| The 1926 World Series was both an example and aberration in the development of modern America during the 1920s. The decade brought paradigm-altering change. Technological innovations, changing values, and urbanization transformed American society into a modern nation. The role of sports in the American culture also changed, becoming popular entertainment. Baseball, led by Babe Ruth, modernized along with America, transforming itself from a strategic dead-ball contest into a long ball hitting competition. Advances in technology and player development, along with the concentration of the major leagues in largest urban areas, reflected larger societal trends toward standardization, professionalism, and urbanization. Ruth's New York Yankees and Branch Rickey's St. Louis Cardinals represented those changes in the 1926 World Series. However, Cardinals pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander, a washed-up throwback to the dead-ball era, regained his former athletic brilliance and won the World Series for the Cardinals. Alexander, from rural Nebraska, represented a time in baseball and American society that had already been replaced by modern paradigms. In contrast to Ruth's Jazz Era exuberance and Rickey's scientific methodology, Alexander's victory was a last great demonstration of individualism over process in the 1920s. However, even as Alexander was winning the World Series, the forces of modernity changed baseball further from what he had known in his earlier glory days and society into a reality in which he, like pastoral America, had no place. |
