Book review: Gmelch, G. (2006). Baseball Without Borders: The International Pastime

Gmelch, G. (2006). Baseball Without Borders: The International Pastime. University of Nebraska Press.

The editor of this collection of 16 authors on baseball in 14 nations is a cultural anthropologist at Union College and University of San Francisco (as well as a former minor league player) and has written two books on baseball culture, Inside Pitch: Life in Professional Baseball, and In the Ballpark: The Working Lives of Baseball People. As only Japan and Cuba are represented by more than one essay, most writers take a broad historical perspective, so you can think of this collection as a global history of baseball. Writing is uneven but largely readable for a general audience.

For those wishing to skip the details, the concluding chapter provides a useful summary of findings. The Americans were not solely responsible for the global diffusion of the game, but were abetted by the Japanese, who took baseball with them to Taiwan and Korea, as well as by expatriate Cubans, who brought the game back from the US and then spread it across the Caribbean, most notably Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Spalding’s late 19th century world tour introduced the game to other corners of the world, and apart from Sri Lanka and Egypt, the game took root in all the other countries visited. (An investigation of these two outliers might provide interesting clues as to the intersection of the game and its audience, much as Kaufman and Patterson’s study of cricket in North America.) While baseball was part of the cultural baggage of invaders and colonizers, it was often used as a vehicle for the weaker party to assert its national and cultural identity. On the ball field, Koreans and Taiwanese could safely challenge the dominance of the Japanese, likewise the Cubans against the Spanish, and the Japanese against the Americans. Apart from the US, Japan, Cuba and the Dominican, baseball has been largely a marginal sport and has not approached the global appeal of basketball. The US game has in recent years become quicker and achieved greater defensive finesse as a result of the presence of increasing numbers of Latin players.

Given that most of the essays seem to follow the same outline and end up reviewing many of the details common to baseball most everywhere, redundancy could have been avoided if the same material had been presented by one author. Still, this was an enjoyable and informative read and a suitable introduction to baseball as it has developed across the world.

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