One Day University

From the end of the American Civil War to the present, the emergence of baseball in the United States reflected the evolution of urbanization, immigration, race, the labor movement, entrepreneurial capitalism, crime, corruption, and legal precedents that reached the Supreme Court. Baseball has been a mirror of the times, and that reflection continued through the twentieth century in the Progressive Age, World War I, the Roaring Twenties, the Depression, World War II, the coming of Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente, and the shifting and expansion of franchises. In 1953, exactly fifty years after the formation of Organized Baseball into two leagues with eight teams in each, the geographic and demographic revolution that took major league baseball from coast to coast began. Eventually, this led to the elimination of the Reserve Clause, the beginning of free agency, and the thirty current professional teams that represent “The National Pastime.”