was international news—labor against mine owners and big business. Tales of scandal and murder in the American West caught everyone’s attention.
At the time, Idaho’s new Sunday Closing Laws had forced the closing of all forms of entertainment for working men and women, with one lone exception during the late spring and summer—the game of baseball.
Every Sunday and on holidays as well, stands at baseball fields in towns throughout the Snake River Valley were packed with spectators watching their town’s “nine” exert their will over the opposition. When a raw-boned 19-year-old kid from California named Walter Johnson pitched for the Weiser City nine against the Caldwell County seaters, the entire community of Weiser took a train to Caldwell to see the game. To quote one of the reporters covering the Haywood trial, Jim Nolan of the Denver Post, “A baseball game at Caldwell, 20 miles away, almost denuded the town of its male inhabitants….”
The proximity of the mill to the ball field demonstrates the classic relationship between baseball and industrial life. The crowd of “fanatics,” the original term for baseball fans, was an important part of the game, showcasing the energy each mill team could muster to root their players on to victory. Courtesy of Worcester Historical Museum, Worcester, MA
On the other side of this sprawling, contentious, complex nation, situated among the mills of the Blackstone Valley in Rhode Island along the banks of the Blackstone River, was the Berkeley Oval. It was a picture of contrasts; in the midst of this industrial landscape of massive brick, five- and six-story mills was a baseball diamond, the very image of a pastoral, agricultural setting. Historians looking at the mill villages of the Blackstone Valley were surprised to find baseball fields as integral a part of the mill village landscape as the church, the company store, and mill housing.
The story goes that when the Berkeley Mill team took on the Ashton Mill nine, both mills of the Lonesdale Company, delivery men would not deliver goods or produce to the mill villages of Berkeley or Ashton for the simple reason that no one would be home to receive them. They would all be at the Berkeley Oval cheering their village favorites on to victory. Why baseball you ask? The answer, quite simply, was that baseball was America.
While there were flourishing baseball contests prior to the American Civil War, it was the initiation of thousands of soldiers during the endless drudgery of camp life that brought baseball to the forefront of American life. Jacques Barzun, an observer of American life, once said that if you wanted to understand America, you first needed to understand the game of baseball.
From the mill villages in the east to the mining camps of the west, baseball was a part of each community. A town that supported a team that played with competitive drive was a town that was regarded as an up-and-coming place—a place where future investment would be rewarded, a place where community character was seen as strong and hardworking. Through baseball a town could develop its own identity. In the competitive world of America in the 19th century, that was everything.
For a moment, stop and consider the element of work. What was the daily life of a worker like in the late 19th century? The lyrics for one of the most popular labor songs of the late 1800s, “Eight Hours,” provides us with a sense of the worker’s state of mind:
Walter Schuster, owner of several mills and friend of Hall of Fame baseball team owner Connie Mack, added former pro players and up-and-coming stars. Courtesy Worcester Historical Museum & the Douglas Historical Society
We mean to make things over;
We’re tired of toil for naught;
We may have enough to live on,
But never an hour for thought.
We need to feel the sunshine;
We need to smell the flowers;
We are sure that God willed it;
We mean to have eight hours!
Eight hours for work;
Eight hours for rest;
Eight hours for what we will!
The common element was work—how hard it was, how dangerous it was, how long it was; one’s life was defined by work. The metal trade workers in Worcester, Massachusetts, were agitating for a 40-hour work week—eight hours a day for work. But just a few miles down the Blackstone River, an eight-hour day was but a wisp of a dream for the factory worker. Beginning in January 1895, annual reports were made to Rhode Island’s general assembly by the factory inspector in his “Hours of Labor” report:
The Factory Inspector is required by the Act to report the number of hours performed by the help in the establishment inspected. No authority is confirmed upon the Inspector to enforce the law limiting the employment of women and minors to 60 hours per week. I have found the 60 hour law conformed to in nearly all establishments inspected. Exceptional occasions arise where exigencies of business seem to necessitate its temporary violation.
Workers in one part of the Blackstone Valley were pushing for a 40-hour week while those in the other part of the valley were saddled with a 60-hour (or more) work week.
Yes, work was long, but what about the danger of work? In 1894, the Rhode Island General Assembly passed a law mandating inspections and yearly reports from the factory inspector regarding mill conditions with a focus on under-age mill workers. These reports contained narratives of the various mill injuries. Indeed, mill work was dangerous. It was common knowledge that working conditions throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries were appalling.
While rivers, waving fields of grain, and majestic mountains separated the coastal watersheds of the Blackstone Valley of Massachusetts and Rhode Island from the distant Snake River Valley in Idaho, the construct of the mill village was the same. And the owners, whether they spun cotton, built machines, or dug deep in the earth for precious metals, seized upon one common thread that would keep their communities happy and their workers in line. That common thread, baseball, helped develop a keen sense of place and connect workers and communities in such a manner that pride in one’s town became sacred. As various immigrant groups found their way to the mills of the Blackstone Valley, mill owners saw baseball as the key to “civilizing” their newly diverse workforce.
Loyalty, teamwork, pride in one’s skill, and pride in community—all of these were important factors in building an efficient and productive work force on the mill floor. Mill workers working together made for an efficient mill. And where could you practice such teamwork? The baseball oval was the answer. Whether workers were Armenian, Polish, French-Canadian, Irish, or Italian, teamwork was the essential ingredient to success when you were practicing on the ball field, turning double plays, and playing hit and run. Whether it was the Rubber League, the Triangle Industrial League, or the Blackstone Valley League, baseball proved to be an effective way for the mill owner to reduce labor turnover, control his work force, and create a greater sense of community, all the while inculcating basic American values in their workers.
Company newspapers like The Heald Herald were a key part of management’s strategy to build team work and company loyalty among its worker population.
The superintendent of the Central Falls (Rhode Island) General Fabric Company was quoted as saying, “Everything being done here is with the idea of encouraging our people to stay with us. These sports are the best thing we have to bring employees together. They create a spirit of neighborliness and good friendship throughout the plant.”
Another mill owner captured the progressive paternalistic view common to the owner class when he said:
Let the worker get outdoors as a participant or spectator and when the whistle blows he will return refreshed both mentally and physically, adding to the life of the worker and to his period of productivity. Both the worker and the company benefit.
And there were definite reasons for the need to keep workers in the mill, focusing on the job at hand, being productive and reasonably content. As noted earlier, work was hard, long, and dangerous, and the push for worker rights was growing stronger and louder with the advent of various labor organizations.
Consider the contrast in the pace of work versus the pace of the game of baseball. Whether building a railroad, digging for ore, or running a textile machinery, productivity was based on speed. You worked to the speed of the machine. But baseball was different. Each inning consisted of six outs, three per side; however long it took to get those outs was the length of an inning. There was no time limit.
What about working conditions? In the mill, it was a raging din at all times. It was hot, dank, smelly, and incredibly dirty—cold in the winter, impossibly hot in the summer. The flow of work was constant. Out on the baseball oval, it was different. A soft summer breeze blowing in from left field on a late afternoon refreshed your skin. You could hear your teammates giving you encouragement or your sweetheart cheering you on from the stands. The smells were of fresh-cut grass or the blooming flowers of the season. Then there was the smell of leather and the feel of that leather as you pounded it into submission.
Between pitches there was time to soak in this relaxing, yet charged atmosphere, for there was a lot on the line. Winners were rewarded, losers were forgotten. Being on the team of the winning company or the winning town carried weight. It meant you had earned recognition and had a future as a town, company, or as an individual.
The next time you agonize over developing an interpretive talk, think about baseball, think about sports and how you can build a story at your site around that classic American competitive drive. For to understand America, you better understand baseball.
For More Information
Lukas, J. Anthony. Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1997.
Rosenzweig, Roy. Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870–1920. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1983.
Hudson, J. Ellery. 16th Annual Report of Factory Inspections Made to the General Assembly (RI). State of Rhode Island. 1910.
Rockwell, Elisha H., and Palmer, Fanny Purdy. 2nd Annual Report of Factory Inspections Made to the General Assembly. State of Rhode Island. 1896.
Reynolds, Doug. 1991. Hardball Paternalism, Hardball Politics: Blackstone Valley Baseball. Labor’s Heritage: Quarterly of the George Meany Memorial Archives (3)2. p. 32.
Birding as Competition: New Jersey’s World Series of Birding Pits Geeks Against Nerds
By Phil Broder
Photo by Joan Kocur.
You know your competition has reached critical mass when it’s big enough to be mocked by Steve Carell on an episode of “The Daily Show.” Because, like the National Spelling Bee, it’s only a few short steps from a head-to-head geek smackdown to being the subject of an award-winning documentary to going live on ESPN. If Jon Stewart and Comedy Central love you, you’re on your way.
That’s the case with the World Series of Birding. It’s the Super Bowl of “pssshing,” the World Cup of binocular-toting nerds, the Olympics of clapper rail calling. And if the mere concept of competitive birdwatching has you doubled over with laughter, then you need to pick up your Nikons and head to Cape May, New Jersey, for this rite of spring.
Organized by the New Jersey Audubon Society, the WSB enters its 27th year in 2010. At its core, the concept is simple: During a designated 24-hour, midnight-to-midnight period in May, teams of birders scour New Jersey in an effort to see and hear the most species of birds. Teams compete in several categories (adult, youth, corporate sponsored, etc.) and various geographic regions (whole state, Cape May County only, Cape Island only, etc.). A system of checks and balances keeps teams from cheating. Teams rush to the finish line at the West Cape May firehouse to turn in their final tallies before midnight, and it usually takes between 220 and 250 species for a team to raise the coveted Urner Stone Cup.
And it would all be just that easy, if this weren’t an event based in serious enviro-geek bird-nerd culture. First, you have to pick a killer name for your team—like the Lagerhead Shrikes, the Marshketeers, Mighty Mighy Turnstones, the Limping Limpkins, Wacky Willets, Duck Duck Duck Duck Duck Brant!, and Nine Inch Rails. Printing up team shirts doesn’t hurt, and tastefully decorating your team vehicle isn’t frowned upon either.
Second, the top teams are sponsored. Nikon, Swarovski, Zeiss, and Steiner Optics all have teams, as do WildBird Magazine and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. My own team of fourth graders was happy with the 49 species they logged, but they weren’t even close to the 117 birds tallied by a team of “professional” fourth graders sponsored by Steiner Optics. After the competition, you’ll find ads in birding magazines touting the binoculars and spotting scopes used by the winners. Bragging rights are on the line.
Third, while this is only a one-day event, it really isn’t. Top teams send scouts a week in advance to poke through forests and marshes, mapping out where birds will be. Using rare bird hotlines and computer forums, teams spend days figuring out where to spend valuable minutes. Every team is going to see the common birds; winners are those who find red-footed falcons that have blown in from Siberia. Road maps are covered in red ink, laying out the shortest route between short-eared owls and northern gannets. And somebody has to stock up on everything from snacks to toilet paper. Planning is everything.
Fourth, practice your bird calls. Winners usually identify about two-thirds of their birds by song, not sight. The competition begins at midnight, so expect to spend the first six hours before daylight listening for owls, rails, and anything else that goes chirp in the night. Mark Garland of the Cape May Bird Observatory has built his career around being able to hear birds that nobody else can.
Finally, just for kicks, you can use your birding to make a statement. Some teams now compete only on foot, running from birding hotspot to hotspot, reducing their carbon footprint (and there’s a special trophy for these crazed, scope-toting marathoners). Others specialize in water birds, limiting their competition to what they can see from boats. Still others practice digiscoping, taking digital photos of every bird they see. One team of senior citizens counts only the birds that fly by the park bench on which they sit all day. It never hurts to have a gimmick.
To say that the competition is cutthroat doesn’t convey the bloodlust that competitive birding engenders. It’s not unheard of for teams to practice dirty tricks like parking in the middle of a road leading to a popular birding area, blocking everyone else’s access. Giving out misinformation is fairly common, although recent advances in iPhones now allow every team to get up-to-the-minute bird sightings sent directly to them. GPS has put an end to teams doling out phony directions.
So, what’s the result of all these avifauna obsessives spending a spring day chasing warblers? The event’s founder, Pete Dunne, realized the moneymaking potential of the World Series. Teams raise pledges (25 cents per bird sounds like a bargain, if you aren’t aware that last year’s winners had 229 species), which can go toward the conservation group of their choice, or to New Jersey Audubon. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised this way. There’s also a great deal of scientific data being collected, as the World Series amounts to a Christmas Bird Count during the May nesting season. And 18 youth teams competed last year, which presents a great opportunity for education. The winners, a Nikon-backed high school squad, had 211 species (and probably get beaten up by the football team on a regular basis).
In Cape May County, considered to be one of the world’s best birding spots, ecotourism (mostly birdwatching) brings in upwards of $32 million annually. If any other TV shows want to make fun of the World Series of Birding, the chamber of commerce would welcome them to town. Competitive birding may be the ne plus ultra of geek chic, but as long as money talks, this sort of nerdiness is just fine.
Phil Broder is the director of education with the Wetlands Institute in Stone Harbor, New Jersey. For more info about the WSB, visit www.birdcapemay.org. To find the July 18, 2000, “Daily Show” video about the World Series, just Google “World Series of Birding.” Or buy a copy of the film “Opposable Chums: Guts and Glory at the World Series of Birding” at www.opposablechums.com.
Posted in Commentaries, Interpreting Sports