The last pure place: Drugs, alcohol, and the paradox of the modern American game

Nathan M Corzine, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation is a critical exploration of the history of post-World War II American society through the lens of Major League Baseball’s decades-long struggle with drug and alcohol abuse. The history of baseball, and professional sport in a broader sense, is inextricably tied to the history of drug and alcohol abuse, and their long history together complicates not only the meaning of sport but also raises compelling questions about the conflict between enforcing ethical absolutes and protecting privacy rights, about labor- management relations, and about the tightening symbiotic link between the sports world and the television industry. Ultimately, using professional baseball as its lodestar, but addressing other American and global sports as well, this work traces the modern development of a peculiar masculine subculture and the society that it not only reflects, but also profoundly influences. At the same time, although this dissertation uses a major professional sport to explore significant social problems, at heart it is a human story, told about flawed men viewed as heroes, and about what we, as a nation, want from those heroes. It is a history of celebrities and the price they will pay to fulfill expectations, escape their troubles, and achieve their dreams. It addresses project that addresses modern political, cultural, and racial divisions, legal and ethical conflicts, evolving concepts of masculinity, the rise of a modern cult of instant gratification, and the timeless human quest for eternal youth and constant virility in an age of unparalleled medical progress. Using archival materials, periodicals, memoirs and a wealth of secondary materials, this dissertation approaches drug use in baseball as a social, cultural, and political problem. It asks why athletes use certain drugs, why management has failed to curtail usage, and how drug abuse in baseball reflected changing concepts of masculinity as well as transformations in American society. More specifically, it connects the upheavals of baseball’s drug woes to the emergence of virulent political division in American life, exploring how both liberal and conservative critics saw baseball’s problems as a damning reflection of the other side’s intransigence against the purest American values. This, then, is not only a history of how athletes have shaped the American narrative about drugs and alcohol, but also one that suggests how sports and politics have intersected in the public sphere.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Roberts, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American studies|American history|Recreation

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