Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Sports in Revolutionary America
After reading the many articles about sports in Revolutionary America I was surprised to see how many sports we still play today that got their roots in that time. What also surprised me is that the sports were never really played competitively with "no attempt to build company pride through sports challenges, nor pit one state or region against another" stated Bonnie Ledbetter in Sports and Games of the American Revolution. I believe that they probably didn't want to get too competitive against one another especially when they were fighting a war with each other. It wouldn't have been good to have animosity against a soldier you are fighting with because of an intense cricket game that was played the day before. I think that also has to do with why they never would keep score or keep track of who won and lost. Ledbetter went on to say "The positive attributes of theses games were informality, individualism, spontaneity, and flexibility."(53) It was a good thing that the soldiers cared so much about these attributes because otherwise the games we know today could have been much different.
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You brought up a great point about one reason that you would not want to encourage sports between members of the same side was that it could create animosity. I had not thought of it that way. However, from a historical perspective, it seems that most sports of that era were fueled by desires to socialize rather than "win-at-all costs." I think the latter mentality would arise later in history, from what I can tell.
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