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2026 Society for American Baseball Research Seymour Medal finalist

Baseball's relationship to American ideals has long been an object of study across disciplines. In Touching Home, Mary Craig contributes to this ongoing study by relating issues of class, race, and gender to America's theoretical tradition of liberalism and republicanism established during the nation's founding era. Specifically, Touching Home traces theories of individualism and civic virtue from the founding era through baseball's place in American society at the end of the twentieth century.

The work also examines the mythologizing of baseball's pastoralism, racial equality, and inculcation of manliness as a civic virtue. These myths became ingrained in baseball in significant ways, including, for example, the Supreme Court's granting of an antitrust exemption to Major League Baseball; MLB's promotion of Jackie Robinson's career as proof of its leadership in and commitment to desegregation; and the short-lived All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (1943-1954) and subsequent relegation of women to softball.

Through the exploration of these and other societal issues, Craig's work highlights baseball's development from accessible hobby to multi-billion-dollar corporation, exploring the ways in which the sport has helped shape how individual Americans engage with politics. Indeed, in the pages of Touching Home readers will find a demythologizing of baseball that helps them better understand the results of their efforts to form community through engaging with teams at both the local and national levels. Scholars of American politics, particularly American political thought, will be intrigued to find baseball used as a case study of the effectiveness of the founders' project of crafting a jointly liberal-republican framework capable of directing Americans toward responsible citizenship.

In all of these ways, Touching Home upholds the value of studying popular culture, presenting baseball as a unique and highly interesting lens through which to help us appreciate how individual Americans relate to politics and parties in their respective communities and nationally.