Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Winter 2000
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 20, No. 1, Winter 2000, pp. 19-33.
Abstract
Since its inception in 1928, American Legion Junior Baseball has been popular in Nebraska. Although originally started to advance the Legion's ideological agenda of Americanism, the primary factor in the success of Junior Baseball has been an active level of support from the citizens and businesses in the state's communities. The Legion's program acquired and maintained such support because of the variety of functions it served in towns and cities across the state. First and foremost, Junior Baseball teams were important sources of civic pride to Nebraskans who enthusiastically backed their local boys. The program also provided local businesses with advertising opportunities and offered a town's teenage boys a chance to experience athletic glory. Moreover, hosting a Legion tournament could provide a big boost to a town's economy as Nebraskans flocked to see these entertaining baseball games.
However, much of the active community support that proved crucial for the survival of Junior Baseball was tied to a quest for winning teams. As a result, the main emphasis of the Nebraska Legion's program shifted from Americanism to athleticism, focusing specifically on aspects pertaining to baseball excellence. This emphasis on athleticism created an environment that subverted many of the Americanism goals that the Legion originally held for Junior Baseball. Specifically, a focus on winning not only limited the total number of boys enrolled in the program but also led to unsportsmanlike behavior from the participants. Nonetheless, the veterans continued to sponsor this popular endeavor that still attracts the interest of thousands of Nebraskans each year.
Regarding national context, in the 1920s many Americans believed the rise of modernism threatened their way of life. Primarily white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, these traditionalists viewed with alarm the growing acceptance of less restrained modes of behavior. The new music, dances, and sexually suggestive movies of the decade all reflected the troubling changes. Traditionalists, who were strongest in smaller, rural communities, blamed this modernist attack on the influx of immigrants who usually resided in the large cities. Old-stock Americans believed that these "foreigners" threatened their communities, the government, and even the Protestant faith. The emergence of a mass society in the 1920s sharpened the differences between traditionalists and those espousing modern values. As a result, the decade witnessed a great struggle between the two forces as traditionalists sought to defend their ideal of a homogeneous nation.
The American Legion, composed of veterans who fought in World War I, was one such group that feared traditional America was under attack. These ex-servicemen saw specific threats coming from Bolsheviks, radical labor unions, leftists, and immigrants, who, they believed, were working to subvert America from within. Equally dangerous, according to the Legion, were the growing pacifist groups who conspired to keep the country weak militarily in the face of numerous external threats. Legionnaires saw it as their duty to promote Americanism and thereby defend the nation from these postwar enemies. Although the veterans often had difficulty defining exactly what Americanism meant, their philosophy usually included a love of country and its democratic heritage, combined with a devotion to capitalism and a belief in the moral superiority of Americans. Initially, the Legion adopted a coercive form of Americanism, often physically assaulting groups they opposed. This, however, generated negative publicity for Legionnaires and by the mid-1920s; they looked for a more subtle way to save an America they thought was "under siege."1
Comments
Copyright 2000 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln