Minor League Baseball: Community Building through Hometown Sports

Minor League Baseball: Community Building through Hometown Sports By Rebecca S. Kraus. New York: Haworth Press, 2002.

Followers of minor-league baseball don’t have it easy. In the best of circumstances, their favorite players won’t be with the local team for long, since this is just a stopover, a tune-up before heading to “the Show.” With a stream of athletes that is commonly in flux, what is it, then, that binds America to its bush-league ball clubs?

Kraus seeks to answer that question. “On the minor league level,” she writes, “the relationship appears to go beyond more money and prestige. Minor league teams occupy a special place in our hearts. We are more forgiving when they lose, and extremely proud of them when they win.”

The self-proclaimed “baseball sociologist” cites numerous studies on the link between sports and community. While she is obviously passionate about the topic, her methodology is uneven. She writes at length in the appendix about how she set out to “prove” such a relationship, but this assertion simply doesn’t come through in the narrative.

Kraus discusses the distinct eras in the long history of the minor leagues. She chronicles the golden days following the postwar years; the “downs,” as other forms of entertainment such as television began to take prominence, reducing game attendance; and the resurgence of the minors as the majors began subsidizing the affiliates and new owners with modern marketing methods took over for the outmoded “mom and pop” administrators.

The author’s information is mostly anecdotal and she spends an inordinate amount of words documenting the movement of teams from city to city and the changes in their big league affiliations. Ultimately, it appears she can’t decide whether to make her approach academic or personal.

While Minor League Baseball is a warm-hearted overview of an increasingly popular subject, it just doesn’t seem to fit in a supposedly scholarly treatise.