For a brief time in the 1880s, before became the norm in the United States, players competed with whites in professional baseball. After that period, however, blacks had to carve out a separate world of baseball. Dozens of black teams faced local semiprofessional teams while storming throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Despite playing a high quality of baseball, the players frequently engaged in various forms of clowning that continued stereotypes of blacks to appeal to spectators. From the 1920s until the '50s, separate black professional leagues "the s" existed as well, but in 1947 crossed the long-standing color bar in . Because baseball was the national game, its racial integration was of enormous symbolic importance in the United States; indeed, it preceded the U.S. Supreme Court's decision ending racial segregation in the schools (in 1954 in ) and helped to usher in the of the 1950s and '60s. Moreover, in the 1980s and '90s a huge growth of Hispanics into professional baseball reflected the country's changing ethnic composition.
Baseball contributed to the shaping of American ideas of gender roles. Although were playing baseball as early as the 1860s, their involvement in the sport was confined for the most part to the role of spectator. To counter the game's reputation for rowdiness, baseball promoters took pains to encourage women to attend. When women played on barnstorming teams in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, the press routinely referred to them as “Amazons,” “freaks,” or “frauds.” In 1943, during World War II, when it was feared that professional baseball might be forced to close down, the made its debut. After having provided more than 600 women an opportunity to play baseball and to entertain several million fans, the league folded in 1954.
The significance of specific baseball teams and individual players extended beyond the local places that they represented. The , who in the first half of the 20th century were the representatives of the big city, became connected with success, while the emerged as the quintessential champions of the Midwest, of small towns and the farms and of rural America with its simplicity. In the 1920s became the diamond's colossal god. To those on assembly lines or sitting at their desks in corporate offices, Ruth embodied America's continuing faith in upward social mobility. His mighty home runs proof that men remained masters of their own destinies and that they could still rise from mean, vulgar beginnings to fame and fortune. For African Americans, black stars such as and furnished equally compelling models of individual inspiration and success.
became important local civic monuments and places of collective memories. The first parks had been jerry-built, flimsy wooden structures, but between 1909 and 1923 some 15 major league clubs constructed new, more permanent parks of steel and concrete. These parks were akin to the great public buildings, skyscrapers, and railway terminals of the day; local residents proudly pointed to them as evidence of their city's size and its achievements. Seeing them as retreats from the noise, and dirt of the city, the owners gave the first parks names—Ebbets Field, Sportsman's Park, and the Polo Grounds—but, with the construction of multisports facilities in the 1960s and '70s, urban and futuristic names such as Astrodome and Kingdome dominated. In a new park-building era in the 1990s, designers sought to recapture the mood of earlier times by designing “retro parks,”. The increasing corporate influence on the game was reflected in park names such as Network Associates Stadium and Bank One Ballpark.
After about the mid-20th century, baseball's claim to being America's game rested on more precarious foundations than in the past. The sport faced feirce competition, not only from other professional sports (especially football) but even more from a massive conversion of Americans from public to private, at-home diversions. Attendance as a percentage of population fell at all levels of baseball, the minor leagues became a shell of their former selves, and hundreds of semipro and amateur teams folded. In the 1990s, player strikes, free agency, disparities in competition, and the rising cost of attending games added to the woes of major league baseball. Yet, baseball continued to exhibit a remarkable resiliency; attendance at professional games improved, and attendance at minor league games was close to World War II records by the end of the century. As the 21st century opened, baseball still faced serious problems, but the sport was gaining in popularity around the world, and a strong case could still be made for baseball holding a special place in the hearts and minds of the American people.