Essay: What is America's game? 3 sports, 3 American eras

What is America's game?

Is it the quirky and cerebral sport that, in its highest form, is unfolding this week in the World Series between the Houston Astros and the Washington Nationals? Baseball is, after all, still called the national pastime.

Is it the gladiatorial battle that unfolds on any given Sunday (and Monday and Thursday), the one that channels raw male power into accomplishments measured in yards and completions and high-octane collisions? Former star wide receiver Jerry Rice thinks so; a new book about the NFL that he co-authored, out next week, is called "America's Game."

Or is it the acrobatic contest with the big orange ball, the one in which players dwarfed only by their global online star power hurtle through rare air, putting on nightly clinics to demonstrate what the human body can do? There's a strong case to be made there, too.

Our history is contained in our games. Big league baseball, NFL football and NBA basketball — the holy trinity of American athletics — each grew to maturity during different periods in the nation's history. And each emerged in an era that reflects the place it came to occupy in the culture.

In a season when the NFL turns 100, and in a week when the World Series has claimed the national spotlight and the latest NBA season is being born, let's ask the question: What is America's game, anyway?

In sport, it is often said, we can find ourselves. To that, add this corollary: Sometimes we can find our country, too.

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BASEBALL: AMERICA STITCHED TOGETHER

Baseball is America's game: the America that was stitching itself together in the first half of the 20th century and becoming a national mass culture.

In that century's first decade, the people who ran the game called baseball put together a commission to determine its...

source https://www.chron.com/news/article/Essay-What-is-America-s-game-3-sports-3-14561471.php