Summary Of Baseball And The Business Of American Innocence By Leonardo Cassuto

Leonardo Cassuto’s “Baseball and the Business of American Innocence” discusses how baseball has a natural attraction to how people write stories and portrait baseball. Baseball has a very hidden fantasy about it. Many authors write many types of books about how baseball is “not only the airbrushed ole days,” but has now transformed into a sickening reality underneath. Cassuto gives many examples of books, like Sheldon and Alan Hirsch’s The Beauty of Short Hops, that opens the doors for people and the realities of baseball. Some of the books talk about the American and the national interests in baseball. These books show how agents from the American teams will go to the Dominican Republic and scout young prospects. However, the allure of the

The numbers in baseball have become a thing to look at, to try and calculate performances and keep track of the records. This interest can be contributed to the growth in fantasy baseball. The caused Mark McGwire to discuss his use of steroids because of the increase of studying the past players’ stats.
This still cannot completely tear the idea of innocence away from baseball. Cassuto tells us “even the U.S. State Department Bureau of International Information Programs proclaims baseball as ‘the game of innocence and growth.’” Baseball salaries were not always as absolute as they are today. Back whenever Babe Ruth, America’s favorite player, played, they would cut salaries based on performance and if someone was not good enough, they were out of luck. Business and baseball go hand and hand now, and even in the early days of it. People never talked about how the players were always left out. The owners were always kept out of the light. The author gives us a visual example on how Marvin Miller, a union activist, “eventually dragged owners to the table.” The players eventually got the respect they deserve and obtained free-agency, allowing them to sell their contracts at the player’s choice. All of this was done out of the light and people are now just realizing that baseball has always been a business. The author gives us an example about how The Great Gatsby is like baseball in the sense that the tragedy in the story cannot happen without the “glorious dream.” Like baseball, the background is the core of the sport itself, without it, the sport would not be what it is