From the jump, this book seeks to answer a question that is often times overlooked by historians when considering the origin of the game. Oftentimes baseball is associated with Jackie Robinson and the breaking of the color-barrier. This topic is deserving completely of study but the author Ryan A. Swanson wants to review how and why the color-barrier even came into existence. Swanson sets out right after the end of the Civil War which places us right at the scene of the growth of baseball. This sport was popularizing at a time of complete unrest, development, and reconstruction following the conclusion of the war and served as a symbol of unity in a ravaged nation. I like this approach because it serves as a symbol of a changing nation. This change was supposed to bring equality between Americans but as Swanson does a good job of showing, the White men after the war were still insistent on keeping their place at the top of the racial hierarchy.
Swanson uses the first chapter to establish the change of the game that game after the Civil War. The game was growing nationally and began to become something more than just the game. Reuniting the nation was the main goal of these early baseball enthusiasts and Swanson argues that this was being done while maintaining the “whiteness” of the game. Through the first few chapters I have enjoyed how the author has refrained from keeping this sports book from being just specifically about sports. This makes the book more entertaining to read as I feel I am seeing the true nature and setting of D.C. after the Civil War. Swanson then moves the focus to the South where the Reconstruction had brought upon deep rooted prejudice and racial tension between the white and black citizens. I liked this approach as well as it makes the development of the color-barrier tie-able to the growing need of white southerners to reclaim the power they felt they lost after the Civil War. The setup of these first few chapters paint a clear picture of the state of not only the game, but the state of the nation. The author is clearly showing how as the nation tried to fix itself through Reconstruction that baseball tried to serve as a complimenting factor. However, as Reconstruction seemed to create greater divides, baseball was no exception.
