Stealing home

Decolonizing baseball's origin stories and their relations to settler colonialism

Bibliographic Data

ID18952196
AuthorsCraig Fortier (0009-0000-3612-5866, York University, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume6
Issue1
Pages1-22
Publication date2016-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSettler Colonial Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1838-0743 • E-ISSN: 2201-473X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/2201473x.2014.993056
OpenAlexW2095806155
LanguageEN
Citations received12

The sport of baseball has played an integral role in constructing a national identity in the American settler state. This essay analyses baseball's popularization as America's national pastime and its interconnections with the formation of a settler colonial identity that seeks to erase Indigenous presence on Turtle Island. It does so by tracing the roots of baseball's origin stories and their relationship to the creation of an American national identity. By examining the processes of colonialism, displacement, genocide, and xenophobia that characterized the game's early history in North America and delving into baseball's role in governing the boundaries of insiders and outsiders in the national imagination, this essay provokes questions with regard to the possibility of re-imagining the game of baseball in a decolonial context

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · Genocide · Indigenous · Media studies · National identity · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociology · Xenophobia · American Sports and Literature · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society