When I was reading through the text this quote stuck out to me “It was in part team’s identification with the Confederacy that made the Virginians so widely accepted in the city. Baseball became amazingly popular after the Civil War throughout the country partly because it validated the experience of that conflict. The game allowed veterans to assert their wartime experience as good while encouraging younger fans to praise their accomplishments.” This quote is important because it reflects the article’s point of the lost cause and baseball. This is just one example from the history of a group spreading their ideology through sport, and one of the best strategies for spreading ideology is through the youth. That to me is the most important thing that I read in this text. The Southern youth being shown these Confederate veterans in a setting that glorified this idea of the “lost cause” and the confederacy was meant to indoctrinate them into that mindset. For these veterans and other groups to push their narratives against the North, Union, and mostly African Americans through an accessible and popular sport was key in getting the youth to jump onto an idea they may have lived through, but one they may have never comprehended in that way. Because of this, it spreads those ideals to people in the next generations who would’ve never known or thought about things like that. This stood out to me because it was propaganda towards these beliefs, but like those beliefs, they floundered due to resistance to change just like the old Souths hold on culture in the region. While the text was mainly about baseball, I definitely took more out of the cultural impact it had in Richmond. Having popular media pushing toxic and fake narratives to the youth has always been an effective method for changing their minds, and in an era where they couldn’t really study for themselves, it made them more susceptible. This article was a great example of everything I have talked about. The entire myth of “lost cause” being perpetrated through basketball like this is sad, as it is a mark on baseball in the state of Virginia.
