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Sport and Society
City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports
Comprehensive and thoughtful, City Games looks at the complex interrelationship and interdependency between sport and the city. Steven A. Riess shows how demographic growth, evolving special arrangements, social reform, the formulation of class and ethnic subcultures, the expansion of urban government, and the rise of political machines and crime syndicates all interacted to influence the development of sports in the United States.
- GenresNonfictionHistorySports
368 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1989
About the author
Steven A. Riess
15 books1 followerA leading authority on the history of sports in modern America, Steven A. Riess is the former the Bernard Brommel Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of History at Northeastern Illinois University. A graduate of New York University, he earned his masters and doctorate degrees at the University of Chicago.
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October 3, 2016
Steven A. Riess, in City Games, ties explicitely the rise of mass participation and consumption of sports with the rise of the metropolitan industrial city. Riess reviews the need for mass entertainment and interest in sports which was incubated with the evolution of cities in the 19th and 20th centuries. At it’s heart a synthesis of sports histories and urban histories, Riess largely does not make ground breaking new research, but instead seeks to identify sports and cities as being key to the rise of capitalism. He therefore looks at sports through the lenses of urban history, noting in his conclusion about the relationship between cities as a whole and sports as an institution: “The principle social and cultural elements of urbanization (its physical structure, social organizations, and belief and behavior systems) that combined to produce organic urban communities also strongly influenced the direction of American sport history. At the same time the development of American sport influenced the process of city building and helped shape the path of urban development.” (252) The central role of sports in the development of cities in finding the middle ground of conflict between classes, ethnicity, and gendered identity is central to his argument. Sports do not develop without the modern city and the modern American city is shaped in a huge social and cultural manner by the institution of sports.
He broke down the history of the city into three time periods, which follow the books breakdown. In the first period of cities under capitalism, the Walking City (1820-1870s), which were relatively small compared to today’s cities and generally centered within two miles of the core of the city, with plenty of open fields and unspecialized lots. The second period is the industrial radial city (1870-1960) saw the rapid expansion of cities to annex surrounding towns, development of public transit, and specialization of space into commercial, industrial, and residential. The last period he explores is the suburbanized metropolis (1945-1980), in which middle class whites fled to the suburbs and new cities in the Sunbelt while racialized ghettos boomed in their place, and the former industrialized cities began to decline. He follows sports’ development in American urban centers from the early Jacksonian ideas of popular participation in games to the institutionalization of sports entertainment in the later half of the 19th century, to the intermingling of civic pride with private entities and cross geographic capital flows within sport.
In the walking city, Riess explored sports shifting emphasis from small pre-industrial cities to larger industrial behomoths. In these changing times, sports also shifted from their medieval folk past towards one of wider adult participation and regulation, club-sports, and middle class embrace of sports as the embodiment of white Protestant male rational virtue in the post-feudal, independent United States. Sports began to shift towards class segregated affairs, with blood sports, strength and skills sports, and field sports being the domain of poor people, and the racing sports, team sports (especially baseball and cricket), and boxing being sports of the middle class in the first half of the 19th century (14). In the “Walking City” time period, cities had vacant lots, open fields, and areas where it was easier to play even as the cities were expanding at a previously unseen pace. Here, Riess detailed how class conflict began to play out through what people did with their recreational time (how much of which differed, depending on class.) Working class athletes and clubs depended on having a sponsor and had a heavily ethnic quality, while middle class clubs were restricted to white protestant men and generally had the earliest country clubs with restricted membership based on occupation (5). Furthermore, working class men’s recreational activities turned towards billiards, gambling, and later fight sports (17-19). In response, middle class reformers began efforts to bring proper sports to the masses in order to bring “Muscular Christian” values to them by suppressing traditional working class sports and promoting the following of more proper sports of Anglo-Americanism, like baseball and cricket (though restriction on playing in clubs was generally limited to the middle class in the walking city.) The beginnings of the urban parks, YMCA gyms, and later playgrounds find their roots in these reform crusades in physical culture, so young urban men could have outlets for their energy that was positive (28).
Riess argued that as capitalist cities accelerated their shift to radical industrial cities in the latter half of the 19th century, as the cities crowded out the previous empty lots. Working class people took over the previous exclusive domains of the team sports through the rise of professionalism and somewhat accessible participation/spectator culture with the construction of parks and semi-public arenas and stadiums (144). As baseball emphasized nationalism, wholesomeness, drama, and pastoral myths (which were counter to its very urban development), it became one of the ways for immigrants to assimilate into Americanism (66). Early on the biggest professional league, the National League, priced out working class spectators by charging fifty cents, banning baseball on Sundays, and sale of alcohol, which were challenged by the so-called Beer and Whiskey League, the American Association, which actievely sold alcohol and charged 25 cents per game in the 1880s. Even here, though, accessibility was largely limited generally to the “old immigrants” in Irish and German players and their descendants until the 1920s (103). As such, cricket faded away as an English sport quickly by the end of the Civil War, and boxing (for poorer workers) and baseball (for skilled and white collar workers) became ways of expressing working class masculinity.
By the end of the 19th century, Riess illustrated that baseball had become so dominated by the working class that factories and firms began sponsoring baseball teams as a way of providing recreation and labor peace (86). In the 20th century, the “new immigrants” in Italians, Eastern Europeans, and Jews were slow to warm to baseball until the 1920s. Basketball was dominated by Jewish players in its early urban days, while boxing was the sport of choice by warring ethnic groups within cities as fighting prowess was highly valued (109). Neighborhood parks, playgrounds, youth sports in public schools, accessible YMCA gyms, playgrounds all became the norm by the end of the 1920s. Indeed, with the combination of celebrity athletes, cheap ticket prices, radio, decline of Sunday blue laws, mass transit, and rising incomes, by the 1920s, spectator sports and participation became a mass, total phenomenon at the core of American culture, which was a global trend by the early twentieth century. Having grand modern sports stadiums were regarded as a sign of civic pride by local politicians and organized crime which also enriched these power brokers. In return, the public saw sports facilities and franchises to be public entities held in trust by the owners, though legally they were private capitalist entities (203).
Riess concluded by exploring the shift of cities towards suburban metropolitan regional areas in the post-war period to the present when the book was written, in 1981. His analysis is a bit limited here, since the changes had occurred over the previous three decades. He noted the major spatial shifts by professional leagues into regions outside the Northeast and Midwest by MLB and NHL, and how the NBA and NFL had advantages in this shift because of their earlier instability and lack of connectedness with large cities on the East Coast (232). As much of the white working and middle class populations moved towards the so-called Sunbelt Cities and towards suburbia, teams largely followed them as cities became blacker with the Great Migration of previously rural black share croppers towards northern cities. With these shifts, sports franchises began to ask for more direct funding of the construction of facilities, and larger participation in sports declined with the advent of television and suburbs, both of which would accelerate in the decades after Riess’s work. Riess wrote in a time before the most outrageous stadium construction in neoliberal transfer of income from public city governments to private corporations in the form of the 1990s-2000s stadium construction boom (237).
Riess’s work is considered a class in the urban sport history and is a must read for any sport historian. He strongly illustrated the links between the city and sports cultural participation. The main quips I have with the book is that it is very limited to the American experience, and could use some comparisons to sport transformation elsewhere in the world, especially elsewhere in the Anglophone world, as I am aware that similar processes were occurring in the UK and the British Empire, especially in the forms of nationalism. It could have also served to show how sports were used by oppressed groups to turn the American identity on its head with figures like Jackie Robinson and Joe Lewis, and making the connections of integration of sports with the rise of white flight from cities and the Great Migration to cities. Much of the rest of the book does a good job connecting moving populations in cities with sports development, but how did basketball transition from being a “Jewish thing” to a “Black thing”? I suspect it had to do with spatial aspects within cities. Why did black men play baseball when they were the most rural group in the US, and switch to basketball and football largely as they moved into cities over the course of the 20th century? Here, I suspect the answer is not purely spatial, but economic and specific policy decisions by both urban governments and professional/collegiate organized sports organizations. Riess skillfully argues for those connections, and it is up to future historians after his work to more explicitly make those sorts of connections (and they have, such as Nathanson, Zirin, Rhodes, and Ruck.)
He broke down the history of the city into three time periods, which follow the books breakdown. In the first period of cities under capitalism, the Walking City (1820-1870s), which were relatively small compared to today’s cities and generally centered within two miles of the core of the city, with plenty of open fields and unspecialized lots. The second period is the industrial radial city (1870-1960) saw the rapid expansion of cities to annex surrounding towns, development of public transit, and specialization of space into commercial, industrial, and residential. The last period he explores is the suburbanized metropolis (1945-1980), in which middle class whites fled to the suburbs and new cities in the Sunbelt while racialized ghettos boomed in their place, and the former industrialized cities began to decline. He follows sports’ development in American urban centers from the early Jacksonian ideas of popular participation in games to the institutionalization of sports entertainment in the later half of the 19th century, to the intermingling of civic pride with private entities and cross geographic capital flows within sport.
In the walking city, Riess explored sports shifting emphasis from small pre-industrial cities to larger industrial behomoths. In these changing times, sports also shifted from their medieval folk past towards one of wider adult participation and regulation, club-sports, and middle class embrace of sports as the embodiment of white Protestant male rational virtue in the post-feudal, independent United States. Sports began to shift towards class segregated affairs, with blood sports, strength and skills sports, and field sports being the domain of poor people, and the racing sports, team sports (especially baseball and cricket), and boxing being sports of the middle class in the first half of the 19th century (14). In the “Walking City” time period, cities had vacant lots, open fields, and areas where it was easier to play even as the cities were expanding at a previously unseen pace. Here, Riess detailed how class conflict began to play out through what people did with their recreational time (how much of which differed, depending on class.) Working class athletes and clubs depended on having a sponsor and had a heavily ethnic quality, while middle class clubs were restricted to white protestant men and generally had the earliest country clubs with restricted membership based on occupation (5). Furthermore, working class men’s recreational activities turned towards billiards, gambling, and later fight sports (17-19). In response, middle class reformers began efforts to bring proper sports to the masses in order to bring “Muscular Christian” values to them by suppressing traditional working class sports and promoting the following of more proper sports of Anglo-Americanism, like baseball and cricket (though restriction on playing in clubs was generally limited to the middle class in the walking city.) The beginnings of the urban parks, YMCA gyms, and later playgrounds find their roots in these reform crusades in physical culture, so young urban men could have outlets for their energy that was positive (28).
Riess argued that as capitalist cities accelerated their shift to radical industrial cities in the latter half of the 19th century, as the cities crowded out the previous empty lots. Working class people took over the previous exclusive domains of the team sports through the rise of professionalism and somewhat accessible participation/spectator culture with the construction of parks and semi-public arenas and stadiums (144). As baseball emphasized nationalism, wholesomeness, drama, and pastoral myths (which were counter to its very urban development), it became one of the ways for immigrants to assimilate into Americanism (66). Early on the biggest professional league, the National League, priced out working class spectators by charging fifty cents, banning baseball on Sundays, and sale of alcohol, which were challenged by the so-called Beer and Whiskey League, the American Association, which actievely sold alcohol and charged 25 cents per game in the 1880s. Even here, though, accessibility was largely limited generally to the “old immigrants” in Irish and German players and their descendants until the 1920s (103). As such, cricket faded away as an English sport quickly by the end of the Civil War, and boxing (for poorer workers) and baseball (for skilled and white collar workers) became ways of expressing working class masculinity.
By the end of the 19th century, Riess illustrated that baseball had become so dominated by the working class that factories and firms began sponsoring baseball teams as a way of providing recreation and labor peace (86). In the 20th century, the “new immigrants” in Italians, Eastern Europeans, and Jews were slow to warm to baseball until the 1920s. Basketball was dominated by Jewish players in its early urban days, while boxing was the sport of choice by warring ethnic groups within cities as fighting prowess was highly valued (109). Neighborhood parks, playgrounds, youth sports in public schools, accessible YMCA gyms, playgrounds all became the norm by the end of the 1920s. Indeed, with the combination of celebrity athletes, cheap ticket prices, radio, decline of Sunday blue laws, mass transit, and rising incomes, by the 1920s, spectator sports and participation became a mass, total phenomenon at the core of American culture, which was a global trend by the early twentieth century. Having grand modern sports stadiums were regarded as a sign of civic pride by local politicians and organized crime which also enriched these power brokers. In return, the public saw sports facilities and franchises to be public entities held in trust by the owners, though legally they were private capitalist entities (203).
Riess concluded by exploring the shift of cities towards suburban metropolitan regional areas in the post-war period to the present when the book was written, in 1981. His analysis is a bit limited here, since the changes had occurred over the previous three decades. He noted the major spatial shifts by professional leagues into regions outside the Northeast and Midwest by MLB and NHL, and how the NBA and NFL had advantages in this shift because of their earlier instability and lack of connectedness with large cities on the East Coast (232). As much of the white working and middle class populations moved towards the so-called Sunbelt Cities and towards suburbia, teams largely followed them as cities became blacker with the Great Migration of previously rural black share croppers towards northern cities. With these shifts, sports franchises began to ask for more direct funding of the construction of facilities, and larger participation in sports declined with the advent of television and suburbs, both of which would accelerate in the decades after Riess’s work. Riess wrote in a time before the most outrageous stadium construction in neoliberal transfer of income from public city governments to private corporations in the form of the 1990s-2000s stadium construction boom (237).
Riess’s work is considered a class in the urban sport history and is a must read for any sport historian. He strongly illustrated the links between the city and sports cultural participation. The main quips I have with the book is that it is very limited to the American experience, and could use some comparisons to sport transformation elsewhere in the world, especially elsewhere in the Anglophone world, as I am aware that similar processes were occurring in the UK and the British Empire, especially in the forms of nationalism. It could have also served to show how sports were used by oppressed groups to turn the American identity on its head with figures like Jackie Robinson and Joe Lewis, and making the connections of integration of sports with the rise of white flight from cities and the Great Migration to cities. Much of the rest of the book does a good job connecting moving populations in cities with sports development, but how did basketball transition from being a “Jewish thing” to a “Black thing”? I suspect it had to do with spatial aspects within cities. Why did black men play baseball when they were the most rural group in the US, and switch to basketball and football largely as they moved into cities over the course of the 20th century? Here, I suspect the answer is not purely spatial, but economic and specific policy decisions by both urban governments and professional/collegiate organized sports organizations. Riess skillfully argues for those connections, and it is up to future historians after his work to more explicitly make those sorts of connections (and they have, such as Nathanson, Zirin, Rhodes, and Ruck.)
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