The Historical Marginalization of Black Fans at Major League Baseball Games

While the decline in Black American baseball players has received lots of scholarly attention in the last three decades, scholars have not spent as much time studying the decline of Black American fans at Major League Baseball (MLB) games. The few of examinations of the number of Black American fans at MLB games that exist tend not to take the structures of the fan experience at MLB games into account. In contrast, this paper examines that experience, which reveals that the persistent, but adaptable, marginalization of Black fans at MLB games—from describing them differently, to treating them differently, to segregating them, to building new ballparks far removed from Black communities, to not marketing to Black audiences, to making it difficult for Black fans to reach games—is a major contributing factor to the disproportionately low number of Black American fans at MLB games today.

Seth S. Tannenbaum is an assistant professor of sport studies at Manhattanville University. He earned a PhD in American History at Temple University and a BA in History at Vassar College. His teaching and research focus on using sport to unpack and understand the world around us. His manuscript, More than a Ballpark: The Baseball Fan Experience as a Window into American Society, examines Americans’ changing understandings of urban areas, inclusion, and the body politic. It analyzes how, amidst significant changes in cities and in leisure consumption patterns, team owners shaped and reshaped the fan experience to reinforce the social hierarchies that existed out side the ballpark. His scholarship has been published in The Journal of Sport History, The Journal of African American History, and Nine: A Journal of Baseball History & Culture among a number of other venues. Along with his Manhattanville Sport Studies colleagues, Dr. Tannenbaum is a co-project director for a National Endowment for the Humanities grant examining the intersection of Latinx studies and sport studies.

All welcome- this seminar is free to attend, but advance registration is required.