Ambassadors in Pinstripes
Review of Ambassadors in Pinstripes:
The Spalding World Baseball Tour and the Birth of the American Empire
Thomas Zeiler, the author of Ambassadors in Pinstripes: the Spalding World Baseball Tour and the Birth of the American Empire, entertains and enlightens the reader through a descriptive journey of Albert Spalding’s efforts to introduce a World Baseball Tour. The bulk of Zeiler’s book is based off of periodicals, newspapers, magazines, and guides; which serves as the groundwork for his book. Albert Spalding is known as a leader; a manager of the Chicago White Stockings, a very successful manufacturer of sporting goods, and predominantly as an organizer of tours designed to popularize America’s “national game” abroad. Spalding’s world tour mission was to send two teams of professional well known players to Australia, Ceylon, Egypt, Europe, and the surrounding areas. His marketing techniques and goals for his all American team to play worldwide was a model for many industries seeking to establish abroad relations. Sports participation also provides a common ground and is a way to unite without discrimination, such as the warring people of South Africa during the Apartheid. Through this successful tour, Spalding established the pattern of baseball’s close connection with globalization and to let the world know of America’s increasingly ambitious exceptionalism in the world.
Sports as a tool of diplomacy came of age in the post-World War I world when it caught the attention of politicians and governments as a channel through which to conduct international relations. Across the globe sports have personified the ideologies of political policies in the 20th century and as we enter the 21st century, sports are becoming an essential part of the toolbox of a country’s public diplomacy. Sport events that host numerous foreign visitors have impacts on a country’s relationship with foreign publics. It’s why organizations and governments seek to attach
The Spalding World Baseball Tour and the Birth of the American Empire
Thomas Zeiler, the author of Ambassadors in Pinstripes: the Spalding World Baseball Tour and the Birth of the American Empire, entertains and enlightens the reader through a descriptive journey of Albert Spalding’s efforts to introduce a World Baseball Tour. The bulk of Zeiler’s book is based off of periodicals, newspapers, magazines, and guides; which serves as the groundwork for his book. Albert Spalding is known as a leader; a manager of the Chicago White Stockings, a very successful manufacturer of sporting goods, and predominantly as an organizer of tours designed to popularize America’s “national game” abroad. Spalding’s world tour mission was to send two teams of professional well known players to Australia, Ceylon, Egypt, Europe, and the surrounding areas. His marketing techniques and goals for his all American team to play worldwide was a model for many industries seeking to establish abroad relations. Sports participation also provides a common ground and is a way to unite without discrimination, such as the warring people of South Africa during the Apartheid. Through this successful tour, Spalding established the pattern of baseball’s close connection with globalization and to let the world know of America’s increasingly ambitious exceptionalism in the world.
Sports as a tool of diplomacy came of age in the post-World War I world when it caught the attention of politicians and governments as a channel through which to conduct international relations. Across the globe sports have personified the ideologies of political policies in the 20th century and as we enter the 21st century, sports are becoming an essential part of the toolbox of a country’s public diplomacy. Sport events that host numerous foreign visitors have impacts on a country’s relationship with foreign publics. It’s why organizations and governments seek to attach