RALPH FASANELLA signed WFUNA art envelope original folk artist Baseball 1991
Ralph Fasanella (1914-1997) Painter of the working people Ralph Fasanella died three years ago on December 16, 1997. He was born to Italian immigrants from the province of Bari, Puglia on Labor Day in 1914. That's fitting, since, today, posters of Fasanella's paintings are found in more union halls and workers' homes. His mother, Ginevra, a buttonhole maker and shop steward in the clothing industry, "taught me never to bait people because of color or religion or where they came from." Joe, his father, a teamster and later an iceman, taught him to "shape up," work hard, and keep at it. Fasanella fought in the Spanish Civil War as a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. He also served in the U.S. Navy. He became a United Electrical Workers (UE) Local 1227 member while working at the Morey Machine shop in Brooklyn. In 1938, he became an organizer for various unions under the CIO. "I always thought that you, as a worker, had to get your share," he says. "Organizing was a way to take on the capitalists. When the auto workers had their sit-down strikes, it was the stirring of America." It was during a UE organizing drive that Ralph, out of restlessness, began to draw. "A few things came out and I was getting excited about it." When a friend suggested that he become a painter, Fasanella, now over thirty years old, found his future. His 1948 painting May Day, "just came out of my belly. I never planned it. I don't know how I did it." The painting shows people of all colors and kinds streaming out of the streets and tenements of New York marching together through Union Square. McCarthy-era blacklisting left Fasanella unable to find work. He supported himself by pumping gas at his brother’s garage in the Bronx until his rediscovery in 1972. In October of that year he appeared on the cover of New York magazine which magazine devoted eight pages to the artist and his scenes of working-class life, a major theme on which his reputation is built. His enormous canvases were filled with vibrant city scenes, Yankee baseball games, Coney Island and the subway at rush hour. He also depicted such significant events as the funeral of New York’s congressman, Vito Marcantonio, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Fasanella quickly gained a reputation as the "greatest American primitive painter since Grandma Moses." The artist spent three years in Lawrence, Mass. in the 1970s gathering material for a series of paintings on the city’s labor history, especially the 1912 "Bread and Roses Strike" of more than 20,000 immigrant textile workers. Life was not easy for the artist in Lawrence. He lived in an $18 a week room at the YMCA while completeing 18 canvases including the famed 5x10-foot painting, "Lawrence 1912: The Great Strike." The large canvas was purchased with donations from 15 unions and given to Congress, where it hung for years in the Rayburn Office Building hearing room of the House Subcommittee on Labor and Education. Following the 1994 elections, the new Republican majority in Congress eliminated "labor" from the committee’s name and Fasanella’s painting from the committee’s hearing room. Removing the painting, he said, "was a sign of the potency of the labor movement. The painting was a visual history of the labor experience and the Republicans couldn't stand it. They were ready to bury the labor movement of this country. It was a sign of weakness that they had to bury the truth." A Boston Sunday Globe editorial on Sept. 10, 1995 said the Republican staffer who ordered the removal of the painting had "little grasp of history and even less of art." "Bread and Roses -- Lawrence 1912" now hangs in Flint, Michigan at the Labor and Learning Center. According to Eva Fasanella, the artist’s widow and business manager, "Lawrence 1912" had been the only labor painting in the Capitol. Fasanella’s 1950 painting "Subway Riders" was installed in the subway station at Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street, one of the few oil paintings in the world permanently on view in a public transportation center. In the late 1980s, Ralph and his wife, poster publisher, and partner, Eva, began an initiative called Public Domain to place Fasanella paintings in public places. Today, as a result, visitors to the Great Hall at Ellis Island in New York Harbor can see "Family Supper." In addition, "May Day" is in the James Fenimore Cooper Museum in Cooperstown, New York. "Subway Riders" is the only oil painting permanently installed in the New York City subway. This painting is on display at the Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street stop of the E and F trains in Manhattan. "In this society you have to get up and fight for the betterment of mankind," says Fasanella. "The people who fought for mankind are my heroes." FRANK STELLA (1936 - ) An American painter he abstractionist painter Frank (Philip) Stella’s recent residency at the Phillips Academy in Andover, his alma mater, illustrates why the 62-year-old Malden-born painter ranks among America's most famous living artists. (Not to be confused with Frank D. Stella, the chairman of F.D. Stella Products Co. and chairman of the National Italian American Foundation). Stella returned to his alma mater recently to lecture, discuss his art with students and present the public with a stunning array of works he made in collaboration with printer-publisher Kenneth Tyler. The show at the Addison Gallery of American Art on the Academy campus, entitled "Frank Stella at Tyler Graphics: A Unique Collaboration" ended on January 3, 1999 and was featured on WGBH's Greater Arts Boston. Stella was born on May 12, 1936, in Malden, Massachusetts from first-generation American parents (his paternal grandparents were Sicilian and his maternal, Calabrian). His father, Frank, was a gynecologist in Malden, who worked his way through medical school by painting department store interiors. He viewed painting as an avocation, not a career. He sent his son, Frank, the eldest of three children, to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, for a good education that would prepare him for a respectable profession. There, in a studio art program that provided students with unlimited supplies of materials and great freedom to experiment, Frank began to paint. ''I knew how to paint before I got here,'' he says of his Andover stay. ''My mother went to art school. And my father made me paint the house. He once said his goal was to make paint ''look as good as it was in the can''; the works in his 1960 ''Benjamin Moore'' series were all made with that brand of house paint, which produced a slick, bouncy surface and eliminated pictorial depth. His father (with whom he remained close until his death in 1979) encouraged him to go to the college of his choice, but said the only three he would pay for were Harvard, Yale or Princeton. Stella chose Princeton for its proximity to New York post-Abstract Expressionist art scene. Stella bypassed Boston. ''I've never been a favorite son of the Boston area,'' he says. He recalls the MFA's selling off a major work of his; a museum spokesperson says the MFA has never owned one. The point isn't which side is right. It's that a major American artist feels his hometown hasn't supported him sufficiently. He also recalls that Boston's Federal Reserve Bank covered a big work of his with a temporary wall, and on it hung small paintings ''by my mother and her Rockport friends'' (he also adds that his mother, Constance Stella, who lives in Ipswich, has sold more paintings this year than he has). He's had a happier experience with MIT, which is home to two major Stellas. His 1988 ''Heads or Tails,'' an acrylic and enamel on aluminum work with aquatic references, is in the entrance to the Tang Center of the Sloan School of Management. His 1994 ''Loohooloo'' fills all four walls of a specially designed conference room in the Department of Architecture. Ninety-seven feet long and projecting up to 46 inches away from the wall, it is a complete environment that Stella compares with the one Monet created with his huge waterlily murals in the Orangerie in Paris. Right after his 1958 graduation from Princeton, Stella moved to New York, where he's been based ever since. ''It's not a restful place,'' he says. ''But I don't know how to function anywhere else. I don't want to live on some farm in Vermont.'' In the summer of 1959, Leo Castelli, the Italian-born art dealer already showing Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, invited the 23-year-old Stella to be on his gallery's roster of cutting-edge artists. Stella's fresh approach continued to develop. Using metallic paint on geometrically shaped canvases, he did groups in aluminum, copper and purple. Sticking with stripes and Benjamin Moore house paint, he began using brighter colors for a series of Concentric Squares and Mitered Mazes in 1962-63. His compositions became curvilinear with his Protractor Series, begun in 1967. In the 1970s, the Polish Village paintings were named after synagogues that had been destroyed in Poland by the Nazis. Stella then began etching and painting brightly patterned metal reliefs known as the Brazilian Series, Exotic Birds works and Indian Birds works. His Cones and Pillars were metal reliefs in those shapes with Italian titles from Italo Calvino's Italian Folktales. Chapter titles from Moby Dick identify a late 1980s series of mixed-media abstract constructions and lithographs with a lot of wave imagery. Stella's interest in and appreciation of the Baroque were confirmed during a tenure in Rome in the winter of 1982-83. He loves sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian painting, particularly that of Michelangelo and Caravaggio. Of the two Caravaggio fascinated him more. He asked, "Can we find a mode of pictorial expression that will do for abstraction now what Caravaggio's pictorial genius did for sixteenth-century naturalism and its magnificent successors?" [See article on Caravaggio Exhibit at Boston College]. Stella uses the crisis of representational art in sixteenth-century Italy to illuminate the crisis of abstraction in our time. In 1983, Harvard named him Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry, an honor previously bestowed on such artists as Igor Stravinsky, T.S. Eliot, Bernstein, Luciano Berio, and Italo Calvino. Frank Stella is a unique artist. He struggled with issues which had placed abstract art in a standstill after Mondrian, and looked back to the sixteenth century for solutions. Stella is influenced by the Baroque period, because of parallel situations, but also because of the creation of space. Large-scale pieces of Stella's work grace corporate spaces around the globe, including Saatchi & Saatchi's New York lobby and the outside wall of Pacific Bell in Los Angeles. He explains it this way: "But, after all, the aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live." I'm a society-minded guy. I'm committed to life. But I can't shut myself off from the past. I don't forget yesterday, so I know who I am today. I hang on to what I was yesterday, so I know what I'm going to do tomorrow. – Ralph Fasanella Ralph Fasanella (1914-1997) was a self-taught painter whose body of work is one of the most compelling artistic critiques of post-World War II America. His paintings—bold, colorful, loaded with detail yet unified in composition—speak powerfully of a distinct working-class identity and culture, and of the dignity of labor. They capture the past and express hope for the future. Fasanella had an artistic vision born of a working life. A child of Italian immigrants, he spent his youth delivering ice with his father and enduring the harsh regimen of a Catholic reform school. During the Depression, Fasanella worked in garment factories and as a truck driver. From his mother—a literate, sensitive, and progressive woman—Fasanella acquired a social conscience. Through her influence he became active in antifascist and trade union causes. Soon after he began to paint in 1945, Fasanella mastered a style that allowed him to communicate visually with workers. He captured a profusion of familiar details, boldly showed interiors and exteriors simultaneously, and combined past and future. Fasanella's art became the visual equivalent of street talk—direct, opinionated, improvisational, and passionate. In his paintings, Fasanella sought to provide a blueprint for humankind to change the world. Fasanella's America—the one he never found but never stopped searching for—lay between memory and vision, between loss and hope. Realizing the promise of America required understanding and acknowledging our heritage, sorting out its best qualities, celebrating its triumphs and memorializing its losses. In merging the interests and values of the collective and individual, Fasanella's family becomes our family, his street becomes our street, and the promise of his America—a humane, democratic society that values culture and community—becomes our shared vision. Ralph Fasanella (September 2, 1914 – December 16, 1997) was a self-taught painter whose large, detailed works depicted urban working life and critiqued post-World War II America. Contents [hide] 1 Early life 2 Union organizing career 3 Painting career 3.1 Late public acclaim 3.2 Notable public displays 3.3 Reputation and death 4 Critical assessment 5 Current permanent exhibits 6 Notes 7 References 8 External links Early life[edit] Ralph Fasanella was born to Joseph and Ginevra (Spagnoletti), Italian immigrants, in the Bronx on Labor Day in 1914. He was the third of six children. His father delivered ice to local homes. His mother worked in a neighborhood dress shop drilling holes into buttons, and spent her spare time as an anti-fascist activist. Fasanella spent much of his youth delivering ice with his father from a horse-driven wagon. This experience deeply impressed him. He saw his father as representative of all working men, beaten down day after day and struggling for survival. "Fasanella later said that the compositional density of his pictures was influenced by the experience of helping his father deliver ice, which involved removing all the food from customers' refrigerators and arranging it in neatly ordered stacks."[1] Fasanella's mother was a literate, sensitive, progressive woman. She instilled in Fasanella a strong sense of social justice and political awareness. Fasanella began accompanying his mother when she worked on anti-fascist and trade union causes. Fasanella also helped his mother publish and distribute a small Italian-language, anti-fascist newspaper to help support the family. Joseph Fasanella abandoned his family and returned to Italy in the 1920s. This increased the influence Fasanella's mother had over young Ralph, but it also led to some behavioral problems. Fasanella served two stints in reform schools run by the Catholic Church for truancy and running away from home. He later said he was sexually abused ("used as a girl") by the priests.[2] These experiences instilled a deep dislike for authority and reinforced Fasanella's hatred for anything which broke people's spirits. Fasanella later depicted his experience in reform school in a painting titled Lineup at the Protectory 2 (1961). The melancholy image features rows of boys standing at attention, watched over by scowling, ominous-looking priests. Fasanella quit school after the sixth grade. During the Great Depression, Fasanella worked as a textile worker in garment factories and as a truck driver. He became a member of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) Local 1227 while working as a machinist in Brooklyn. He became strongly aware of the growing economic and social injustice in the U.S., as well as the plight and powerlessness of the working class. In late 1930s, Ralph Fasanella volunteered to fight in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, an American paramilitary force fighting to support the Second Spanish Republic against the successful fascist rebellion led by General Francisco Franco. Union organizing career[edit] After the Spanish Civil War, Fasanella returned to the United States, where he began organizing labor unions. Fasanella joined the UE staff in 1940. He organized a Western Electric manufacturing plant in Manhattan, a Sperry Gyroscope factory, and a number of other electrical equipment and machine plants in and around New York City. One of his later paintings shows a union organizing committee meeting being held in a UE hall. It was during a UE organizing drive in 1940 that Fasanella first began to draw.[3] Fasanella married Matilda Weiss in 1943. The short-lived marriage ended in 1944. Painting career[edit] In the mid-1940s, Fasanella began to suffer from intense finger pain caused by arthritis. A union co-worker suggested that he take up painting as a way to exercise his fingers and ease the pain. In 1945, Fasanella persuaded the UE to organize painting classes for its members at a local college. He was one of the first members to sign up for classes. Fasanella became consumed by art, and left labor union organizing to paint full-time. To pay the bills, he bought a service station and worked there. Fasanella's painting focused on city life, men and women at work, union meetings, strikes, sit-ins and baseball games. He quickly developed a style which spoke to workers and the poor through the use of familiar details. Fasanella improvised a quasi-surrealist style, depicting interiors and exteriors or past and future simultaneously. He painted canvases as big as 10 feet across because he envisioned his paintings hanging in large union meeting halls. " 'I always felt embarrassed by the whole thing,' he said, 'but I had to do it.' "[4] Fasanella's art was highly improvisational. He never planned out works, and rarely revised them. He said of his 1948 painting May Day, it "just came out of my belly. I never planned it. I don't know how I did it."[3] His first solo show was at the ACA Galleries in New York City in 1948. One of his first sales was to choreographer Jerome Robbins. In 1950, Fasanella married Eva Lazorek, a school teacher. They had a son, Marc, and a daughter, Gina. Fasanella's opinionated, leftist-oriented artwork caused him to be blacklisted among art dealers and galleries during the McCarthy era. His wife supported him by teaching school. Fasanella's work, however, remained largely unknown for nearly 30 years. While he was acknowledged within labor and leftist circles, his art remained more of a popular curiosity. Late public acclaim[edit] A self-proclaimed folk-art dealer "discovered" Fasanella in 1972. On October 30, 1972, Fasanella appeared on the cover of New York magazine. The cover depicted him wearing a work shirt and standing in his tiny studio. Accompanying the photo was the headline: "This man pumps gas in the Bronx for a living. He may also be the best primitive painter since Grandma Moses."[5] The New York magazine cover catapulted Fasanella to national fame. Fasanella was happy with his fame, but dismissed descriptions of his work as primitive. Fasanella said it was not possible to be primitive in a post-industrial society. Critic John Berger agreed, pointing out Fasanella's left-liberal critique of urban living, "the violence of the daily necessity of the streets .. the way that the density of the working population makes itself felt."[1] In 1972 he appeared in a major interview, with anchor Patrick Watson, on WNET Channel XIII's groundbreaking newshour The Fifty-First State. This led to the publishers Alfred Knopf and Company, under chief editor Robert Gottlieb, to commission Watson to write the book Fasanella's City, which was richly produced, with superb four-colour reproductions of the artist's work. Now Fasanella's art began to sell. He appeared on The Dick Cavett Show and CBS News Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt, and his work appeared in several documentary films (including one about baseball). A large number of exhibits traveled the U.S. His work brought new respect for folk, urban and working-class art, and encouraged the emerging field of labor culture studies. Fasanella spent three years in Massachusetts in the mid-1970s. He lived in an $18-a-week room at the YMCA while completing 18 canvases. He produced several very large paintings of New England mill towns, three of which depicted the Lawrence textile strike of 1912. He also produced a painting of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and violent, blood-red image of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In 1986, Ron Carver, a union organizer, founded a non-profit organization called Public Domain to raise money and acquire Fasanella works so that they could be displayed in public rather than private collections. Carver was inspired by Fasanella himself, who declared, "I didn't paint my paintings to hang in some rich guy's living room."[5] Notable public displays[edit] Fasanella's 5-foot by 10-foot painting, Lawrence 1912: The Great Strike (also titled Bread and Roses - Lawrence, 1912) was purchased by donations from 15 labor unions and the AFL-CIO. It was loaned to the United States Congress, where it hung for years in the Rayburn Office Building in the hearing room of the House Subcommittee on Labor and Education. Following the 1994 elections, a staffer for the new Republican majority in Congress had the painting removed from the hearing room and returned to the owners.[6] The work now hangs at the Labor Museum and Learning Center in Flint, Michigan. In 1995, Fasanella's 1950 painting, Subway Riders, was installed in the Fifth Avenue / 53rd Street subway station. Fasanella's Family Supper is currently on permanent display in the Great Hall at Ellis Island. Reputation and death[edit] By the end of his life, many of the causes Fasanella fought for no longer enjoyed public favor or had been lost. Fasanella himself lamented the decline in the relevance of his work. "It's over. What I wanted to do was to paint great big canvases about the spirit we used to have in the movement and then go around the country showing them in union halls. When I started these paintings I had no idea that when they were all finished there wouldn't be any union halls in which to show them."[2] It quickly became apparent that much of the public fascination for Fasanella's work had relied on the political and socio-economic messages they contained rather than their artistic appeal. As those messages fell from favor, Fasanella was abandoned by many of his strongest supporters. As he told one reporter: "The other day, I called an old lefty pal at 1199 (the drug and hospital workers' union) and offered them my stuff. 'Forget it Ralph,' he said to me. 'We don't want your stuff.'"[2] At his death, however, he had regained a small measure of popularity. In a press release regarding his death, John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, declared Fasanella to be "a true artist of the people in the tradition of Paul Robeson and Woody Guthrie."[7] A retrospective at the American Folk Art Museum in 2014 presented critics and the public with an opportunity to reassess Fasanella's art and its place in postwar American culture.[8] Critical assessment[edit] Critics praise Fasanella for utilizing bold images and strong colors: His paintings—bold, colorful, loaded with detail yet unified in composition—speak powerfully of a distinct working-class identity and culture, and of the dignity of labor. They capture the past and express hope for the future.[9] Fasanella is also cited for being able to create deeply detailed works with highly individualized parts, yet unifying these scenes into a coherent single image. "Typically, his paintings have hundreds, if not thousands, of individually painted people and buildings. But Fasanella's people are never individuals. They're always seen en masse."[2] Some critics have argued that Fasanella's world is one of simplistic nostalgia for a past that never really existed. But his supporters point to the "anger, anxiety and agitation" which can be found not only in some of the subjects he depicts (strikes, sit-ins) but in the subtle details of his canvases (such as the angry marchers in his May Day). "He has done what he set out to do, paint the heroism of the working class in the organizing struggles of the thirties and the forties and the continuing struggles, the joys and sorrows and the hopes that make up the lives of workers and their families."[5] Current permanent exhibits[edit] Fasanella's paintings may be found in the following permanent collections and public spaces:[10] Fifth Avenue / 53rd Street subway station, New York City, NY Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, NY Communications Workers of America Headquarters Building, Washington, D.C. Ellis Island Immigration Museum, Ellis Island, NY Flint Public Library, Flint, MI Heritage State Park Visitors' Center, Lawrence, MA Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. Labor Museum and Learning Center, Flint, MI Lewiston/Auburn College, University of Southern Maine, Lewiston, ME Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. American Folk Art Museum, New York City, NY New Bedford City Hall, New Bedford, MA New York State Historical Association, Fenimore House Museum, Cooperstown, NY Oakland International Airport Terminal Building, Oakland, CA State Administration Building, Providence, RI Vito Marcantonio Library, Hackensack, NJ (has in its collection 50+ signed Fasanella art prints) Ralph Fasanella (1914–1997) was a working-class New Yorker and renowned painter of “social reality.” Through his colorful and dense compositions, he depicted complex themes of social and political unrest, historic events, the importance of leisure, and the unique energy of New York City and its citizens. Born in the Bronx and raised in New York City’s Little Italy, Fasanella was the son of Italian immigrants who, like so many others, left their country in search of a better life. Fasanella’s working-class identity, formed during those early years, was one that endured throughout his life. Raised by a mother who was involved in labor rights and anti-fascist activism, Fasanella himself became an advocate for unionism and worked as an organizer—most notably for the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America. Immediately prior to his union organizing, he fought against Franco’s army in the Spanish Civil War, as a member of the all-volunteer Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Fasanella’s early activities as a light industry worker and labor organizer gave way to his burgeoning interest in painting. In 1945, at the age of thirty-one, Fasanella began to draw as a way to alleviate pain in his hands. He attended some art classes, but he felt self-conscious about the pretensions of being an “Artist”; he came to terms with it by using his art as a tool to agitate for social change. He eventually transitioned out of his role with the union and devoted himself full time to his painting. Drawing upon the people, places, and social matters that surrounded him, Fasanella quickly developed a body of work and was offered exhibitions at the prominent ACA Galleries in New York in 1946 and 1947. However, after this brief period of art world recognition, Fasanella was blacklisted during the McCarthy era because of his leftist profile, and gallery interest ended abruptly. Through these and ensuing years, he maintained an earnest and consistent effort with his painting, while working at a family-owned gas station in the Bronx to earn an income. In 1972 Fasanella was “discovered” and featured on the cover of New York Magazine. Although he had been producing and showing his work on a regular basis at venues such as union halls, churches, and a variety of public spaces, the feature framed Fasanella as a “primitive” artist—a label he roundly dismissed. Nevertheless, it was this media attention that led to a turning point for Fasanella, who, at the age of fifty-eight, became able to focus his full attention on his artmaking. His incisive visual narratives continue to resonate with contemporary audiences, proclaiming social engagement and action as a primary effect of artistic expression. p211.tif Image: Top: Ice Man Crucified #3, Ralph Fasanella (1914–1997), New York City, 1956, oil on canvas, 48 3/4 x 37 3/4 in., American Folk Art Museum, gift of Patricia L. and Maurice C. Thompson Jr., 1991.11.1. Artistic Contribution Without struggle, there is no reason to live. If you’re not struggling, you don’t deserve to be alive. —Ralph Fasanella For Ralph Fasanella, being an artist was hard work. Like his jobs as truck driver, machinist, union organizer, or gas station operator, Fasanella’s function as an artist was one he took on as a serious responsibility, even when it wasn’t providing an income. The struggle to find and keep gainful employment, to affect change in one’s life, to participate in culture in meaningful ways, and to support one’s family was a defining characteristic for Fasanella, both personally and artistically. Life is together. Fighting together, playing stickball together. People need each other. —Ralph Fasanella Fasanella understood painting as a social process. Observation of and interaction with others was crucial to his approach. The artist depicted his environmental, historical, and human subjects with a careful, highly practiced sense of detail and individuality, often sketching the world around him while riding on the subway, for example, or dining at a luncheonette. People were his passion. He claimed to know every person he painted, and modeled unique characteristics for each of the human figures he placed in his compositions. I think the only time a drawing or a painting is really successful is when you come out of it. The painter has to come out of it himself. —Ralph Fasanella Over the course of Fasanella’s fifty-two years as a practicing artist, his work evolved from the angst and radical politics of his youth, through the social and political engagement of the 1960s and ’70s, and into more personal and nostalgic reflections on his childhood, as in the Iceman Crucified series and other depictions of healthy civic and cultural life. In all of this, his work was bound to memory. Fasanella’s imagery is, in a sense, documentation. His paintings are documents of a certain time and place that the artist wanted to keep as part of the cultural consciousness; to tell stories and instruct the masses. The stories he told were ones of political upheaval, as in McCarthy Press; the monotony of a work-a-day life, as in Subway Riders; or relished moments of leisure and play, as in Coney Island. The elaborate geometries within his compositions helped to make sense of his densely arranged canvases and hold together their narrative structure. In creating these artworks, Fasanella was able to remind himself, and others, where they came from—and where they are going. I may paint flat, but I don’t think flat. —Ralph Fasanella In all of his work, Fasanella strived to depict collective experiences from a wide perspective. The masses of people, the panoramic formats and long angles, the exhaustive detail—all contributed to making Fasanella’s world multidimensional and diverse as a rule. He was able to convey familiar New York City scenes, political events, and immigrant stories so well because they weren’t only the products of observation but a vital part of the artist’s personal, lived experience. Related Materials See Ralph Fasanella’s curriculum vitae See a list of books and films from Ralph Fasanella’s personal library Image: Watergate, Ralph Fasanella (1914–1997), New York City, 1976, oil on canvas, 60 x 90 in., American Folk Art Museum, New York, gift of Eva Fasanella and her children, Gina Mostrando and Marc Fasanella, 2005.5.5. The Ralph Fasanella Collection and Archive at the American Folk Art Museum Since the early 1990s, the American Folk Art Museum has acquired more than one hundred works by the self-taught painter Ralph Fasanella, many of them gifts from the artist and his family. In 2005 the Estate of Ralph Fasanella made a donation of seven large-scale paintings to the American Folk Art Museum, augmenting the institution’s holdings with some of the most distinctive examples from the artist’s corpus. Between 2009 and 2013 the estate gave the museum a major gift of 102 preparatory drawings and sketches, along with a significant archive of Fasanella’s papers, establishing the largest public repository of the artist’s work. The archive, a vast resource for scholarship, includes correspondence, sketchbooks, notebooks, photography, professional records of note, source material, audio-visual media, publications, and clippings. The Ralph Fasanella Collection and Archive preserves and continues the artist’s legacy of social engagement. It is of particular interest to students and scholars who are completing research in the areas of art history, Italian-American culture, labor rights, social activism, and New York City history. Image: Letter to Ralph Fasanella from Studs Terkel, June 30, 1988, American Folk Art Museum Archives, New York. Additional Resources This evolving selection of related resources on Ralph Fasanella and his work spotlights various media and essays by scholars and leading authorities on the artist. Publications • The Utopian Vision of an Immigrant’s Son: The Oil on Canvas Legacy of Ralph Fasanella, by Marc Fasanella • Ralph Fasanella: The Making of a Working-Class Artist, by Paul S. D’Ambrosio • Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget, by Leslie Umberger • Ralph Fasanella: The Public Domain Story, by Ron Carver Exhibitions Self-Taught Genius: Treasures from the American Folk Art Museum Self-Taught Genius considers the shifting implications of a self-taught ideology in the United States, from a widely endorsed and deeply entrenched movement of self-education to its current usage to describe artists creating outside traditional frames of reference and canonical art history. Self-taught art, past and present, blurs frontiers between disciplines, makes definitions look constricted, and forces us to reconsider our assumptions about authoritative systems. These individuals have been active participants in the shaping of American visual culture, influencing generations of artists and establishing lively artistic traditions. Recast as self-taught geniuses, they fit within a pervasive but mutable self-taught culture, reflecting life in America as it has changed and as it has been ambitiously dreamed. Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget Ralph Fasanella celebrated the common man and tackled complex issues of postwar America in colorful, socially minded paintings. This exhibition celebrates the one hundredth anniversary of the artist’s birth and brings together key works from a career spanning fifty-two years. Fasanella was born in the Bronx and grew up in working-class neighborhoods of New York; he became a tireless advocate for laborers’ rights, first as a union organizer and later as a painter. Videos • Ralph Fasanella: A Painter of Working-Class People • Exhibition Talk—Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget • Interview with Ralph Fasanella • Italics: Television for the Italian American Experience, interview with Valérie Rousseau, curator, self-taught art and art brut, American Folk Art Museum, about the exhibition Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget. Credits Coordinated by Dr. Valérie Rousseau, Curator, Self-Taught Art and Art Brut, American Folk Art Museum Research and texts by Juliana Driever, Independent Curator Assisted by Lauren Arnold, Megan Conway, Claudia Grigg Edo, Natasha Gross, Tanya Heinrich, and Ann-Marie Reilly
Fasanella worked as a garment worker, truck driver, ice delivery man, union organizer, and gas station operator before committing himself to painting in 1945. Untrained as an artist, Fasanella developed an astute and accessible style meant to foster social empowerment. His large paintings were conceived as memorial tributes, didactic tools, and rallying cries that made the possibility of a better society palpable to his community. Fasanella is often remembered for his iconic admonition “Lest We Forget”—an impassioned plea to honor the sacrifices of our forebears. Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget unites the artist’s most powerful works in a celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of his birth. Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum with generous support from Tania and Tom Evans, Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. American Folk Art Fund, and Paula and Peter Lunder. The C.F. Foundation in Atlanta supports the museum’s traveling exhibition program, Treasures to Go. The presentation at the American Folk Art Museum is supported in part by Joyce Berger Cowin, the David Davies and Jack Weeden Fund for Exhibitions, the Estate of Ralph Fasanella, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. 6 HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE Featuring five paintings by artist Ralph Fasanella from the American Folk Art Museum that reflect American history and culture, this Teacher’s Guide is designed for high school–level educators. Although classroom teachers across the city, state, and nation often cover similar content, each educator has a distinct approach to engaging their learners in the material. In response, the museum’s education team has created a guide to borrow from and build on to meet the needs of your specific classroom environment and teaching style. There are multiple objectives for using this guide. One goal is to empower educators working with students in high school and with varying abilities to teach from the collection images presented here, and to encourage the teaching of American history through an exploration of folk and self-taught art. Another is to encourage students to ask critical questions when investigating visual art as a primary source. We hope that this material will support dynamic learning in your classroom and help your students draw parallels with subjects they are already studying. For each work of art in this guide, you will find an accompanying color reproduction, background information on the object and its creator, and a list of resources that help illuminate the work. In addition, each lesson plan contains questions to spark discussion as well as suggestions for related activities and projects for students meant to extend their learning even further. The questions section is separated into three categories: Questions for Careful Looking ask students to observe each object in great detail and then work together to decode what they see, Questions for Further Discussion tie in threads of background information on the objects to further the looking process, and Questions for Context help students identify and understand the cultural climate in which the object was created—unlike the Questions for Careful Looking, they encourage students to consider their responses independent of the artwork. Depending on the contextual information your students already have about the originating time and place of the object, you might want to ask these questions before or after students discuss what they see in the image. Please note that several of the following lessons also include images of simulated projects contained in the Suggested Activities heading—some are completed project demonstrations, while others offer detail or process shots of the activities you may want to try in your classroom. Whether you are in the museum or your own classroom, we are certain that you will discover new and inspiring ways to integrate folk and self-taught art into your teaching to make American history and culture come alive for your students! 7 TEACHING FROM IMAGES AND OBJECTS Object-based learning, particularly from museum collections, activates students’ powers of observation, interpretation, and analysis. At the American Folk Art Museum, our teaching methodology is inquiry-based and discussion-driven. Through facilitated conversation about objects, students construct their own interpretations of the works, thus establishing ownership of their ideas and cultivating confidence and pride in learning. As students link their observations and interpretations to those of their peers and bring their prior knowledge into the conversation, the class develops a collective body of knowledge, while individuals hone their critical thinking skills. We recommend a few techniques that will help you guide students through the meaning-making process as you facilitate discussions about works of art: Invite students to look carefully. Start by asking students to take a minute to look silently at the work of art. At first, this process might be uncomfortable for students who are not accustomed to silent looking, but it will become easier with each new image. This invitation to look is essential; we are rarely encouraged to slow down to make observations. By spending a few moments together examining the image, students will start the lesson with a shared experience. Use repetition in your Questions for Careful Looking. Repeat questions you have posed to your students with different objects so they can anticipate the questions and feel comfortable responding. Repetition will help students better understand questions they might not have understood the first time, and it will provide them with a series of useful starting-point questions for when they approach an image on their own. Engage students through open-ended questions. Open-ended questions create space for multiple viewpoints and more than one “right” answer. In addition, these types of questions encourage discussion as opposed to single-word answers. When asked to respond to an open-ended question, students are invited to participate and share their ideas without fear of giving the “wrong” answer. Paraphrase all students’ comments. As students offer their ideas and interpretations, paraphrase their comments to ensure that the whole group has heard each student’s ideas. In addition, by voicing a student’s comment in different words, you validate that comment and let the student know that you have heard the idea and understood it. Be sure to paraphrase all comments in a way that does not suggest that one comment is more valuable than another. 8 Introduce new vocabulary in authentic ways. As you paraphrase students’ comments, attempt to balance the vocabulary that students already have with new words. Vocabulary is best acquired when presented in context, and a discussion about a work of art in which everyone is focused on a shared stationary image provides a perfect opportunity for this experience. Ask students to support all observations and interpretations. Ask students to back up their inferences and ideas with evidence from the work of art to legitimize their interpretations. Ask for visual evidence even when an interpretation seems obvious. Point to elements of the image to which students refer. If you have the opportunity to project an image of a work of art, point to areas of the picture that students address in their comments. This helps ground each comment and ensures that all students can see the element being discussed. Weave background information into the discussion in appropriate and authentic ways. As students develop their interpretations of the work of art, you may want to share threads of background information with the group. Information about the object should further the looking process, contextualize the artwork for students, or appropriately challenge the group to push the limits of their thinking. At the beginning of each lesson, you will find Questions for Careful Looking. At times these questions relate specifically to details in the work of art, while in other instances they have a more general scope, and they may appear in multiple lessons in this Curriculum Guide. Both types of questions are equally important in the discussion, but the latter—the more general question—is critical in order for all possible observations to be heard. However, if a general discussion seems to have tapered off, simply asking for further detailed observations can revitalize conversation and allow students who haven’t yet shared ideas to find new layers and meaning in the object and lead the group in new directions. By beginning your discussion of an artwork with concrete observations, you ensure that all students have the same starting point. As the discussion progresses, students will naturally apply a historical context to the work; with markedly increasing ease, they will piece together what they see with what they know. At the same time, they will gain confidence in asking questions about what they see and seeking the information to answer them. As a result, students will use what they have taken from the conversation and apply it to the ensuing project. In the process, students will also gain experience scrutinizing primary sources and works of art in general, while at the same time cultivating their visual literacy and critical-thinking skills. 9 NEW YORK STATE LEARNING STANDARDS The lessons in this Curriculum Guide address a variety of New York State Learning Standards, all strands of the New York City Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Arts, and Common Core Standards (www.corestandards.org). Because lesson plans are designed to be adapted and tailored by educators, they are not accompanied by individual lists of standards addressed. The standards listed below reflect those inherent in many of the lessons and programs in the museum. The Arts: New York State Learning Standards Standard 1: Students will actively engage in the processes that constitute creation and performance in the arts and participate in various roles in the arts. Standard 2: Students will be knowledgeable about and make use of the materials and resources available for participation in arts in various roles. Standard 3: Students will respond critically to a variety of works in the arts, connecting the individual work to other works and to other aspects of human endeavor and thought. Standard 4: Students will develop an understanding of the personal and cultural forces that shape artistic communication and how the arts in turn shape the diverse cultures of past and present society. Social Studies: New York State Learning Standards Standard 1: Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in the history of the United States and New York. Standard 2: Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in world history and examine the broad sweep of history from a variety of perspectives. Standard 3: Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the geography of the interdependent world in which we live—local, national, and global— including the distribution of people, places, and environments over the Earth’s surface. Standard 4: Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of how the United States and other societies develop economic systems and associated institutions to allocate scarce resources; how major decision-making units function in the United States and other national economies; and how an economy solves the scarcity problem through market and nonmarket mechanisms. Standard 5: Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the necessity for establishing governments; the governmental system of the United States and other nations; the U.S. Constitution; the basic civic values of American constitutional democracy; and the roles, rights, and responsibilities of citizenship, including avenues of participation. 10 English Language Arts: New York State Learning Standards Standard 1: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for information and understanding. Standard 2: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for literary response and expression. Standard 3: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for critical analysis and evaluation. Standard 4: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for social interaction. Mathematics, Science, and Technology: New York State Learning Standards Standard 1: Students will use mathematical analysis, scientific inquiry, and engineering design, as appropriate, to pose questions, seek answers, and develop solutions. Standard 3: Students will understand mathematics and become mathematically confident by communicating and reasoning mathematically; by applying mathematics in real-world settings; and by solving problems through the integrated study of number systems, geometry, algebra, data analysis, probability, and trigonometry. New York City Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Arts Strand 1: Artmaking Strand 2: Literacy in the Arts Strand 3: Making Social, Cultural, and Historical Connections Strand 4: Community and Cultural Resources Strand 5: Careers and Life-Long Learning in Visual Arts 11 Farewell, Comrade—The End of the Cold War Ralph Fasanella (1914–1999) and unidentified artist New York City; 1992–1997 (Ralph Fasanella); c. 1998–1999 (unidentitfied artist) Oil on canvas; 59 3/4 x 88 1/2" American Folk Art Museum, gift of Eva Fasanella and her children, Gina Mostrando and Marc Fasanella 2005.5.3 BACKGROUND INFORMATION Fasanella’s final painting captures the artist’s internal conflicts following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which signaled the end of the Russian experiment with socialism. Fasanella was a staunch socialist and anti-fascist. As a youth he was a member of the Young Communist League, and in the 1930s he volunteered for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight against fascism during the Spanish Civil War. A laborer and union organizer, Fasanella feared a society in which the drive for profit trumped the welfare of its people. In this complex image, intended as the central panel of a triptych, the artist employs American news sources and sports idioms to chart an intricate history. Lenin lies in state in a packed stadium; stacks of books symbolize the intellectual pillars that supported the socialist enterprise with titles that identify those who heroically battled for economic and social justice. Oversized covers of the New York Times and New York Post succinctly call the game’s outcome: “Gorbachev . . . Fumbles the Ball” and “Yanks Win Big.” Fasanella passed away before the work had been fully realized. Shortly after his death, his wife, Eva, hired a painter (who has yet to be identitfied) to put the finishing touches on this piece. RESOURCES Applebaum, Anne. “How the Pope ‘Defeated’ Communism.” Washington Post, April 6, 2005. . D’Ambrosio, Paul S. Ralph Fasanella’s America. Cooperstown, NY: Fenimore Art Museum, 2001. Hollander, Stacy C., and Brooke Davis Anderson. American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum. New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001. Lugovskaya, Nina. I Want to Live: The Diary of a Young Girl in Stalin’s Russia. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Ross, Stewart. The Collapse of Communism (Witness to History). Chicago: Heinemann Library, 2004. Tucker, Robert C., ed. The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978. Watson, Patrick. Fasanella’s City: The Paintings of Ralph Fasanella with the Story of His Life and Art. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. 12 Farewell, Comrade—The End of the Cold War 13 QUESTIONS FOR CAREFUL LOOKING • What is going on in this painting? What do you see that makes you say that? • Where does your eye go first? Why do you think that is? • How is the painting organized? • What color predominates in this painting? What can you say about the artist’s use of color? QUESTIONS FOR FURTHE R DISCUSSION • Read all of the text in the painting, starting with the headlines at the top, and then the rest from left to right. Group the words and phrases together by writing them on a board—make a column for people, for places, for facts, and for opinions. What are the major concerns in this painting? • This painting is titled Farewell, Comrade—The End of the Cold War. How does that add to your understanding of the text? What was the Cold War? • Who is lying in the coffin in the center of the composition? How can you tell? • Notice the stacks of books surrounding Vladimir Lenin’s coffin. Can you read the names of the authors on their covers? What place does literature have in this work of art? • Where do you see groups of people? They are depicted in the subway, at a bar, and at a political rally. What do these places have in common? How are they different? • In the bottom right corner of the painting, people are playing pool and are labeled “World Powers.” Why might Fasanella depict world leaders in this way? • How would you describe the tone or mood of this work? QUESTIONS FOR CONTEXT • This painting concerns different economic systems: socialism, communism, and capitalism. What do you know about each? • Vladimir Lenin was the former premier of the USSR. Under his rule, the Russian Empire became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a single-party, socialist state in which the government controlled most of the property and resources. Lenin died in 1924, but the events depicted in this painting—the fall of the USSR—took place in 1991. Using clues from the painting, describe how and why Fasanella used Lenin’s death as a metaphor for current events. • Who is the man in the white garments in the bottom left of the painting? Pope John Paul II is often thought to have contributed to the USSR’s downfall. Practicing religion was outlawed in the USSR; the Pope rallied against that law and other principles of socialism. Does Fasanella depict him in a positive or negative way here? What makes you say that? • Fasanella had a personal connection to the events depicted in this painting. He was a member of the Young Communist League and believed strongly in socialism. Socialism can be viewed as the distribution of wealth throughout a community, as opposed to capitalism, in which wealth can be accumulated by just a few. Why might socialism have been appealing to Fasanella, a laborer and union worker? 14 SUGGES TED ACTIVITIES • Newspapers feature prominently in this painting. Ask students to research articles on the 1991 collapse of the USSR using a computer or the library. Make a list of actual headlines in several newspapers— the New York Times and your local paper, for example—and compare them to the headlines in Fasanella’s painting. • Ask students to keep track of what people in their communities (classmates, families, riders on the subway, and anyone else they encounter) are reading, over the course of a week. Have students note book titles, newspaper headlines, magazines, etc., and create a class collage to see what patterns, if any, emerge. What can they tell about their current historical moment, based on the materials that people around them are reading? • Stage a debate: Can socialism work? Ask half the class to take the stance that it can, and the other half that it cannot. Have them research and argue their positions. 15 McCarthy Press Ralph Fasanella (1914–1997) New York City; 1958 Oil on canvas; 40 x 70" American Folk Art Museum, gift of Eva Fasanella and her children, Gina Mostrando and Marc Fasanella, 2005.5.6 BACKGROUND INFORMATION Fasanella sounds a rallying cry in McCarthy Press. His goal was not to make martyrs out of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the American couple convicted and executed for treason related to passing information about the atomic bomb to the USSR, but rather to illuminate the injustice of their death. Laden with symbolism and dark imagery, the painting is dominated by a large, central letter A, crowned with a devilish totem to symbolize both the atomic bomb and the intense paranoia that dominated the era. McCarthy Press is a dark composition, set after the Rosenberg’s execution. Their images appear in the newspaper at the center of the painting. A crane lowers their coffins into the ground while icons of democracy loom against a bloodred sky. The canvas is peppered with symbols of the powerful United States government: the Capitol Building with a view of a secret military meeting; the Lincoln Memorial; the Supreme Court; and the Washington Monument, with the Sing Sing prison unit where the Rosenbergs were held replacing the reflecting pool. Signboards across the skyline bear the pleading message, Save. Fond of employing signage to comment on American consumerism, Fasanella imbues it here with a more somber message: “We can save anything in America— but we couldn’t save two people.” RESOURCES D’Ambrosio, Paul S. Ralph Fasanella’s America. Cooperstown, NY: Fenimore Art Museum, 2001. Hollander, Stacy C., and Brooke Davis Anderson. American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum. New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001. Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003. Schrecker, Ellen W. Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. Taylor, David. The Cold War (20th Century Perspectives). Chicago: Reed Educational & Professional, 2001. Watson, Patrick. Fasanella’s City: The Paintings of Ralph Fasanella with the Story of His Life and Art. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. Zinn, Howard and Rebecca Stefoff. A Young People’s History of the United States: Columbus to the War on Terror. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007. 16 McCarthy Press 17 QUESTIONS FOR CAREFUL LOOKING • Make a list of all of the different elements you see in this painting. Once you think you’ve noted everything, add three more items. • What colors do you see? Where? • Talk about scale in this painting. Is it realistic? What makes you say that? • What is the mood or tone of this painting? QUESTIONS FOR FURTHE R DISCUSSION • This painting is organized around a gigantic letter A, which stands for the atomic bomb. How did Fasanella use the letter to structure the painting? • What buildings do you recognize in this painting? What does the inclusion of symbols of the United States capital tell you about Fasanella and his artwork? • Read some of the newspaper headlines and signs in the center of the painting. How do they relate to the rest of the imagery? • Talk about the crane at the lower center of the painting. What is it doing? • To the left of the crane, there is a wall with two yellow eyes peering out. What might the artist be suggesting by giving eyes to a wall? • What do you make of the large red image at the upper center of the painting? • There are many different scenes happening at the same time in this artwork. How would your viewing experience be different if each scene were its own painting? What would be gained? What would be lost? QUESTIONS FOR CONTEXT • This painting is called McCarthy Press. Take that phrase apart—what does “press” refer to in this work? What do you know about Senator Joseph McCarthy? During the Cold War, a period of tension chiefly between the United States and the USSR from the 1940s through the 1990s, McCarthy crusaded against communism. As a member of the Young Communist League, how might Fasanella have felt about McCarthy? What evidence can you find in this painting to support your ideas? • The painting also concerns the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for treason. The Rosenbergs were convicted of passing secrets regarding the atomic bomb to the USSR. Where do you see them in this painting? Why might Fasenella have chosen to portray them dead rather than alive? • In this painting, Fasanella implicates the government in the Rosenbergs’s execution. Where and how does Fasanella depict the government? How are the people involved portrayed? • Many people believed that the charges against the Rosenbergs were unfair and that the USSR did not benefit greatly from the intelligence they passed on. It is also widely thought that Ethel was charged in an attempt to pressure Julius into confessing to treason, not because she was directly involved. How do you see these beliefs playing out in the painting? • There was a campaign to save the Rosenbergs from execution. How is this campaign documented in the painting? Do you think Fasanella was for or against the Rosenbergs’ execution? Why? • Just under the lower left corner of the central A, there is a billboard that reads “go see Arthur Miller Crucible.” The Crucible is a 1953 play that concerns the Salem Witch Trials. How does that detail relate to the themes of the artwork? • Communism is associated with the color red. Senator McCarthy’s hunt for American communists was called the Red Scare. How did Fasanella use both the color red and the word red in this painting? 18 SUGGES TED ACTIVITIES • Ask students to sketch a small portion of the painting without telling anyone which section they’ve chosen. After they’ve sketched for ten minutes, ask them to switch papers with a classmate and to find the detail that the other person sketched in the larger composition. Use the activity to fuel a conversation about the complicated, multilayered, and active nature of Fasanella’s artwork. • Fasanella organized McCarthy Press around the letter A, for the atomic bomb. Ask students to create their own drawing based around a letter that relates to current events. • Pair a study of this painting and McCarthyism with a study of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible and the Salem Witch Trials. Ask students to write about or discuss the parallels between the “witch hunts” in both eras. 19 BLIND NEWSDEALER Ralph Fasanella (1914–1997) New York City; 1947 Oil on canvas; 39 x 39" Gift of Eva Fasanella and her children, Gina Mostrando and Marc Fasanella, 2004.27.1 BACKGROUND INFORMATION Ralph Fasanella was born in New York City and was the son of Italian immigrants. Early in his life, Fasanella developed an intense feeling for the struggles of working people. In 1938, at the age of 24, he took a job as a union organizer, and as early as the 1940s he experienced an urge to draw. By the 1950s he was painting every evening. His subjects reflected his strong ideological commitment to organized labor and to those who he believed were economically exploited. Besides providing a forum for his social and political views, painting opened up an outlet for Fasanella’s creativity. Blind Newsdealer is a subject that Fasanella painted several times, and the scene is a typical Manhattan cityscape. The newsdealer is depicted in the center of the painting wearing dark glasses, surrounded by newspapers organized in neat, sorted stacks—the Times, the Herald Tribune, the Sun, and the News. RESOURCES American Folk Art Museum website. “Online Adjunct to Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget.” www.folkartmuseum.org/fasanellacollection Community Learning Network. “Advertising in the Media Theme Page.” www.cln.org/themes/ media_advert.html. D’Ambrosio, Paul S. Ralph Fasanella’s America. Cooperstown, NY: Fenimore Art Museum, 2001. Hollander, Stacy C., and Brooke Davis Anderson. American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum. New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001. Watson, Patrick. Fasanella’s City: The Paintings of Ralph Fasanella with the Story of His Life and Art. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. 20 Blind Newsdealer 21 QUESTIONS FOR CAREFUL LOOKING • What is happening in this painting? • What can we say about the place depicted in the painting? • How does the composition lead your eye through the work? • What more can you find? QUESTIONS FOR FURTHE R DISCUSSION • Look closely at the words on the newspapers in the painting. How do the headlines compare with ones you see today? • Fasanella tells us in the title that the newsdealer in the painting is blind. To what do you think the newsdealer is blind? What do you see that he does not? How does Fasanella use the metaphor of blindness? • The newsstand in Fasanella’s painting is covered with images of women. How are the women depicted? What messages about gender does the artist communicate? • The words beauty and love are featured prominently in the newsstand. What roles do these two concepts play in the painting? • Do you think the newsstand acts as a confining element for the newsdealer, or a sanctuary? What visual clues lead you to this conclusion? • Fasanella is known for his sympathetic treatment of labor issues and as a champion of working people. How does this painting relate to these themes? What commentary, if any, does the artist inject into the image? • Do you think the themes in this painting are still relevant today? QUESTIONS FOR CONTEXT • What were some of the major stories one might have been able to read about at this newsstand in 1947, when the painting was made? • How has the recent emergence of online news sources affected the print media you might find at a newsstand today? • Do you think there is there a kind of “blindness” in today’s news media? If so, how? SUGGES TED ACTIVITIES • Have students collect headlines from various news publications in their communities and develop a written response to what they discover. What are some critical modern-day social issues, and how are headlines indications of these issues? • Have an in-class journalism competition. Ask students to research underreported issues relevant to their community. What important stories are not being told? Ask students to submit their activist articles to their school or local community newspaper. • Have students investigate the depiction of both men and women in the media. How do these portrayals compare with each other? • Ask students to visit local newsstands and to survey the available publications. Interview the vendor to learn about how publications are selected for sale, and which are most popular with buyers. 22 Iceman Crucified #3 Ralph Fasanella (1914–1997) New York City; 1956 Oil on canvas; 48 3/4 x 37 3/4" Gift of Patricia L. and Maurice C. Thompson Jr., 1991.11.1 BACKGROUND INFORMATION The Iceman Crucified series encapsulates some of Ralph Fasanella’s most powerful and poignant artistic themes. The series was a turning point for Fasanella; his artistic vision broke free from the confines of realism and his imagery became deeply personal. In Iceman Crucified #3, his father—Joe the Iceman—is cast as the crucified Christ to explore ideas of suffering and sacrifice, memory and personal growth. Fasanella “began to see his father as the Christ; the cursing and bitterness were not, in the end, demeaning—they were the sweat and the protest of the stations of the cross. And the blind, inescapable, unrelieved, mind clouding daily agony with the ice was the Calvary” (Watson, 140). As a child, Fasanella worked alongside his father on an ice delivery route, putting in long, hard days on tough streets. As a result of this upbringing, Fasanella developed an enduring and passionate commitment to the struggles of working people. The subject of the painting may be the artist’s father, but the painting is no less a reflection of Fasanella’s social conscience than are his mural-size depictions of striking workers. RESOURCES American Folk Art Museum website. “Online Adjunct to Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget.” Paul S. Ralph Fasanella’s America. Cooperstown, NY: Fenimore Art Museum, 2001. Watson, Patrick. Fasanella’s City: The Paintings of Ralph Fasanella with the Story of His Life and Art. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. 23 Iceman Crucified #3 24 QUESTIONS FOR CAREFUL LOOKING • What is happening in this painting? • What can you say about the setting? • What clues are there to indicate when this scene took place? • What symbolism can you find? • What are the effects of incorporating text into the images? QUESTIONS FOR FURTHE R DISCUSSION • What commentary does this painting give on commerce in the twentieth century? What changes have there been since this painting was created? Have those changes improved our quality of life? • What was Fasanella’s viewpoint of New York City, as communicated through this work of art? What elements of that viewpoint do you identify with? • Does this image portray your idea of the “American Dream”? What do you notice in this image that informs your opinion? • Fasanella’s Iceman Crucified #3 is teeming with many different people. How does his depiction of peoples’ roles in economic systems relate to the attitude toward industry in the time this was painted? QUESTIONS FOR CONTEXT • What is an iceman? When did the profession become obsolete? • What is martyrdom? In the American social strata, what kinds of people are most often martyred? How so? • The U.S. national minimum hourly wage was established in 1938. Though the iceman depicted here was likely self-employed and therefore not a recipient of an hourly wage, the plight of the blue-collar worker was the impetus for changing labor laws during the time this painting was created. Chart the progression of the minimum wage on both state and federal levels from 1938 to the present. What is the federal minimum wage today? What is the minimum wage in your state? And what were they in 1956, when Iceman Crucified #3 was created? • What is globalization? What effects has it had here in the United States and abroad? SUGGES TED ACTIVITIES • This painting depicts part of the process of distribution through manual labor. Ask students to track the pathways that various products take as they are transported around the globe, and then have them develop a written piece in the voice of one of the products. For example, what journey does a banana take from its place of origin to our kitchen table? • Research various “living wage” campaigns being staged locally and nationally. Does the minimum federal wage, as it currently stands, meet people’s needs? Does the state minimum wage meet people’s needs, where you live? Ask students to simulate being the head of their household and then translate sample hourly wages into weekly and monthly totals. Based on real-life research, have students create a monthly budget for a family of four. Have students share their discoveries as a class. • Ask students to examine archival photographs of their community, and then photograph that same community as it is today—at the same locations pictured in the archival photos, when possible. What has changed? What remains the same? 25 American Heritage Ralph Fasanella (1914–1997) New York City; 1974 Oil on canvas; 50 x 80" Gift of Eva Fasanella and her children, Gina Mostrando and Marc Fasanella, 2005.5.1 BACKGROUND INFORMATION Fasanella became increasingly dissatisfied with American politics in the wake of the civil rights movement. American Heritage appears at first to be a patriotic scene at the White House; a closer look reveals instead a mass funeral for the many lost souls of the era, from President John F. Kennedy to the slain civil rights workers of Mississippi. Flanked by their own coffins, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg loom as ghostly martyrs. An oversize peace dove appears mockingly above politicians who seem unable to grasp the basics of human dignity and equality. RESOURCES American Folk Art Museum website. “Online Adjunct to Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget.” www.folkartmuseum.org/fasanellacollection D’Ambrosio, Paul S. Ralph Fasanella’s America. Cooperstown, NY: Fenimore Art Museum, 2001. Hollander, Stacy C., and Brooke Davis Anderson. American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum. New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001. Kaufman, Stuart B. “Labor’s Heritage.” Quarterly of The George Meany Memorial Archives 1, no. 4 (1989). Watson, Patrick. Fasanella’s City: The Paintings of Ralph Fasanella with the Story of His Life and Art. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. 26 American Heritage 27 QUESTIONS FOR CAREFUL LOOKING • What story or stories can you find in this image? • What strikes you about these figures? • What would you title this painting? • If you could cut the scene into different pieces, where would the divisions be? • What can you say about the overall mood? QUESTIONS FOR FURTHE R DISCUSSION • The title of this painting is American Heritage. How does the title affect your interpretation of the painting? Does this image correspond to your idea of American heritage? • Ralph Fasanella is known for the socially conscious and political messages in his paintings. How do you interpret the artist’s sentiments about the 1960s? Do you think this is a patriotic image? • Are the ideas in this painting applicable to today’s political climate? Which elements are still relevant? How would you update this painting for a modern-day audience? • Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the only Americans found guilty of and executed for treason during the Cold War, appear prominently in the center of the composition. Why would the artist have placed the couple centrally in the painting? • Fasanella was accused of being unpatriotic during the McCarthy era for his leftist associations. How might a McCarthy supporter interpret this image? • The artist condensed several important Washington, D.C., landmarks into his composition. How does this device impact the narrative? QUESTIONS FOR CONTEXT • Who are the people whose names appear at the bottom of the painting? How did they contribute to the cultural climate of the 1960s? • Which Washington, D.C., landmarks appear in this painting? What is the function of each of these buildings, or whom do they memorialize? • How did the intense anti-communist feeling of McCarthyism impact American culture in the middle of the twentieth century? Are the effects still felt today? SUGGES TED ACTIVITIES • Have students create a class painting reflecting the style of Ralph Fasanella. Rather than addressing the 1960s, consider another decade in American history. What will they include? What will they exclude? • Have students write an obituary for each of the individuals whose names appear at the bottom of the painting. Alternatively, ask students to write newspaper articles chronicling the work of these individuals. • Ask students to research the life and work of Fasanella. What patterns can be found in his paintings? How does knowledge of his biography affect the interpretations of his work? 28 GLOSSARY capitalism An economic system in which people, rather than the government, own goods, wealth, and property. Cold War A period of tension, of struggle for power, and of conflict in beliefs (particularly communism vs. capitalism) which existed primarily between the USSR and the United States and lasted roughly from the 1940s–1991. The fear that either of these two superpowers might use the atomic bomb predominated during the Cold War. communism An economic system in which the government, rather than people, own goods, wealth, and property. comrade A member of the Communist Party. Lenin, Vladimir (1870–1924) The Communist leader who led a revolution to establish the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. McCarthy, Senator Joseph (1908–1957) A Republican senator from Wisconsin who, during the 1950s Cold War–era, insisted that there were communist and socialist spies in the United States that needed to be identified and prosecuted. He also attempted to remove politicians from office whom he accused of homosexuality. His claims were unsubstantiated and his methods were characterized by a failure to follow due process. McCarthyism The term for Senator Joseph McCarthy’s practices and the broader anti-communist crusade. It is now used for other similar mass-persecutions and unsubstantiated accusations. 29 Red Scare A term for extreme anti-communism during the Cold War. It is named after the red color of the USSR’s flag. Rosenberg, Ethel (1915–1953) and Julius Rosenberg (1918–1953) An American married couple convicted of conspiring to commit espionage by passing secrets about the atomic bomb to the USSR. They were executed by electric chair in 1953. socialism An economic system in which goods, wealth, and property are distributed equally by the government to its people. Stalin, Joseph (1878–1953) The leader of the USSR, after Lenin’s death in 1924, until his death in 1953. He transformed the USSR from an agrarian nation into an industrial superpower, using brutal tactics, including forced labor camps and executions of those who opposed him. USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, governed as a single socialist state, from 1922–1991. 30 Print and Online resources American Folk Art Museum website. “Online Adjunct to Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget.” www.folkartmuseum.org/fasanellacollection Applebaum, Anne. “How the Pope ‘Defeated’ Communism.” Washington Post, April 6, 2005. . ited States: Columbus to the War on Terror. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007. 32 VISITING THE AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM STUDEN T AND ED UCATOR PROGRAMS The American Folk Art Museum offers a range of discussion-based gallery and artmaking programs for students, including single visits and multisession museum–school partnerships. For more information on current programs for students or additional educator programs, please Information about all programs can also be found on the museum’s website, www.folkartmuseum.org. TOURS, PRE-K TO GRADE 12 Offered September–June, Monday–Friday, 10:30 am –4:30 pm All programs are discussion-based and interactive and are led by experienced educators. Students will further develop their critical-thinking skills through dynamic conversations and activities centered on works of art. Programs relate to the New York State Learning Standards and the New York City Curriculum Blueprint. The program you choose will be customized for your students’ age group and abilities, and the museum welcomes inclusion classes and students with disabilities or special needs. The museum can accommodate up to thirty students at time. The museum offers a series of themed tours—including Introduction to Folk Art, People and Places, and Artists’ Materials & Process—that can be tailored for any age group. All groups have the option to sketch as part of the gallery experience and access the museum’s Touch Collection. For the complete list of tour themes, descriptions, and fee structure, visit www.folkartmuseum.org. MUSE UM–SCHOOL PA RTNE RSH IPS Multisession collaborations between the museum’s education department and schools combine exhibitionbased programs with specialized classroom visits by an experienced museum educator. These multiplevisit school partnerships provide students with a unique opportunity to hone their critical-thinking skills and powers of observation. Customized to meet each school’s objectives, school partnerships can also include artmaking workshops, professional development for school staff, and programs for families. School partnerships are appropriate for all age levels. A listing of sample partnership programs can be found at www.folkartmuseum.org. 33 RESOURCES FOR ED UCATORS You are invited to create a workshop specifically for your staff at the grade, school, or regional level. Museum educators will work with you to develop a program that meets the needs of your specific group. The museum also offers additional free curriculum guides that
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding team, called the pitcher, throws a ball that a player on the batting team, called the batter, tries to hit with a bat. The objective of the offensive team (batting team) is to hit the ball into the field of play, away from the other team's players, allowing its players to run the bases, having them advance counter-clockwise around four bases to score what are called "runs". The objective of the defensive team (referred to as the fielding team) is to prevent batters from becoming runners, and to prevent runners' advance around the bases.[2] A run is scored when a runner legally advances around the bases in order and touches home plate (the place where the player started as a batter). The principal objective of the batting team is to have a player reach first base safely; this generally occurs either when the batter hits the ball and reaches first base before an opponent retrieves the ball and touches the base, or when the pitcher persists in throwing the ball out of the batter's reach. Players on the batting team who reach first base without being called "out" can attempt to advance to subsequent bases as a runner, either immediately or during teammates' turns batting. The fielding team tries to prevent runs by getting batters or runners "out", which forces them out of the field of play. The pitcher can get the batter out by throwing three pitches which result in strikes, while fielders can get the batter out by catching a batted ball before it touches the ground, and can get a runner out by tagging them with the ball while the runner is not touching a base. The opposing teams switch back and forth between batting and fielding; the batting team's turn to bat is over once the fielding team records three outs. One turn batting for each team constitutes an inning. A game is usually composed of nine innings, and the team with the greater number of runs at the end of the game wins. Most games end after the ninth inning, but if scores are tied at that point, extra innings are usually played. Baseball has no game clock, though some competitions feature pace-of-play regulations such as the pitch clock to shorten game time. Baseball evolved from older bat-and-ball games already being played in England by the mid-18th century. This game was brought by immigrants to North America, where the modern version developed. Baseball's American origins, as well as its reputation as a source of escapism during troubled points in American history such as the American Civil War and the Great Depression, have led the sport to receive the moniker of "America's Pastime"; since the late 19th century, it has been unofficially recognized as the national sport of the United States, though in modern times is considered less popular than other sports, such as American football. In addition to North America, baseball is considered the most popular sport in parts of Central and South America, the Caribbean, and East Asia, particularly in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. In Major League Baseball (MLB), the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, teams are divided into the National League (NL) and American League (AL), each with three divisions: East, West, and Central. The MLB champion is determined by playoffs that culminate in the World Series. The top level of play is similarly split in Japan between the Central and Pacific Leagues and in Cuba between the West League and East League. The World Baseball Classic, organized by the World Baseball Softball Confederation, is the major international competition of the sport and attracts the top national teams from around the world. Baseball was played at the Olympic Games from 1992 to 2008, and was reinstated in 2020. Rules and gameplay Further information: Baseball rules and Outline of baseball Diagram of a baseball field Diamond may refer to the square area defined by the four bases or to the entire playing field. The dimensions given are for professional and professional-style games. Children often play on smaller fields. 2013 World Baseball Classic championship match between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, March 20, 2013 A baseball game is played between two teams, each usually composed of nine players, that take turns playing offense (batting and baserunning) and defense (pitching and fielding). A pair of turns, one at bat and one in the field, by each team constitutes an inning. A game consists of nine innings (seven innings at the high school level and in doubleheaders in college, Minor League Baseball and, since the 2020 season, Major League Baseball; and six innings at the Little League level).[3] One team—customarily the visiting team—bats in the top, or first half, of every inning. The other team—customarily the home team—bats in the bottom, or second half, of every inning. The goal of the game is to score more points (runs) than the other team. The players on the team at bat attempt to score runs by touching all four bases, in order, set at the corners of the square-shaped baseball diamond. A player bats at home plate and must attempt to safely reach a base before proceeding, counterclockwise, from first base, to second base, third base, and back home to score a run. The team in the field attempts to prevent runs from scoring by recording outs, which remove opposing players from offensive action, until their next turn at bat comes up again. When three outs are recorded, the teams switch roles for the next half-inning. If the score of the game is tied after nine innings, extra innings are played to resolve the contest. Many amateur games, particularly unorganized ones, involve different numbers of players and innings.[4] The game is played on a field whose primary boundaries, the foul lines, extend forward from home plate at 45-degree angles. The 90-degree area within the foul lines is referred to as fair territory; the 270-degree area outside them is foul territory. The part of the field enclosed by the bases and several yards beyond them is the infield; the area farther beyond the infield is the outfield. In the middle of the infield is a raised pitcher's mound, with a rectangular rubber plate (the rubber) at its center. The outer boundary of the outfield is typically demarcated by a raised fence, which may be of any material and height. The fair territory between home plate and the outfield boundary is baseball's field of play, though significant events can take place in foul territory, as well.[5] There are three basic tools of baseball: the ball, the bat, and the glove or mitt: The baseball is about the size of an adult's fist, around 9 inches (23 centimeters) in circumference. It has a rubber or cork center, wound in yarn and covered in white cowhide, with red stitching.[6] The bat is a hitting tool, traditionally made of a single, solid piece of wood. Other materials are now commonly used for nonprofessional games. It is a hard round stick, about 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) in diameter at the hitting end, tapering to a narrower handle and culminating in a knob. Bats used by adults are typically around 34 inches (86 centimeters) long, and not longer than 42 inches (110 centimeters).[7] The glove or mitt is a fielding tool, made of padded leather with webbing between the fingers. As an aid in catching and holding onto the ball, it takes various shapes to meet the specific needs of different fielding positions.[8] Protective helmets are also standard equipment for all batters.[9] At the beginning of each half-inning, the nine players of the fielding team arrange themselves around the field. One of them, the pitcher, stands on the pitcher's mound. The pitcher begins the pitching delivery with one foot on the rubber, pushing off it to gain velocity when throwing toward home plate. Another fielding team player, the catcher, squats on the far side of home plate, facing the pitcher. The rest of the fielding team faces home plate, typically arranged as four infielders—who set up along or within a few yards outside the imaginary lines (basepaths) between first, second, and third base—and three outfielders. In the standard arrangement, there is a first baseman positioned several steps to the left of first base, a second baseman to the right of second base, a shortstop to the left of second base, and a third baseman to the right of third base. The basic outfield positions are left fielder, center fielder, and right fielder. With the exception of the catcher, all fielders are required to be in fair territory when the pitch is delivered. A neutral umpire sets up behind the catcher.[10] Other umpires will be distributed around the field as well.[11] David Ortiz, the batter, awaiting a pitch, with the catcher and umpire Play starts with a member of the batting team, the batter, standing in either of the two batter's boxes next to home plate, holding a bat.[12] The batter waits for the pitcher to throw a pitch (the ball) toward home plate, and attempts to hit the ball[13] with the bat.[12] The catcher catches pitches that the batter does not hit—as a result of either electing not to swing or failing to connect—and returns them to the pitcher. A batter who hits the ball into the field of play must drop the bat and begin running toward first base, at which point the player is referred to as a runner (or, until the play is over, a batter-runner). A batter-runner who reaches first base without being put out is said to be safe and is on base. A batter-runner may choose to remain at first base or attempt to advance to second base or even beyond—however far the player believes can be reached safely. A player who reaches base despite proper play by the fielders has recorded a hit. A player who reaches first base safely on a hit is credited with a single. If a player makes it to second base safely as a direct result of a hit, it is a double; third base, a triple. If the ball is hit in the air within the foul lines over the entire outfield (and outfield fence, if there is one), or if the batter-runner otherwise safely circles all the bases, it is a home run: the batter and any runners on base may all freely circle the bases, each scoring a run. This is the most desirable result for the batter. The ultimate and most desirable result possible for a batter would be to hit a home run while all three bases are occupied or "loaded", thus scoring four runs on a single hit. This is called a grand slam. A player who reaches base due to a fielding mistake is not credited with a hit—instead, the responsible fielder is charged with an error.[12] Any runners already on base may attempt to advance on batted balls that land, or contact the ground, in fair territory, before or after the ball lands. A runner on first base must attempt to advance if a ball lands in play, as only one runner may occupy a base at any given time. If a ball hit into play rolls foul before passing through the infield, it becomes dead and any runners must return to the base they occupied when the play began. If the ball is hit in the air and caught before it lands, the batter has flied out and any runners on base may attempt to advance only if they tag up (contact the base they occupied when the play began, as or after the ball is caught). Runners may also attempt to advance to the next base while the pitcher is in the process of delivering the ball to home plate; a successful effort is a stolen base.[14] A pitch that is not hit into the field of play is called either a strike or a ball. A batter against whom three strikes are recorded strikes out. A batter against whom four balls are recorded is awarded a base on balls or walk, a free advance to first base. (A batter may also freely advance to first base if the batter's body or uniform is struck by a pitch outside the strike zone, provided the batter does not swing and attempts to avoid being hit.)[15] Crucial to determining balls and strikes is the umpire's judgment as to whether a pitch has passed through the strike zone, a conceptual area above home plate extending from the midpoint between the batter's shoulders and belt down to the hollow of the knee.[16] Any pitch which does not pass through the strike zone is called a ball, unless the batter either swings and misses at the pitch, or hits the pitch into foul territory; an exception generally occurs if the ball is hit into foul territory when the batter already has two strikes, in which case neither a ball nor a strike is called. A shortstop tries to tag out a runner who is sliding head first, attempting to reach second base. While the team at bat is trying to score runs, the team in the field is attempting to record outs. In addition to the strikeout and flyout, common ways a member of the batting team may be put out include the ground out, force out, and tag out. These occur either when a runner is forced to advance to a base, and a fielder with possession of the ball reaches that base before the runner does, or the runner is touched by the ball, held in a fielder's hand, while not on a base. (The batter-runner is always forced to advance to first base, and any other runners must advance to the next base if a teammate is forced to advance to their base.) It is possible to record two outs in the course of the same play. This is called a double play. Three outs in one play, a triple play, is possible, though rare. Players put out or retired must leave the field, returning to their team's dugout or bench. A runner may be stranded on base when a third out is recorded against another player on the team. Stranded runners do not benefit the team in its next turn at bat as every half-inning begins with the bases empty.[17] An individual player's turn batting or plate appearance is complete when the player reaches base, hits a home run, makes an out, or hits a ball that results in the team's third out, even if it is recorded against a teammate. On rare occasions, a batter may be at the plate when, without the batter's hitting the ball, a third out is recorded against a teammate—for instance, a runner getting caught stealing (tagged out attempting to steal a base). A batter with this sort of incomplete plate appearance starts off the team's next turn batting; any balls or strikes recorded against the batter the previous inning are erased. A runner may circle the bases only once per plate appearance and thus can score at most a single run per batting turn. Once a player has completed a plate appearance, that player may not bat again until the eight other members of the player's team have all taken their turn at bat in the batting order. The batting order is set before the game begins, and may not be altered except for substitutions. Once a player has been removed for a substitute, that player may not reenter the game. Children's games often have more lenient rules, such as Little League rules, which allow players to be substituted back into the same game.[3][18] If the designated hitter (DH) rule is in effect, each team has a tenth player whose sole responsibility is to bat (and run). The DH takes the place of another player—almost invariably the pitcher—in the batting order, but does not field. Thus, even with the DH, each team still has a batting order of nine players and a fielding arrangement of nine players.[19] Personnel See also: Baseball positions Players Defensive positions on a baseball field, with abbreviations and scorekeeper's position numbers (not uniform numbers) See also the categories Baseball players and Lists of baseball players The number of players on a baseball roster, or squad, varies by league and by the level of organized play. A Major League Baseball (MLB) team has a roster of 26 players with specific roles. A typical roster features the following players:[20] Eight position players: the catcher, four infielders, and three outfielders—all of whom play on a regular basis Five starting pitchers who constitute the team's pitching rotation or starting rotation Seven relief pitchers, including one closer, who constitute the team's bullpen (named for the off-field area where pitchers warm up) One backup, or substitute, catcher Five backup infielders and backup outfielders, or players who can play multiple positions, known as utility players. Most baseball leagues worldwide have the DH rule, including MLB, Japan's Pacific League, and Caribbean professional leagues, along with major American amateur organizations.[21] The Central League in Japan does not have the rule and high-level minor league clubs connected to National League teams are not required to field a DH.[22] In leagues that apply the designated hitter rule, a typical team has nine offensive regulars (including the DH), five starting pitchers,[23] seven or eight relievers, a backup catcher, and two or three other reserve players.[24][25] Managers and coaches The manager, or head coach, oversees the team's major strategic decisions, such as establishing the starting rotation, setting the lineup, or batting order, before each game, and making substitutions during games—in particular, bringing in relief pitchers. Managers are typically assisted by two or more coaches; they may have specialized responsibilities, such as working with players on hitting, fielding, pitching, or strength and conditioning. At most levels of organized play, two coaches are stationed on the field when the team is at bat: the first base coach and third base coach, who occupy designated coaches' boxes, just outside the foul lines. These coaches assist in the direction of baserunners, when the ball is in play, and relay tactical signals from the manager to batters and runners, during pauses in play.[26] In contrast to many other team sports, baseball managers and coaches generally wear their team's uniforms; coaches must be in uniform to be allowed on the field to confer with players during a game.[27] Umpires Any baseball game involves one or more umpires, who make rulings on the outcome of each play. At a minimum, one umpire will stand behind the catcher, to have a good view of the strike zone, and call balls and strikes. Additional umpires may be stationed near the other bases, thus making it easier to judge plays such as attempted force outs and tag outs. In MLB, four umpires are used for each game, one near each base. In the playoffs, six umpires are used: one at each base and two in the outfield along the foul lines.[28] Strategy See also: Baseball positioning Many of the pre-game and in-game strategic decisions in baseball revolve around a fundamental fact: in general, right-handed batters tend to be more successful against left-handed pitchers and, to an even greater degree, left-handed batters tend to be more successful against right-handed pitchers.[29] A manager with several left-handed batters in the regular lineup, who knows the team will be facing a left-handed starting pitcher, may respond by starting one or more of the right-handed backups on the team's roster. During the late innings of a game, as relief pitchers and pinch hitters are brought in, the opposing managers will often go back and forth trying to create favorable matchups with their substitutions. The manager of the fielding team trying to arrange same-handed pitcher-batter matchups and the manager of the batting team trying to arrange opposite-handed matchups. With a team that has the lead in the late innings, a manager may remove a starting position player—especially one whose turn at bat is not likely to come up again—for a more skillful fielder (known as a defensive substitution).[30] Tactics Pitching and fielding A first baseman receives a pickoff throw, as the runner dives back to first base. See also: Pitch (baseball) The tactical decision that precedes almost every play in a baseball game involves pitch selection.[31] By gripping and then releasing the baseball in a certain manner, and by throwing it at a certain speed, pitchers can cause the baseball to break to either side, or downward, as it approaches the batter, thus creating differing pitches that can be selected.[32] Among the resulting wide variety of pitches that may be thrown, the four basic types are the fastball, the changeup (or off-speed pitch), and two breaking balls—the curveball and the slider.[33] Pitchers have different repertoires of pitches they are skillful at throwing. Conventionally, before each pitch, the catcher signals the pitcher what type of pitch to throw, as well as its general vertical and/or horizontal location.[34] If there is disagreement on the selection, the pitcher may shake off the sign and the catcher will call for a different pitch. With a runner on base and taking a lead, the pitcher may attempt a pickoff, a quick throw to a fielder covering the base to keep the runner's lead in check or, optimally, effect a tag out.[35] Pickoff attempts, however, are subject to rules that severely restrict the pitcher's movements before and during the pickoff attempt. Violation of any one of these rules could result in the umpire calling a balk against the pitcher, which permits any runners on base to advance one base with impunity.[36] If an attempted stolen base is anticipated, the catcher may call for a pitchout, a ball thrown deliberately off the plate, allowing the catcher to catch it while standing and throw quickly to a base.[37] Facing a batter with a strong tendency to hit to one side of the field, the fielding team may employ a shift, with most or all of the fielders moving to the left or right of their usual positions. With a runner on third base, the infielders may play in, moving closer to home plate to improve the odds of throwing out the runner on a ground ball, though a sharply hit grounder is more likely to carry through a drawn-in infield.[38] Batting and baserunning Several basic offensive tactics come into play with a runner on first base, including the fundamental choice of whether to attempt a steal of second base. The hit and run is sometimes employed, with a skillful contact hitter, the runner takes off with the pitch, drawing the shortstop or second baseman over to second base, creating a gap in the infield for the batter to poke the ball through.[39] The sacrifice bunt, calls for the batter to focus on making soft contact with the ball, so that it rolls a short distance into the infield, allowing the runner to advance into scoring position as the batter is thrown out at first. A batter, particularly one who is a fast runner, may also attempt to bunt for a hit. A sacrifice bunt employed with a runner on third base, aimed at bringing that runner home, is known as a squeeze play.[40] With a runner on third and fewer than two outs, a batter may instead concentrate on hitting a fly ball that, even if it is caught, will be deep enough to allow the runner to tag up and score—a successful batter, in this case, gets credit for a sacrifice fly.[38] In order to increase the chance of advancing a batter to first base via a walk, the manager will sometimes signal a batter who is ahead in the count (i.e., has more balls than strikes) to take, or not swing at, the next pitch. The batter's potential reward of reaching base (via a walk) exceeds the disadvantage if the next pitch is a strike.[41] History Main article: History of baseball Further information: Origins of baseball The evolution of baseball from older bat-and-ball games is difficult to trace with precision. Consensus once held that today's baseball is a North American development from the older game rounders, popular among children in Great Britain and Ireland.[42][43][44] American baseball historian David Block suggests that the game originated in England; recently uncovered historical evidence supports this position. Block argues that rounders and early baseball were actually regional variants of each other, and that the game's most direct antecedents are the English games of stoolball and "tut-ball".[42] The earliest known reference to baseball is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery.[45] Block discovered that the first recorded game of "Bass-Ball" took place in 1749 in Surrey, and featured the Prince of Wales as a player.[46] This early form of the game was apparently brought to Canada by English immigrants.[47] By the early 1830s, there were reports of a variety of uncodified bat-and-ball games recognizable as early forms of baseball being played around North America.[48] The first officially recorded baseball game in North America was played in Beachville, Ontario, Canada, on June 4, 1838.[49] In 1845, Alexander Cartwright, a member of New York City's Knickerbocker Club, led the codification of the so-called Knickerbocker Rules,[50] which in turn were based on rules developed in 1837 by William R. Wheaton of the Gotham Club.[51] While there are reports that the New York Knickerbockers played games in 1845, the contest long recognized as the first officially recorded baseball game in U.S. history took place on June 19, 1846, in Hoboken, New Jersey: the "New York Nine" defeated the Knickerbockers, 23–1, in four innings.[52] With the Knickerbocker code as the basis, the rules of modern baseball continued to evolve over the next half-century.[53] By the time of the Civil War, baseball had begun to overtake its fellow bat-and-ball sport cricket in popularity within the United States, due in part to baseball being of a much shorter duration than the form of cricket played at the time, as well as the fact that troops during the Civil War did not need a specialized playing surface to play baseball, as they would have required for cricket.[54][55] In the United States Further information: Baseball in the United States and History of baseball in the United States Establishment of professional leagues In the mid-1850s, a baseball craze hit the New York metropolitan area,[56] and by 1856, local journals were referring to baseball as the "national pastime" or "national game".[57] A year later, the sport's first governing body, the National Association of Base Ball Players, was formed. In 1867, it barred participation by African Americans.[58] The more formally structured National League was founded in 1876.[59] Professional Negro leagues formed, but quickly folded.[60] In 1887, softball, under the name of indoor baseball or indoor-outdoor, was invented as a winter version of the parent game.[61] The National League's first successful counterpart, the American League, which evolved from the minor Western League, was established in 1893, and virtually all of the modern baseball rules were in place by then.[62][63] The National Agreement of 1903 formalized relations both between the two major leagues and between them and the National Association of Professional Base Ball Leagues, representing most of the country's minor professional leagues.[64] The World Series, pitting the two major league champions against each other, was inaugurated that fall.[65] The Black Sox Scandal of the 1919 World Series led to the formation of the office of the Commissioner of Baseball.[66] The first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, was elected in 1920. That year also saw the founding of the Negro National League; the first significant Negro league, it would operate until 1931. For part of the 1920s, it was joined by the Eastern Colored League.[67] Rise of Ruth and racial integration Compared with the present, professional baseball in the early 20th century was lower-scoring, and pitchers were more dominant.[68] The so-called dead-ball era ended in the early 1920s with several changes in rule and circumstance that were advantageous to hitters. Strict new regulations governed the ball's size, shape and composition, along with a new rule officially banning the spitball and other pitches that depended on the ball being treated or roughed-up with foreign substances, resulted in a ball that traveled farther when hit.[69] The rise of the legendary player Babe Ruth, the first great power hitter of the new era, helped permanently alter the nature of the game.[70] In the late 1920s and early 1930s, St. Louis Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey invested in several minor league clubs and developed the first modern farm system.[71] A new Negro National League was organized in 1933; four years later, it was joined by the Negro American League. The first elections to the National Baseball Hall of Fame took place in 1936. In 1939, Little League Baseball was founded in Pennsylvania.[72] Robinson posing in the uniform cap of the Kansas City Royals, a California Winter League barnstorming team, November 1945 (photo by Maurice Terrell) Jackie Robinson in 1945, with the era's Kansas City Royals, a barnstorming squad associated with the Negro American League's Kansas City Monarchs A large number of minor league teams disbanded when World War II led to a player shortage. Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley led the formation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League to help keep the game in the public eye.[73] The first crack in the unwritten agreement barring blacks from white-controlled professional ball occurred in 1945: Jackie Robinson was signed by the National League's Brooklyn Dodgers and began playing for their minor league team in Montreal.[74] In 1947, Robinson broke the major leagues' color barrier when he debuted with the Dodgers.[75] Latin-American players, largely overlooked before, also started entering the majors in greater numbers. In 1951, two Chicago White Sox, Venezuelan-born Chico Carrasquel and black Cuban-born Minnie Miñoso, became the first Hispanic All-Stars.[76][77] Integration proceeded slowly: by 1953, only six of the 16 major league teams had a black player on the roster.[76] Attendance records and the age of steroids In 1975, the union's power—and players' salaries—began to increase greatly when the reserve clause was effectively struck down, leading to the free agency system.[78] Significant work stoppages occurred in 1981 and 1994, the latter forcing the cancellation of the World Series for the first time in 90 years.[79] Attendance had been growing steadily since the mid-1970s and in 1994, before the stoppage, the majors were setting their all-time record for per-game attendance.[80][81] After play resumed in 1995, non-division-winning wild card teams became a permanent fixture of the post-season. Regular-season interleague play was introduced in 1997 and the second-highest attendance mark for a full season was set.[82] In 2000, the National and American Leagues were dissolved as legal entities. While their identities were maintained for scheduling purposes (and the designated hitter distinction), the regulations and other functions—such as player discipline and umpire supervision—they had administered separately were consolidated under the rubric of MLB.[83] In 2001, Barry Bonds established the current record of 73 home runs in a single season. There had long been suspicions that the dramatic increase in power hitting was fueled in large part by the abuse of illegal steroids (as well as by the dilution of pitching talent due to expansion), but the issue only began attracting significant media attention in 2002 and there was no penalty for the use of performance-enhancing drugs before 2004.[84] In 2007, Bonds became MLB's all-time home run leader, surpassing Hank Aaron, as total major league and minor league attendance both reached all-time highs.[85][86] Around the world With the historic popular moniker as "America's national pastime", baseball is well established in several other countries as well. As early as 1877, a professional league, the International Association, featured teams from both Canada and the United States.[87] While baseball is widely played in Canada and many minor league teams have been based in the country,[88][89] the American major leagues did not include a Canadian club until 1969, when the Montreal Expos joined the National League as an expansion team. In 1977, the expansion Toronto Blue Jays joined the American League.[90] Sadaharu Oh managing the Japan national team in the 2006 World Baseball Classic. Playing for the Central League's Yomiuri Giants (1959–80), Oh set the professional world record for home runs. In 1847, American soldiers played what may have been the first baseball game in Mexico at Parque Los Berros in Xalapa, Veracruz.[91] The first formal baseball league outside of the United States and Canada was founded in 1878 in Cuba, which maintains a rich baseball tradition. The Dominican Republic held its first islandwide championship tournament in 1912.[92] Professional baseball tournaments and leagues began to form in other countries between the world wars, including the Netherlands (formed in 1922), Australia (1934), Japan (1936), Mexico (1937), and Puerto Rico (1938).[93] The Japanese major leagues have long been considered the highest quality professional circuits outside of the United States.[94] Pesäpallo, a Finnish variation of baseball, was invented by Lauri "Tahko" Pihkala in the 1920s,[95] and after that, it has changed with the times and grown in popularity. Picture of Pesäpallo match in 1958 in Jyväskylä, Finland. After World War II, professional leagues were founded in many Latin American countries, most prominently Venezuela (1946) and the Dominican Republic (1955).[96] Since the early 1970s, the annual Caribbean Series has matched the championship clubs from the four leading Latin American winter leagues: the Dominican Professional Baseball League, Mexican Pacific League, Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League, and Venezuelan Professional Baseball League. In Asia, South Korea (1982), Taiwan (1990) and China (2003) all have professional leagues.[97] The English football club, Aston Villa, were the first British baseball champions winning the 1890 National League of Baseball of Great Britain.[98][99] The 2020 National Champions were the London Mets. Other European countries have seen professional leagues; the most successful, other than the Dutch league, is the Italian league, founded in 1948.[100] In 2004, Australia won a surprise silver medal at the Olympic Games.[101] The Confédération Européene de Baseball (European Baseball Confederation), founded in 1953, organizes a number of competitions between clubs from different countries. Other competitions between national teams, such as the Baseball World Cup and the Olympic baseball tournament, were administered by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) from its formation in 1938 until its 2013 merger with the International Softball Federation to create the current joint governing body for both sports, the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC).[102] Women's baseball is played on an organized amateur basis in numerous countries.[103] After being admitted to the Olympics as a medal sport beginning with the 1992 Games, baseball was dropped from the 2012 Summer Olympic Games at the 2005 International Olympic Committee meeting. It remained part of the 2008 Games.[104] While the sport's lack of a following in much of the world was a factor,[105] more important was MLB's reluctance to allow its players to participate during the major league season.[106] MLB initiated the World Baseball Classic, scheduled to precede its season, partly as a replacement, high-profile international tournament. The inaugural Classic, held in March 2006, was the first tournament involving national teams to feature a significant number of MLB participants.[107][108] The Baseball World Cup was discontinued after its 2011 edition in favor of an expanded World Baseball Classic.[109] Distinctive elements Baseball has certain attributes that set it apart from the other popular team sports in the countries where it has a following. All of these sports use a clock,[110] play is less individual,[111] and the variation between playing fields is not as substantial or important.[112] The comparison between cricket and baseball demonstrates that many of baseball's distinctive elements are shared in various ways with its cousin sports.[113] No clock to kill A well-worn baseball In clock-limited sports, games often end with a team that holds the lead killing the clock rather than competing aggressively against the opposing team. In contrast, baseball has no clock, thus a team cannot win without getting the last batter out and rallies are not constrained by time. At almost any turn in any baseball game, the most advantageous strategy is some form of aggressive strategy.[114] Whereas, in the case of multi-day Test and first-class cricket, the possibility of a draw (which occurs because of the restrictions on time, which like in baseball, originally did not exist[115]) often encourages a team that is batting last and well behind, to bat defensively and run out the clock, giving up any faint chance at a win, to avoid an overall loss.[116] While nine innings has been the standard since the beginning of professional baseball, the duration of the average major league game has increased steadily through the years. At the turn of the 20th century, games typically took an hour and a half to play. In the 1920s, they averaged just less than two hours, which eventually ballooned to 2:38 in 1960.[117] By 1997, the average American League game lasted 2:57 (National League games were about 10 minutes shorter—pitchers at the plate making for quicker outs than designated hitters).[118] In 2004, Major League Baseball declared that its goal was an average game of 2:45.[117] By 2014, though, the average MLB game took over three hours to complete.[119] The lengthening of games is attributed to longer breaks between half-innings for television commercials, increased offense, more pitching changes, and a slower pace of play, with pitchers taking more time between each delivery, and batters stepping out of the box more frequently.[117][118] Other leagues have experienced similar issues. In 2008, Nippon Professional Baseball took steps aimed at shortening games by 12 minutes from the preceding decade's average of 3:18.[120] In 2016, the average nine-inning playoff game in Major League baseball was 3 hours and 35 minutes. This was up 10 minutes from 2015 and 21 minutes from 2014.[121] In response to the lengthening of the game, MLB decided from the 2023 season onward to institute a pitch clock rule to penalize batters and pitchers who take too much time between pitches.[122] Individual focus Babe Ruth in 1920, the year he joined the New York Yankees Although baseball is a team sport, individual players are often placed under scrutiny and pressure. While rewarding, it has sometimes been described as "ruthless" due to the pressure on the individual player.[123] In 1915, a baseball instructional manual pointed out that every single pitch, of which there are often more than two hundred in a game, involves an individual, one-on-one contest: "the pitcher and the batter in a battle of wits".[124] Pitcher, batter, and fielder all act essentially independent of each other. While coaching staffs can signal pitcher or batter to pursue certain tactics, the execution of the play itself is a series of solitary acts. If the batter hits a line drive, the outfielder is solely responsible for deciding to try to catch it or play it on the bounce and for succeeding or failing. The statistical precision of baseball is both facilitated by this isolation and reinforces it. Cricket is more similar to baseball than many other team sports in this regard: while the individual focus in cricket is mitigated by the importance of the batting partnership and the practicalities of tandem running, it is enhanced by the fact that a batsman may occupy the wicket for an hour or much more.[125] There is no statistical equivalent in cricket for the fielding error and thus less emphasis on personal responsibility in this area of play.[126] Uniqueness of parks Further information: Ballpark Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. The Green Monster is visible beyond the playing field on the left. Unlike those of most sports, baseball playing fields can vary significantly in size and shape. While the dimensions of the infield are specifically regulated, the only constraint on outfield size and shape for professional teams, following the rules of MLB and Minor League Baseball, is that fields built or remodeled since June 1, 1958, must have a minimum distance of 325 feet (99 m) from home plate to the fences in left and right field and 400 feet (122 m) to center.[127] Major league teams often skirt even this rule. For example, at Minute Maid Park, which became the home of the Houston Astros in 2000, the Crawford Boxes in left field are only 315 feet (96 m) from home plate.[128] There are no rules at all that address the height of fences or other structures at the edge of the outfield. The most famously idiosyncratic outfield boundary is the left-field wall at Boston's Fenway Park, in use since 1912: the Green Monster is 310 feet (94 m) from home plate down the line and 37 feet (11 m) tall.[129] Similarly, there are no regulations at all concerning the dimensions of foul territory. Thus a foul fly ball may be entirely out of play in a park with little space between the foul lines and the stands, but a foulout in a park with more expansive foul ground.[130] A fence in foul territory that is close to the outfield line will tend to direct balls that strike it back toward the fielders, while one that is farther away may actually prompt more collisions, as outfielders run full speed to field balls deep in the corner. These variations can make the difference between a double and a triple or inside-the-park home run.[131] The surface of the field is also unregulated. While the adjacent image shows a traditional field surfacing arrangement (and the one used by virtually all MLB teams with naturally surfaced fields), teams are free to decide what areas will be grassed or bare.[132] Some fields—including several in MLB—use artificial turf. Surface variations can have a significant effect on how ground balls behave and are fielded as well as on baserunning. Similarly, the presence of a roof (seven major league teams play in stadiums with permanent or retractable roofs) can greatly affect how fly balls are played.[133] While football and soccer players deal with similar variations of field surface and stadium covering, the size and shape of their fields are much more standardized. The area out-of-bounds on a football or soccer field does not affect play the way foul territory in baseball does, so variations in that regard are largely insignificant.[134] A New York Yankees batter (Andruw Jones) and a Boston Red Sox catcher at Fenway Park These physical variations create a distinctive set of playing conditions at each ballpark. Other local factors, such as altitude and climate, can also significantly affect play. A given stadium may acquire a reputation as a pitcher's park or a hitter's park, if one or the other discipline notably benefits from its unique mix of elements. The most exceptional park in this regard is Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies. Its high altitude—5,282 feet (1,610 m) above sea level—is partly responsible for giving it the strongest hitter's park effect in the major leagues due to the low air pressure.[135] Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, is known for its fickle disposition: a pitcher's park when the strong winds off Lake Michigan are blowing in, it becomes more of a hitter's park when they are blowing out.[136] The absence of a standardized field affects not only how particular games play out, but the nature of team rosters and players' statistical records. For example, hitting a fly ball 330 feet (100 m) into right field might result in an easy catch on the warning track at one park, and a home run at another. A team that plays in a park with a relatively short right field, such as the New York Yankees, will tend to stock its roster with left-handed pull hitters, who can best exploit it. On the individual level, a player who spends most of his career with a team that plays in a hitter's park will gain an advantage in batting statistics over time—even more so if his talents are especially suited to the park.[137] Statistics Further information: Baseball statistics Organized baseball lends itself to statistics to a greater degree than many other sports. Each play is discrete and has a relatively small number of possible outcomes. In the late 19th century, a former cricket player, English-born Henry Chadwick of Brooklyn, was responsible for the "development of the box score, tabular standings, the annual baseball guide, the batting average, and most of the common statistics and tables used to describe baseball."[138] The statistical record is so central to the game's "historical essence" that Chadwick came to be known as Father Baseball.[138] In the 1920s, American newspapers began devoting more and more attention to baseball statistics, initiating what journalist and historian Alan Schwarz describes as a "tectonic shift in sports, as intrigue that once focused mostly on teams began to go to individual players and their statistics lines."[139] The Official Baseball Rules administered by MLB require the official scorer to categorize each baseball play unambiguously. The rules provide detailed criteria to promote consistency. The score report is the official basis for both the box score of the game and the relevant statistical records.[140] General managers, managers, and baseball scouts use statistics to evaluate players and make strategic decisions. Rickey Henderson—the major leagues' all-time leader in runs and stolen bases—stealing third base in a 1988 game Certain traditional statistics are familiar to most baseball fans. The basic batting statistics include:[141] At bats: plate appearances, excluding walks and hit by pitches—where the batter's ability is not fully tested—and sacrifices and sacrifice flies—where the batter intentionally makes an out in order to advance one or more baserunners Hits: times a base is reached safely, because of a batted, fair ball without a fielding error or fielder's choice Runs: times circling the bases and reaching home safely Runs batted in (RBIs): number of runners who scored due to a batter's action (including the batter, in the case of a home run), except when batter grounded into double play or reached on an error Home runs: hits on which the batter successfully touched all four bases, without the contribution of a fielding error Batting average: hits divided by at bats—the traditional measure of batting ability The basic baserunning statistics include:[142] Stolen bases: times advancing to the next base entirely due to the runner's own efforts, generally while the pitcher is preparing to deliver or delivering the ball Caught stealing: times tagged out while attempting to steal a base Cy Young—the holder of many major league career marks, including wins and innings pitched, as well as losses—in 1908. MLB's annual awards for the best pitcher in each league are named for Young. The basic pitching statistics include:[143] Wins: credited to pitcher on winning team who last pitched before the team took a lead that it never relinquished (a starting pitcher must pitch at least five innings to qualify for a win) Losses: charged to pitcher on losing team who was pitching when the opposing team took a lead that it never relinquished Saves: games where the pitcher enters a game led by the pitcher's team, finishes the game without surrendering the lead, is not the winning pitcher, and either (a) the lead was three runs or less when the pitcher entered the game; (b) the potential tying run was on base, at bat, or on deck; or (c) the pitcher pitched three or more innings Innings pitched: outs recorded while pitching divided by three (partial innings are conventionally recorded as, e.g., "5.2" or "7.1", the last digit actually representing thirds, not tenths, of an inning) Strikeouts: times pitching three strikes to a batter Winning percentage: wins divided by decisions (wins plus losses) Earned run average (ERA): runs allowed, excluding those resulting from fielding errors, per nine innings pitched The basic fielding statistics include:[144] Putouts: times the fielder catches a fly ball, tags or forces out a runner, or otherwise directly effects an out Assists: times a putout by another fielder was recorded following the fielder touching the ball Errors: times the fielder fails to make a play that should have been made with common effort, and the batting team benefits as a result Total chances: putouts plus assists plus errors Fielding average: successful chances (putouts plus assists) divided by total chances Among the many other statistics that are kept are those collectively known as situational statistics. For example, statistics can indicate which specific pitchers a certain batter performs best against. If a given situation statistically favors a certain batter, the manager of the fielding team may be more likely to change pitchers or have the pitcher intentionally walk the batter in order to face one who is less likely to succeed.[145] Sabermetrics Sabermetrics refers to the field of baseball statistical study and the development of new statistics and analytical tools. The term is also used to refer directly to new statistics themselves. The term was coined around 1980 by one of the field's leading proponents, Bill James, and derives from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).[146] The growing popularity of sabermetrics since the early 1980s has brought more attention to two batting statistics that sabermetricians argue are much better gauges of a batter's skill than batting average:[147] On-base percentage (OBP) measures a batter's ability to get on base. It is calculated by taking the sum of the batter's successes in getting on base (hits plus walks plus hit by pitches) and dividing that by the batter's total plate appearances (at bats plus walks plus hit by pitches plus sacrifice flies), except for sacrifice bunts.[148] Slugging percentage (SLG) measures a batter's ability to hit for power. It is calculated by taking the batter's total bases (one per each single, two per double, three per triple, and four per home run) and dividing that by the batter's at bats.[149] Some of the new statistics devised by sabermetricians have gained wide use: On-base plus slugging (OPS) measures a batter's overall ability. It is calculated by adding the batter's on-base percentage and slugging percentage.[150] Walks plus hits per inning pitched (WHIP) measures a pitcher's ability at preventing hitters from reaching base. It is calculated by adding the number of walks and hits a pitcher surrendered, then dividing by the number of innings pitched.[151] Wins Above Replacement (WAR) measures number of additional wins his team has achieved above the number of expected team wins if that player were substituted with a replacement-level player.[152] Popularity and cultural impact Two players on the baseball team of Tokyo, Japan's Waseda University in 1921 Writing in 1919, philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen described baseball as the national religion of the US.[153] In the words of sports columnist Jayson Stark, baseball has long been "a unique paragon of American culture"—a status he sees as devastated by the steroid abuse scandal.[154] Baseball has an important place in other national cultures as well: Scholar Peter Bjarkman describes "how deeply the sport is ingrained in the history and culture of a nation such as Cuba, [and] how thoroughly it was radically reshaped and nativized in Japan."[155] In the United States The major league game in the United States was originally targeted toward a middle-class, white-collar audience: relative to other spectator pastimes, the National League's set ticket price of 50 cents in 1876 was high, while the location of playing fields outside the inner city and the workweek daytime scheduling of games were also obstacles to a blue-collar audience.[156] A century later, the situation was very different. With the rise in popularity of other team sports with much higher average ticket prices—football, basketball, and hockey—professional baseball had become among the most blue-collar-oriented of leading American spectator sports.[157] The Tampere Tigers celebrating the 2017 title in Turku, Finland Overall, baseball has a large following in the United States; a 2006 poll found that nearly half of Americans are fans.[158] In the late 1900s and early 2000s, baseball's position compared to football in the United States moved in contradictory directions. In 2008, MLB set a revenue record of $6.5 billion, matching the NFL's revenue for the first time in decades.[159] A new MLB revenue record of more than $10 billion was set in 2017.[160] On the other hand, the percentage of American sports fans polled who named baseball as their favorite sport was 9%, compared to pro football at 37%.[161] In 1985, the respective figures were pro football 24%, baseball 23%.[162] Because there are so many more major league games played, there is no comparison in overall attendance.[163] In 2008, total attendance at major league games was the second-highest in history: 78.6 million, 0.7% off the record set the previous year.[85] The following year, amid the U.S. recession, attendance fell by 6.6% to 73.4 million.[164] Eight years later, it dropped under 73 million.[165] Attendance at games held under the Minor League Baseball umbrella set a record in 2008, with 43.3 million.[166] While MLB games have not drawn the same national TV viewership as football games, MLB games are dominant in teams' local markets and regularly lead all programs in primetime in their markets during the summer.[167] Caribbean Since the early 1980s, the Dominican Republic, in particular the city of San Pedro de Macorís, has been the major leagues' primary source of foreign talent.[168] In 2017, 83 of the 868 players on MLB Opening Day rosters (and disabled lists) were from the country. Among other Caribbean countries and territories, a combined 97 MLB players were born in Venezuela, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.[169] Hall-of-Famer Roberto Clemente remains one of the greatest national heroes in Puerto Rico's history.[170] While baseball has long been the island's primary athletic pastime, its once well-attended professional winter league has declined in popularity since 1990, when young Puerto Rican players began to be included in the major leagues' annual first-year player draft.[171] In Cuba, where baseball is by every reckoning the national sport,[172] the national team overshadows the city and provincial teams that play in the top-level domestic leagues.[173] Asia An Afghan girl playing baseball in August 2002 In Asia, baseball is among the most popular sports in Japan and South Korea.[174] In Japan, where baseball is inarguably the leading spectator team sport, combined revenue for the twelve teams in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), the body that oversees both the Central and Pacific Leagues, was estimated at $1 billion in 2007. Total NPB attendance for the year was approximately 20 million. While in the preceding two decades, MLB attendance grew by 50 percent and revenue nearly tripled, the comparable NPB figures were stagnant. There are concerns that MLB's growing interest in acquiring star Japanese players will hurt the game in their home country.[175] Revenue figures are not released for the country's amateur system. Similarly, according to one official pronouncement, the sport's governing authority "has never taken into account attendance ... because its greatest interest has always been the development of athletes".[176] In Taiwan, baseball is one of the most widely spectated sports, with the origins dating back to Japanese rule.[177] Among children As of 2018, Little League Baseball oversees leagues with close to 2.4 million participants in over 80 countries.[178] The number of players has fallen since the 1990s, when 3 million children took part in Little League Baseball annually.[179] Babe Ruth League teams have over 1 million participants.[180] According to the president of the International Baseball Federation, between 300,000 and 500,000 women and girls play baseball around the world, including Little League and the introductory game of Tee Ball.[181] A varsity baseball team is an established part of physical education departments at most high schools and colleges in the United States.[182] In 2015, nearly half a million high schoolers and over 34,000 collegians played on their schools' baseball teams.[183] By early in the 20th century, intercollegiate baseball was Japan's leading sport. Today, high school baseball in particular is immensely popular there.[184] The final rounds of the two annual tournaments—the National High School Baseball Invitational Tournament in the spring, and the even more important National High School Baseball Championship in the summer—are broadcast around the country. The tournaments are known, respectively, as Spring Koshien and Summer Koshien after the 55,000-capacity stadium where they are played.[185] In Cuba, baseball is a mandatory part of the state system of physical education, which begins at age six. Talented children as young as seven are sent to special district schools for more intensive training—the first step on a ladder whose acme is the national baseball team.[173] In popular culture The American Tobacco Company's line of baseball cards featured shortstop Honus Wagner of the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1909 to 1911. In 2007, the card shown here sold for $2.8 million.[186] Baseball has had a broad impact on popular culture, both in the United States and elsewhere. Dozens of English-language idioms have been derived from baseball; in particular, the game is the source of a number of widely used sexual euphemisms.[187] The first networked radio broadcasts in North America were of the 1922 World Series: famed sportswriter Grantland Rice announced play-by-play from New York City's Polo Grounds on WJZ–Newark, New Jersey, which was connected by wire to WGY–Schenectady, New York, and WBZ–Springfield, Massachusetts.[188] The baseball cap has become a ubiquitous fashion item not only in the United States and Japan, but also in countries where the sport itself is not particularly popular, such as the United Kingdom.[189] Baseball has inspired many works of art and entertainment. One of the first major examples, Ernest Thayer's poem "Casey at the Bat", appeared in 1888. A wry description of the failure of a star player in what would now be called a "clutch situation", the poem became the source of vaudeville and other staged performances, audio recordings, film adaptations, and an opera, as well as a host of sequels and parodies in various media. There have been many baseball movies, including the Academy Award–winning The Pride of the Yankees (1942) and the Oscar nominees The Natural (1984) and Field of Dreams (1989). The American Film Institute's selection of the ten best sports movies includes The Pride of the Yankees at number 3 and Bull Durham (1988) at number 5.[190] Baseball has provided thematic material for hits on both stage—the Adler–Ross musical Damn Yankees—and record—George J. Gaskin's "Slide, Kelly, Slide", Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson", and John Fogerty's "Centerfield".[191] The baseball-inspired comedic sketch "Who's on First?", popularized by Abbott and Costello in 1938, quickly became famous. Six decades later, Time named it the best comedy routine of the 20th century.[192] Literary works connected to the game include the short fiction of Ring Lardner and novels such as Bernard Malamud's The Natural (the source for the movie), Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., John Grisham's Calico Joe and W. P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe (the source for Field of Dreams). Baseball's literary canon also includes the beat reportage of Damon Runyon; the columns of Grantland Rice, Red Smith, Dick Young, and Peter Gammons; and the essays of Roger Angell. Among the celebrated nonfiction books in the field are Lawrence S. Ritter's The Glory of Their Times, Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer, and Michael Lewis's Moneyball. The 1970 publication of major league pitcher Jim Bouton's tell-all chronicle Ball Four is considered a turning point in the reporting of professional sports.[193] Baseball has also inspired the creation of new cultural forms. Baseball cards were introduced in the late 19th century as trade cards. A typical example featured an image of a baseball player on one side and advertising for a business on the other. In the early 1900s they were produced widely as promotional items by tobacco and confectionery companies. The 1930s saw the popularization of the modern style of baseball card, with a player photograph accompanied on the rear by statistics and biographical data. Baseball cards—many of which are now prized collectibles—are the source of the much broader trading card industry, involving similar products for different sports and non-sports-related fields.[194] Modern fantasy sports began in 1980 with the invention of Rotisserie League Baseball by New York writer Daniel Okrent and several friends. Participants in a Rotisserie league draft notional teams from the list of active MLB players and play out an entire imaginary season with game outcomes based on the players' latest real-world statistics. Rotisserie-style play quickly became a phenomenon. Now known more generically as fantasy baseball, it has inspired similar games based on an array of different sports.[195] The field boomed with increasing Internet access and new fantasy sports-related websites. By 2008, 29.9 million people in the United States and Canada were playing fantasy sports, spending $800 million on the hobby.[196] The burgeoning popularity of fantasy baseball is also credited with the increasing attention paid to sabermetrics—first among fans, only later among baseball professionals.[197] Derivative games Main article: Variations of baseball Informal variations of baseball have popped up over time, with games like corkball reflecting local traditions and allowing the game to be played in diverse environments.[198] Two variations of baseball, softball and Baseball5, are internationally governed alongside baseball by the World Baseball Softball Confederation.[199] British baseball Main article: British baseball American professional baseball teams toured Britain in 1874 and 1889, and had a great effect on similar sports in Britain. In Wales and Merseyside, a strong community game had already developed with skills and plays more in keeping with the American game and the Welsh began to informally adopt the name "baseball" (Pêl Fas), to reflect the American style. By the 1890s, calls were made to follow the success of other working class sports (like Rugby in Wales and Soccer in Merseyside) and adopt a distinct set of rules and bureaucracy.[200] During the 1892 season rules for the game of "baseball" were agreed and the game was officially codified.[201] Finnish baseball Main article: Pesäpallo Finnish baseball, known as pesäpallo, is a combination of traditional ball-batting team games and North American baseball, invented by Lauri "Tahko" Pihkala in the 1920s.[202] The basic idea of pesäpallo is similar to that of baseball: the offense tries to score by hitting the ball successfully and running through the bases, while the defense tries to put the batter and runners out. One of the most important differences between pesäpallo and baseball is that the ball is pitched vertically, which makes hitting the ball, as well as controlling the power and direction of the hit, much easier. This gives the offensive game more variety, speed, and tactical aspects compared to baseball.[202] See also icon Baseball portal Baseball awards Baseball clothing and equipment List of baseball films List of organized baseball leagues Women in baseball Related sports Brännboll (Scandinavian bat-and-ball game) Comparison of baseball and cricket Lapta (game) (Russian bat-and-ball game) Oină (Romanian bat-and-ball game) Snow baseball (with similar rules played in India during winters) Stickball Stoop ball Vitilla Wiffle ball
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