Considering the United States of America’s origins as an English colony it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that in the 18th century the English colonists brought their emblematically English game of cricket to the “Thirteen Colonies”. But it was American citizens themselves, albeit largely those of Anglo descent, who planted the foundations of the first cricket clubs and playing grounds all over the country and in particular the Eastern Seaboard. What might come as surprising is that in the land where baseball is THE bat-and-ball sport, quite a few of these have survived, at least in name, as cricket clubs.
The game of cricket itself brightly flickered (if not entirely thrived) in different pockets of the United States for long periods of the 19th century and even briefly into the 20th century. Cricket was rooted in America long before the game of baseball was even close to capturing the nation’s imagination. By the time of the Civil War at least 20 American states played the game of cricket✿ – active US cricket-playing cities included Baltimore, Savannah, Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and even as far away as San Francisco[1]. From about 1890 to the onset of WWI America experienced a “golden age” of cricket, with its epicentre revolving around the city of Philadelphia[2].
In Hollywood during the thirties and forties ex-pat film actors mainly from Britain but also from Australia (David Niven, Ronald Colman, Boris Karloff, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, etc) played for the Hollywood Cricket Club, a team formed by veteran Hollywood screen performer Sir C Aubrey Smith, a former first-class amateur player in the late 19th century who represented Sussex, the MCC and captained England in the inaugural test match against South Africa (1889).
In more recent times immigrants from the West Indies, from South Asia and elsewhere have been the lifeblood of the sport in the US, both playing and following the game … the series of exhibition matches in New York and elsewhere in 2016 between two international “All-Stars” teams, led by contemporary cricketing legends Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne, being an example of ongoing current interest within the US.
Despite the decline of cricket from having once been a national sport in the US❂ and its eventual replacement by baseball, a number of the old cricket clubs continue to exist, many transforming themselves into key venues for other mainstream sports and emphasising their social and commercial roles … what follows is a brief survey of the history of the more famous and historic American cricket clubs.
Staten Island CC of New York:
(Randolph) Walker Park (Livingston) is the home ground of the Staten Island Cricket Club (founded in 1872 as the Staten Island Cricket and Base Ball Club). The original club ground was the ‘Flats’ at St George (a different neighbourhood of Staten Is). SICC exists to this day as “the oldest cricket club in continuous use”[3]. And although world-famous cricketers such as Donald Bradman, Everton Weekes and Garry Sobers have played at the ground during visits to the US, it might be said that its fame in the US derives as least as much from its use as a tennis venue. The first national tennis tournament was held at the grounds in 1880, tracing its origins to the 1874 visit of a Staten Island resident Mary Ewing Outerbridge to Bermuda. Outerbridge observed this new game adapted by a British army major, W C Wingfield, in that North Atlantic Island. Returning to Staten Island with a net, balls and racquets, Outerbridge, with the assistance of her brother, created the first US (lawn) tennis court[4].
The Metropolitan Baseball Club used Walker Park cricket ground in the early days. The Metro BC later evolved into a baseball major league identity – first as the New York Giants and later after relocation as the San Francisco Giants[5]. These days it’s a common spectacle at Walker Park to observe cricket-obsessed immigrant club members from the West Indies, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and elsewhere, decked out in cream or coloured flannels, wielding their “paddle-like” bats and taking “bare-handed catches” on the Staten Island oval[6].
St George’s CC Prospect Park ground, NY
St George’s CC of New York:
Among the other clubs in New York, there was one, St George’s CC (later Manhattan CC)❦, which rivalled the illustrious history of Staten Is CC in pedigree stakes. From its founding in 1838 up to the American Civil War, SGCC was one of the powerhouses of New York and American cricket. St George’s CC’s Bloomingdale Park was the venue for what was arguably the world’s first international cricket (and perhaps any sporting) contest (USA V Province of Canada, 1844). Since 1865 the Club has continuously played the game based at its Prospect Park ground, its foremost cricketer in the late 19th century was bowling star M R Cobb (who also had a formidable stint spearheading the New Jersey Athletic Club attack)[7].
Philadelphia CC:
The Philadelphia Cricket Club (the celebrated “Philly CC”, one of the oldest clubs in the US, founded 1854), today is a private country club with two locations, Flourtown and Chestnut Hill✥ – the latter was the Club’s cricket venue from 1883. PCC involvement in cricket emanated from the enthusiasms of young men of English descent who had played the game at the University of Pennsylvania. For over 40 years PCC competed with other clubs in the region for the prestigious Halifax Cup … by 1924 however the cricketing activities of PCC had been overtaken by other pursuits and came to an abrupt halt (until happily revived in Philly by immigrants from the Sub-Continent of South Asia in 1998)[8].
Philadelphia Club of gentlemen cricketers
As part of its “extra-cricketular” activities Philadelphia Cricket Club early on established itself as a centre for the hosting of top-level tennis and golf events. PCC was a founding member of the US Lawn Tennis Association (today the USTA) and hosted the US Women’s National Singles Championship from its inception in 1887 through to 1921. In addition it hosted the national doubles title for women and the national mixed doubles title during this period[9]. PCC has similar bragging rights for golf, St Martin’s was home to the US Men’s Open in 1907 and 1910, whilst Wissahickon has hosted lower-level professional tournaments on the US PGA men’s circuit.
Germantown CC: Germantown CC is another pioneering cricket club which competed with PCC in the prestigious Philadelphia comp. Originally located in Nicetown, it relocated to West Manheim Street after merging with the Young America Cricket Club in 1890. Like a number of the other cricket clubs tennis overtook cricketing pursuits in the 20th century with GCC providing the venue for the US National Tennis Championship from 1921 to 1923. On the cricket front, by 1980 Germantown CC was one of only three surviving competing cricket clubs in the Pennsylvanian league.
Dwight F Davis, donor of the eponymous cup
The club’s main sporting activity these days is its tennis played in summer but it still fits in competitive cricket around the tennis (in spring and autumn). Tennis’ dominant position in the “cricket club” can be gauged by its total of 46 tennis courts on the complex, reflecting an important historic role played by GCC in the sport at the elite level – five times host of the Davis Cup Final, plus host of the 1964 Federation Cup (international women’s team tournament)[10].
Merion CC:
The Merion Cricket Club (Pennsylvania) played its first game in 1866 and in its early days repulsed an attempt to turn it into a baseball club. In the late 1890s-early 1900s the MCC’s Haverford ground was host to matches between the Gentlemen of Pennsylvania and Touring English XIs. But like PCC, the MCC from the 1890s moved inexorably to golf as its main sporting pursuit. Merion CC has hosted the US Men’s Golf Open five times (the latest in 2013). The Merion Cricket Club has also been the venue for elite tennis … in 1939 its Haverford courts hosted the Davis Cup (the premier men’s international teams event), the final between the US and Australia.
(J) Bart King
Belmont CC and Bart King: Belmont Cricket Club was one of the big four clubs in Philadelphia during the cricket “Golden Age’. Founded in 1874 Belmont CC survived only to 1914 when it was disbanded (despite having America’s greatest practitioner of the sport of cricket, John Barton (Bart) King, among the ranks of its players). Bart King played in the Pennsylvanian comp for the Belmont Club from 1893 to 1913 [see also Footnote 2]. King had a first-class career record which saw the right-arm fast bowler take 415 wickets at an exceptional average of 15.66 in only 65 matches! Philadelphian King’s tally of victims included an impressive 252 wickets over three tours of Britain (heading the 1908 English season’s first-class bowling averages for all matches!)
Longwood CC (Boston): Longwood CC was formed in 1877, some years later establishing its long-term cricket home ground at Chestnut Hill (Mass.). It was not long before tennis became the premier sport at Longwood CC (first lawn tennis court laid down the following year, 1878). That predominance of tennis was established when the Club held the first ever Davis Cup match (initially called the International Lawn Tennis Challenge) in 1900, and further consolidated by hosting the 1917 US National Doubles championship, the men’s US Pro Tournament (1964-1999), the women’s Fed Cup and 15 Davis Cup ties in total. The brothers Harry and George Wright, famous as baseball players and managers in the early professional baseball era, were also prominent in the Longwood cricket team in the late 19th century.
With the diminishing interest in cricket as an American pastime many cricket clubs including those mentioned above switched their participatory activities to the new emerging sports like golf and tennis. Other cricket clubs from the 1890s on transformed themselves into athletics clubs, eg, Longwood CC became the Boston Athletics Association. The New Jersey Athletics Association started its organisational existence as a cricket club. The Cresent Athletic Club in Brooklyn Hts (NYC) followed a different course … formed as an (American) football club in 1884, it developed multi-sport fields at its Bay Ridge location, including cricket and lacrosse. The Cresent AC hosted the second ever Davis Cup world team tennis challenge (1902)[11].
PostScript1: Cricket V Baseball
Sports historians and other interested individuals have put forward several theories as to why baseball ultimately eclipsed cricket in the US. Baseball’s rise to the status of national game was partly an unforseen consequence of the 1860s American Civil War – during the war it was difficult to get proper cricket equipment and to mark and maintain the pitch, so it was much easier for soldiers to set up simple games of baseball which they did increasingly during their ‘downtime’ from the fighting … post-bellum the game of baseball gradually took firm hold[12]. The elaborate accoutrement of cricket compared to that of baseball was part of the answer: for a baseball game to happen required very little – a smooth, wooden bat, a ball and a few weighted bags … and no field or ground preparation!
Brian Palmer et al has pointed out the role marketing played in advancing the cause of baseball after the Civil War. The promoters of baseball sensing an opportunity at a formative point in its development, established the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players in 1871. This unified the sport as well as professionalising it (refer also to PostScript 2 for more on this), meanwhile cricket stayed regionalised and amateur, a sport of and for gentlemen and their social strata✧. Many top cricket players made the switch to baseball and the fans followed[13]. Cricket historian Tom Melville contends that a secondary element in baseball’s meteoric climb was that whilst many of the top baseballers succeeded in cricket, the opposite was less inclined to be the case[14].
Once it caught on, other factors seem to have contributed to tilting the matter in baseball’s favour … baseball was seen as faster and shorter than cricket – which could drag on for up to four or five days, whereas baseball comprised nine innings each side (around three hours all up), so you could, and they did, play “double-headers” on the same day at the same ground! Cricket with its on-going stream of interruptions – lunch, tea break, drinks breaks, stumps – contrasts sharply with the continuity of baseball[15]. Are Americans temperamentally more suited to a game that is quick, dynamic and guarantees a winner? This is hard to argue conclusively for sports across the board, because although it fits the description of baseball and for matter basketball and tennis, American football with its stop-start, TV ad break-punctuated, drawn out nature, seems to refute this – as does Americans’ favourite individual sport, golf (a standard PGA golf tournament comprising 72 holes of play over four long days (4 x 18) is the antithesis of a rapidly achieved denouement).
The utter ‘Englishness’ of cricket figures highly in the explanations of some historians for its rejection by Americans. The embryonic seeds lie perhaps with the American Revolution. After the severing of political ties with Britain from 1776 a new-found patriotism led many Americans (loyalist Anglo-Americans aside) to distance themselves culturally from the mother country and some expressed this by jettisoning the most ‘English’ of games as well. Melville concludes that cricket’s British connexions contributed to the game’s demise in the US … cricket, according to Melville, ultimately failed to “establish an American character”[16]. The popularity of baseball saw it come to embody a spirit of nationalism that was idiosyncratically and unmistakably American.
The sport of baseball as it evolved had always tended to have a less complicated set of rules relative to cricket…rules in the latter game are officially and grandly called the Laws of Cricket¶. Tom Melville makes the point that as baseball evolved from its nascent, native state to something more standardised, its exponents and practitioners tended to ignore those rules which hindered “the spirit and fun of the game”[17]. Cricket’s laws with their British imperial remnants (nothwithstanding sincere efforts in recent times to free the game up more), for the most part has tended toward rigidity. Laws (rules) on stoppages due to bad light and rain are inherently not conducive to letting the game flow…nor is the recent innovation of umpires referring dismissal decisions to a video replay system for review.
AG Spalding
PostScript2: AG Spalding and the baseball origin myth
One of the most ardent advocates of professional baseball was Albert G Spalding. Spalding, a former MLB player and team manager, was a master of “spin-doctoring”, constantly preaching the merits of baseball and extolling its supposedly ‘democratic’ spirit, compared to the ‘elitist’ nature of cricket. In 1888 he organised an “All-Star” world tour, a series of baseball games between his Chicago White Stockings and an “All-American” side, aimed at popularising the game internationally. Spalding’s much hyped tour was personally rewarding to him as he used it to promote and sell the sporting goods that his company manufactured. Later, the influential baseballer-cum-businessman lobbied for the formation of a national commission to investigate and resolve baseball’s obscure origins (which were in dispute at the time). The Mills Commission, with Spalding’s guiding hand, erroneously credited an undeserving Union general from the Civil War, Abner Doubleday, with the invention of baseball. The myth has long been comprehensively deflated – the most likely candidates for baseball’s antecedents reside in either the archaic British game of rounders or the old monastic French game, la soule (D Block, Baseball before We Knew It)[18].
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✿ and/or the modified regional form of it known simply as ‘Wicket’
❂ international cricket’s inaugural governing body, the Imperial Cricket Conference (ICC), did nothing to aid US cricket’s development or popularity in 1909 by restricting test level cricket to member countries of the British Empire only
❦ the Manhatten Cricket Club building today is a bar in W79th Street New York, downstairs from an Australian-themed restaurant named “Burke and Wills” – after a couple of ill-fated explorers of the Australian continent in the 1860s
✥ and three golf courses, St Martin’s (in Chestnut Hill), Wissahickon and Militia Hill (both in Whitemarsh Township, Flourtown)
✧ this introduces a different factor contributing to baseball’s success, a class-based one. In becoming ‘universal’ the sport made an appeal to all Americans, to all classes – cf. the more restrictive social reach of US cricket
¶ this can be measured quantitatively as well – the MLB (Major League Baseball) has nine main rules (with subsets), compared to the MCC’s (Marylebone Cricket Club’s) 42 Laws. The “Laws of Cricket” which extend back to the 18th century tend also to have more arcane laws on its books
[1] R Noboa y Rivera, ‘How Philadelphia became the unlikely epicentre of American Cricket’, The Guardian, 28-Mar-2015, www.theguardian.com
[2] the Gentlemen of Philadelphia cricket team played first-class cricket for 35 years including three tours of England. The Philadelphians’ star player was fast bowler Bart King, a pioneering exponent of swing pace bowling. King, considered by most judges the best ever American cricketer, topped the English 1908 season bowling averages, ahead of all first-class bowlers in Britain (his record lowest average stood for 50 years!), ‘Philadelphian cricket team’, Wikipedia, www.en.m.wikipedia.org
[3] as claimed by SICC, ‘Staten Island C.C. A Brief History’, (R Bavanandan), www.statenislandcc.org
[4] M Pollak, ‘Rocking the Tennis Cradle’, New York Times, 27-Aug-2006, www.mobile.nytimes.com
[5] ‘Staten Island C.C.’, op.cit.
[6] J Yates, ‘GET OUT: Swingers Club’, 12-Jun-2008, www.silive.com
[7] P David Sentance, Cricket in America, 1710-2000 (2006); ‘The Cresent Athletic Club’, (BrooklynBallParks.com-CAC), www.covehurst.net; M Williamson, ‘The oldest international contest of them all’, (Cricinfo), www.espncricinfo.com
[8] ‘PCC History by J S F Murdoch, Historian’, Philadelphia Cricket Club, www.philacricket.com
[9] ‘Philadelphia Cricket Club’, Wikipedia, www.en.m.wikipedia.org
[10] ‘Germantown Cricket Club’, Wikipedia, www.en.m.wikipedia.org
[11] Sentance, op.cit.
[12] J Marder & A Cole, ‘Cricket in the USA’, www.espncricinfo.com (Adapted from Barclays World of Cricket, (1980))
[13] B Palmer, ‘Why don’t Americans Play Cricket?’, Slate, 24-Feb-2011, www.slate.com
[14] In the second half of the 19th century there was a lot of crossover between cricket and baseball by the players (including composite matches incorporating both forms of the bat-and-ball contest), T Melville, The Tented Field: A History of Cricket in America (1998)
[15] Palmer, loc.cit.
[16] Melville, op.cit.
[17] ibid.
[18] ET Smith, ‘Patriot game’, The Guardian (UK), 02-Jul-2005, www.theguardian.com; ‘Albert Spalding’, Wikipedia, www.em.n.wikipedia.org
Eighty years ago this month the IOC’s most controversial Olympiad was held. 1936 was a momentous year for the Olympic movement – the official Summer Olympic Games were held by the Nazis in August in Berlin. Back in February of that year another part of Germany, Garmisch-Partenkirchen*, had hosted the Winter Olympiad[1]. And in July there had been, or should have been, an alternative, anti-Nazi Olympiad in Barcelona … more of that later.
Never before had a modern games been manipulated for propaganda purposes to the extent that the Germans under Hitler did at Berlin. When the Summer Games were awarded in 1931 Germany was still under the governance of the democratic (but ill-fated) Weimar Republic, but with Hitler coming to power two years later Germany swiftly took on a more unsavoury and increasingly sinister complexion. The Third Reich was soon savagely attacking the liberties of Jews, communists and the Roma (gypsies) … and much worse was to come!
(Image: www.olympic-museum.de)
As it got closer to the event there were questions asked within the Olympic community about whether the Games should go ahead in Berlin. The Nazi regime’s transparent violations of human rights at home, and it’s failure to behave like a good international citizen (eg, pulling out of the League of Nations in 1933, illegally occupying the Rhineland in March 1936, etc), prompted a number of nations to consider boycotting the event.
In America public opinion was far from consensual on the issue. 500,000 Americans signed petitions demanding an alternate site” to Berlin and several newspapers, including the New York Times registered objections to US participation [Peter Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades, (1994)].
f=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/image-18.jpg”> Berlin olympischstadion 1936[/captThe US Olympic Committee debated the issue at great length. American Olympic association heavyweight, Avery Brundage (later controversial head of the IOC) was “gung-ho” for going ahead with participating, running the (now hackneyed) line that politics had no place in sport. The head of the American Amateur Athletic Union, JT Mahoney, and many others, were in favour of boycotting. The authoritarian patrician Brundage was widely thought to be anti-Semitic and racist (in 1935 he alleged there was “a Jewish-communist conspiracy” trying to prevent the US team’s participation in Berlin). Ultimately Brundage’s lobby narrowly carried the AAAU vote in favour of going. The American decision to participate in Berlin was pivotal in salvaging the Games for the host city[2].
Brundage, defender of the Nazi Olympiad International opposition to the Nazi Olympics remained very vocal in the lead-up to the event. Spain and Barcelona in particular had a vested interest, having lost the bid to hold the 1936 Games to Berlin (the German city won easily, 43 votes to 16)♔. SASI (the international federation of workers’ sports) decided to hold the next instalment of its Workers’ Olympiads (see my previous post) in Barcelona in 1936. The Catalan Committee in Favour of Popular Sport (CCEP), boosted by the election of the leftist Popular Front in Spain in February 1936, worked with SASI to plan and prepare the Barcelona Olympiad♕, scheduled to begin just two weeks before the start of the official (Berlin) Games … clearly timed to steal Nazi Germany’s (and the Führer’s) thunder!
(Source: Bernard N. Danchik Papers; ALBA 033; Box 2; Tamiment Library / Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, NYU)
In the end, although only two countries, the USSR and Spain, withdrew from the Berlin Games in favour of the Barcelona Olympiade, support for the Barcelona alternative games was widespread. The Olympiad was not state-sponsored in the fashion of the IOC carnival but backing came from progressive bodies and associations within western countries (trade unions, socialists, communists, anarchists, syndicalists, etc.). The Peoples’ Olympiad was also supported by various individuals – eg, dissident Germans with first-hand experience of the Hitler state and Jewish-American athletes opposed to Nazism[3].
SASI preached a cooperative and fraternal spirit to the 6,000 athletes from 22 countries who committed to participate. Whereas the Berlin Games were perceived as an affront to the Olympic ideals, Barcelona was intended to be based on a foundation of international solidarity that would elevate the “brotherhood of men and races” and “show the sport-loving masses (a Olympiad) that is neither chauvinistic or commercialised”, one devoid of the “sensational publicity of stars” that was characteristic of the IOC-run Games[4].
The organising committee for the Peoples’ Olympiad employed an emblem which reinforced the SASI themes of solidarity, brotherhood and world peace … three male athletes standing defiantly side-by-side, one white, one coloured and one (to all appearances) of mixed or Asian ethnicity (no females in the poster to be seen however … inclusiveness apparently hadn’t extended that far by then!)[5].
Most of the mainstream IOC sports had been slated for inclusion in Barcelona and one or two former ones like amateur rugby revived. Also tacked on to the Olympiad were a variety of cultural activities such as folk dancing, theatre, music, chess♚ and an “Art Olympiad” (the promoters advertised the event also as a “Folk Olympiad”)[6].
Avery Brundage and the IOC were not alone in condemning the ‘rebel’ Olympiad in Catalonia, the Spanish right-wing press slammed the idea saying, variously: it would be a “second class Olympics” because it was open to all-comers, it was a “Jewish-communist” games, etc.[7]. On the Left the Spanish Marxist Workers’ Party (POUM) opposed the Peoples’ Olympiad on two grounds – the preoccupation with sports was “a waste of time” distracting the working class from its ‘proper’ objectives, and they mistrusted the motives of the democratic socialists (ie, SASI)[8]. Another instance of the lack of unity of the European Left in the face of the threat from the totalitarian Right.
El Estadio de Montjuic
In July 1936 on the eve of the games opening, the Peoples’ Olympiad was thwarted when the Spanish military led by General Franco staged a coup against the republican government. The outbreak of a full-scale civil war in the country resulted in the Olympiad’s cancellation. It was a double blow for the city of Barcelona as it had earlier also lost out on the 1924 Olympic bid (to Paris). Some of the overseas athletes A number of the overseas athletes who had already arrived in Barcelona stayed, joining the Republic side and fighting in the International Brigades against Franco’s Falange forces. The Berlin Olympics kicked off as planned on 1st August with the politics indeed overshadowing the sport[9]. Barcelona and its Montjuïc Stadium had to wait another 56 years before it finally got its chance to hold the Olympic Games in 1992.
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* the infrastructure for the sports tournament was already in place – the main stadium and hotels (to be converted into a state-of-the-art Olympic village) had been constructed for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition and upgraded for the city’s bid for the 1936 Games
♚ Chess has a long tradition (since 1924) of staging its own brand of international Olympics, the Chess Olympiads, now held biennially
─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─
[1] such was the furore that surrounded the Berlin Olympics, the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Games, comparatively, have been largely overlooked by history … Hitler did take a more low-key approach to the Bavarian event, however it was not entirely without controversy, eg, the “Jews not wanted” signs prominently displayed in the town had to be hastily removed from sight (albeit only temporarily); the German army undertook military manoeuvres in the vicinity during the Games, A Meyhoff & G Pfeil, ‘Garmisch-Partenkirchen’s Uncomfortable Past: German Ski Resort Represses Memory of 1936 Winter Olympics’, Spiegel International Online, 22-Jan 2010, www.spiegel.de
[2] H Gordon, Australia and the Olympics ; ‘The Movement to Boycott the Olympics of 1936’, (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), www.ushmm.org
[3] British support of Barcelona (and opposition to Berlin) was formidable, promising a big representation of UK athletes for the Olimpíada Popular, TUC (Trade Union Congress), ‘Labor Chest – Opposition to the Nazi Games, British Workers’ Sports Associations’ (Press Release), 9-Jun 1936), in Documents on the Popular Olympiad from “Trabajadores: The Spanish Civil War through the eyes of organised labor”, BTU Congress (Modern Research Centre, University of Warwick), www.contentdm.warwick.ac.uk
[4] ibid.
[5] J Freedland, ‘The Anti-Nazi Games that never were’, Evening Standard (Lon.), 16-Jul 2012
[6] ‘The Peoples’ Olympics in Barcelona’, http://iberianature.com/
[7] G Calomé & J Sureda, ‘Sport and Industrial Relations’ (1913-1939): the 1936 Popular Olympiad’, (1995), www.ddd.uab.cat
[8] ibid.
[9] Photos of the Berlin Games at the time of the event capture how completely Nazi propaganda lorded it over the ideals of the Olympics – the massive Nazi swastika symbol is seen to dwarf the Olympic Rings at venues, ‘The Olympics: Playing Political Games’, (Modern Research Centre, University of Warwick), www2.warwick.ac.uk
1936 was a momentous year for the Olympic movement, the official, IOC-sanctioned Olympic Games was hosted by Nazi Germany’s Berlin. Never before had a modern games been manipulated for propaganda purposes to the extent that the Germans under Hitler did in Berlin 80 years ago this month. When Berlin was awarded the Games in 1931, Germany was still under the governance of the democratic Weimar Republic, but with Hitler coming to power two years later Germany swiftly took on a more unsavoury and increasingly sinister complexion. The Third Reich was soon savagely attacking the liberties of Jews, communists, the Roma (gypsies) and other targeted groups of German society … and much worse was to come!
As it got closer to the event there were questions asked within the Olympic community about whether the Games should go ahead in Berlin. The Nazi regime’s transparent violations of human rights at home, and it’s failure to behave like a good international citizen (eg, pulling out of the League of Nations in 1933, illegally occupying the Rhineland in March 1936, etc), prompted a number of nations to consider boycotting the event.
The US Olympic Committee debated the issue at great length. American Olympic association heavyweight, Avery Brundage (later controversial head of the IOC) was “gung-ho” for going ahead with participating, running the (now hackneyed) line that politics had no place in sport. The head of the American Amateur Athletic Union, JT Mahoney, and many others, were in favour of boycotting. The patrician Brundage was widely thought to be anti-Semitic and racist (in 1935 he alleged there was “a Jewish-communist conspiracy” trying to prevent the US team’s participation in Berlin). Ultimately Brundage’s lobby narrowly carried the AAAU vote in favour of going. The American decision to participate in Berlin was pivotal in salvaging the Games for the host city[1].
Catalonia’s Olympiad Stadium
International opposition to the Nazi Olympics remained very vocal in the lead-up to the event. Spain and Barcelona in particular had a vested interest, having lost the bid to hold the 1936 Games to Berlin (the German city won easily, 43 votes to 16)♔. SASI (the international federation of workers’ sports) decided to hold the next instalment of its Workers’ Olympiads (see my previous post) in Barcelona in 1936. The Catalan Committee in Favour of Popular Sport (CCEP), boosted by the election of the leftist Popular Front in Spain in February 1936, worked with SASI to plan and prepare the Barcelona Olympiad♕, scheduled to begin just two weeks before the start of the official (Berlin) Games (clearly timed to steal Nazi Germany’s thunder!).
Politics and sport, the National Socialist way
In the end, although only two countries, the USSR and Spain, withdrew from the Berlin Games in favour of the Barcelona Olympiade, support for the Barcelona alternative games was widespread. The Olympiad was not state-sponsored in the fashion of the IOC carnival but backing came from progressive bodies and associations within western countries (trade unions, socialists, communists, anarchists, syndicalists, etc.). The Peoples’ Olympiad was also supported by various individuals – eg, dissident Germans with first-hand experience of the Hitler state and Jewish-American athletes opposed to Nazism[2].
SASI preached a cooperative and fraternal spirit to the 6,000 athletes from 22 countries who committed to participate. Whereas the Berlin Games were perceived as an affront to the Olympic ideals, Barcelona was intended to be based on a foundation of international solidarity that would elevate the “brotherhood of men and races” and “show the sport-loving masses (a Olympiad) that is neither chauvinistic or commercialised”, one devoid of the “sensational publicity of stars” that was characteristic of the IOC-run Games[3].
Olimpíada Popular poster: International worker-athlete brotherhood
The organising committee for the Peoples’ Olympiad employed an emblem which reinforced the SASI themes of solidarity, brotherhood and world peace … three male athletes standing defiantly side-by-side, one white, one coloured and one (to all appearances) of mixed or Asian ethnicity (no females in the poster to be seen however … inclusiveness apparently hadn’t extended that far by then!)[4].
Most of the mainstream IOC sports had been slated for inclusion in Barcelona and one or two former ones like amateur rugby revived. Also tacked on to the Olympiad were a variety of cultural activities such as folk dancing, theatre, music, chess♚ and an “Art Olympiad” (the promoters advertised the event also as a “Folk Olympiad”)[5].
Avery Brundage and the IOC were not alone in condemning the ‘rebel’ Olympiad in Catalonia, the Spanish right-wing press slammed the idea saying, variously: it would be a “second class Olympics” because it was open to all-comers, it was a “Jewish-communist” games, etc.[6]. On the Left the Spanish Marxist Workers’ Party (POUM) opposed the Peoples’ Olympiad on two grounds – the preoccupation with sports was “a waste of time” distracting the working class from its ‘proper’ objectives, and they mistrusted the motives of the democratic socialists (ie, SASI)[7]. Another instance of the lack of unity of the European Left in the face of the threat from the totalitarian Right.
Estadio Montjuïc
In July 1936 on the eve of the games opening, the Peoples’ Olympiad was thwarted when the Spanish military led by General Franco staged a coup against the republican government. The outbreak of a full-scale civil war in the country resulted in the Olympiad’s cancellation. Some of the overseas athletes A number of the overseas athletes who had already arrived in Barcelona stayed, joining the Republic side and fighting in the International Brigades against Franco’s Falange forces. The Berlin Olympics kicked off as planned on 1st August with the politics indeed overshadowing the sport[8]. Barcelona and its Montjuïc Stadium had to wait another 56 years before it finally got its chance to hold the Olympic Games in 1992.
유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유
♔ a double blow for Barcelona as it also earlier had lost the 1924 Olympic bid (to Paris)
♕ the infrastructure for the sports tournament was already in place – the main stadium and hotels (to be converted into a state-of-the-art Olympic village) had been constructed for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition and upgraded for the city’s bid for the 1936 Games
♚ Chess has a long tradition (since 1924) of staging its own brand of international Olympics, the Chess Olympiads, now held biennially
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[1] H Gordon, Australia and the Olympics ; ‘The Movement to Boycott the Olympics of 1936’, (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), www.ushmm.org
[2] British support of Barcelona (and opposition to Berlin) was formidable, promising a big representation of UK athletes for the Olimpíada Popular, TUC (Trade Union Congress), ‘Labor Chest – Opposition to the Nazi Games, British Workers’ Sports Associations’ (Press Release), 9-Jun 1936), in Documents on the Popular Olympiad from “Trabajadores: The Spanish Civil War through the eyes of organised labor”, BTU Congress (Modern Research Centre, University of Warwick), www.contentdm.warwick.ac.uk
[3] ibid.
[4] J Freedland, ‘The Anti-Nazi Games that never were’, Evening Standard (Lon.), 16-Jul 2012
[5] ‘The Peoples’ Olympics in Barcelona’, http://iberianature.com/
[6] G Calomé & J Sureda, ‘Sport and Industrial Relations’ (1913-1939): the 1936 Popular Olympiad’, (1995), www.ddd.uab.cat
[7] ibid.
[8] Photos of the Berlin Games at the time of the event capture how completely Nazi propaganda lorded it over the ideals of the Olympics – the massive Nazi swastika symbol is seen to dwarf the Olympic Rings at venues, ‘The Olympics: Playing Political Games’, (Modern Research Centre, University of Warwick), www2.warwick.ac.uk
The second week of the Rio Olympics is now in full swing with the track and field disciplines having taken over from the swimming events. The conspicuous media coverage of the ‘unofficial'(sic) medal tallies in these games and the keen, vicarious interest of patriotic supporters in the performances of their national teams is as high as ever. By way of contrast to today’s highly competitive and commercialised IOC Olympics, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at a very different kind of Olympiad, one lacking in individual competitiveness, centring largely round the Second World in the 1920s and 1930s.
During the interwar period (1919-1939) the newly-communist state of the USSR isolated itself from the capitalist world, this also meant opting out of the western system of sport, including the quadrennial Olympic Games♜. The USSR leaders viewed the Olympics as a capitalist and inherently exploitative and chauvinistic sporting event run by and for the West’s elites¹. The Bolsheviks certainly wanted to engage the Soviet citizenry especially its youth in physical activity, but wanted to create a sporting and physical culture that was ‘proletarian’ in nature to match the state’s avowed ideological position². Eschewing the IOC games’ ‘bourgeois’ individualism and record-seeking, the Soviets envisaged a sporting movement that would be class-based, collectivist and mass-oriented³.
Spartakiad 1931
As an alternative to the Olympics the Soviet Union in the early 1920s introduced the Spartakiad⁴, an ongoing, international multi-sports event sponsored by itself. The state organisation responsible for organising the event was called Red Sport International♔ (RSI or Sportintern), under the aegis of the powerful Comintern (the Communist International). The Spartikiad was the brainchild of RSI’s first president, Nikolai Podvoisky who came to the position from being Vsevobuch (responsible for organising the military training of Soviet youth).
RSI was formed in opposition to the IOC’s First World-dominated Olympics, but also in opposition to the rival Socialist Workers’ Sport International (Ger: Sozialistische Arbeitersport Internationale, SASI) which was founded as the Lucerne Sport International and based in that German-speaking Swiss city in 1920 (see Postscript). SASI organised a series of Workers’ Olympiads over the ensuing two decades.
The early (unofficial) Spartakiads were purely Soviet Republic affairs involving formations of the Red Army and Spartak Youth Physical Culture. Later participants included trade unions, the Dynamo Physical Culture Sports Society, the Patriotic Defence Society (DOSAAF) and other labour-based sports clubs and associations. From 1928 to 1937 athletes from sports clubs and associations outside of the USSR were invited to take part in the Spartakiads.
RSI Vs SASI
Predictably the separate sports tournaments of the USSR-sponsored RSI and the SASI (backed by the German parliamentary socialist Left and a mixture of independent socialists, syndicalists and anarchists) became vehicles to endorse the virtues of each body’s political stance … the Soviets saw the sporting activities of RSI as opportunities for political education of the masses (although they were quite frustrated at the limited success in this objective). There were calls in the 1920s for SASI and RSI to unify their multi-sport movements and some tentative connections made, but these were made against a backdrop of the non-crystallisation of the Left in Europe. Communists and social democrats committed the fatal political mistake: bickering and fighting with each other rather than focusing on the common enemy, a greater threat to them from fascism and the Far Right in Europe (eg, as happened in Weimar Germany). Ultimately the two workers’ sporting organisations couldn’t bring themselves to merge as the ideological divide between moderate (democratic) Left and Far Left widened⁵.
Both sports internationals were large-scale organisations, each with over two million members by 1928. Both professed to be anti-bourgeois but crucial differences surfaced rapidly. SASI took a strongly anti-militarist stance (the Olympiad’s slogan was “No More War”), and insisted that members follow its policy of political party neutrality (on both counts antithetical to RSI). SASI’s political non-alignment drew hostility from RSI who attacked it for a failure to espouse revolutionary goals, labelling its members as ‘Mensheviks’ and ‘reformists’. RSI also pursued a strategy of trying to ‘white-ant’ SASI by forming communist factions within it. SASI for its part earnestly resisted attempts by RSI to radicalise its movement and impose a communist dominance over it⁶.
Frankfurt WO 1925
SASI held its first Workers’ Olympiad in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1925. Around 150,000 spectators attended and a world record was broken in the 4 x 100 metres women’s relay race. SASI fostered the ideals of international solidarity and brotherhood among athletes, this was in stark contrast to the IOC which had compromised its own Olympic principles by allowing Belgium and France to ban the defeated (so-called) “aggressor nations”, Germany and Austria, from the 1920 and 1924 Olympics♕. The display of national flags and anthems at Worker Olympiads were forbidden … all athletes competed under a single red flag and “The Internationale” was sung at ceremonies which comprised displays of free exercises by a mass of gymnasts. The sense of brotherhood engendered by SASI discouraged the quest for records and the idolisation of individual athletes⁷.
Another feature distinguishing the Workers’ Olympiad from the IOC Olympics was that the best performed athletes were awarded diplomas instead of medals. As well, there was no exclusive accommodation for competitors such as Olympic villages, worker-athletes were billeted with local, working class families⁸.
The 1931 SASI Olympiad in Vienna♚ was probably the most successful tournament, introducing innovative sports such as fitness biathlon (run-and-swim) and “military sport”. It attracted 250,000 spectators (more than attended the 1932 Los Angeles Games), with competitors from 26 countries numbering in excess of 75,000 (cf. a mere 1,410 competing at the LA Games). Workers’ Olympiads were not restricted to elite performers, they were in fact overtly non-elitist … open to participants regardless of ability. SASI’s games had a more socially progressive approach … where the IOC had only 107 women competitors in LA in 1932 (about 7% of the total), Vienna had 25,000 female athletes attend in 1931⁹.
The next Workers’ Olympiad was set to take place in Barcelona in 1936, the same year as the Berlin Olympics, and was intended to be a protest against the IOC’s awarding of the Games to Hitler’s Germany. It was however called off at the 11th hour owing to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (see separate post). Hastily rescheduled for 1937♤ in Antwerp, this Olympiad was considerably reduced in scale (15 participating countries) … no German athletes because the Workers’ Gymnastics and Sports Federation of Germany (ATSB) had been outlawed by the Nazi regime upon coming to power. As a partial reconciliation SASI did permit RSI sporting clubs and bodies to take part. Exotic or novel sports at Antwerp included Basque pelota, Czech handball, table tennis, motor cycling and chess¹⁰.
Antwerp WO 1937
The 1937 Workers’ Olympiad was the last of SASI’s sexennial multi-sports labour-centred events, as the outbreak of World War II put paid to plans to hold the 1943 Workers’ Olympiad scheduled to take place in Helsinki. The global war also called a halt to the Moscow-controlled Spartakiads (Red Star International itself was dissolved in the late 1930s).
Emerging from the war as allies of Britain, France and the US, the USSR moved towards a position of greater engagement with the world. Embracing the West, to the extent it did this, was partly a recognition of the need to modernise the Soviet Union, and this was essential if the USSR was going to compete with and overtake the capitalist world in industry, technology and agriculture. A key part of engaging internationally was to integrate into the Western international sports system, starting with the major sports in the USSR, football and weightlifting. The Soviets got themselves onto the world governing federations in these sports and then extended the process to other highly participatory sports¹¹.
As the muscle-flexing of the Cold War was starting up, the USSR recognised the value of using sport to project and enhance great-power status, so a clear aim was re-admission to the Olympic Games fraternity. The Soviets did not try to participate at the 1948 London Games but timed their return for the 1952 Games in Helsinki where they were successful in winning 22 gold medals. At Melbourne in the 1956 Olympics the USSR finished first (above even the mighty USA) in the medal tally. Such a demonstration of communist sporting supremacy over capitalist nations in this world arena brought the Soviet Union a real measure of international recognition¹² (in the same way as Soviet technological breakthroughs in the “Space Race” did).
In the post-war period the Soviet Union continued holding Spartakiads, but they now had new purposes. The Spartikiads and other such massive-scale, multi-sport extravaganzas (kompleksnye sorevnovania) were still PR vehicles to propagate positive values of youth, optimism and world peace. The Spartakiad continued right up to the breakup of the USSR, and its sporting activities bolstered national defence by providing paramilitary training for Soviet youth. But the event was now held one year prior to the Olympics, the Spartakiad became an internal Olympics trial, a mechanism to find and develop new talent for the upcoming Games¹³.
Postscript:
The origins of worker gymnastic and sporting associations and clubs lie in Central Europe in late I9th century and arose out of an increase in workers’ leisure time, eg, Germany led the way with the formation of the Worker-Gymnasts Association (Arbeiter-Turnerbund – ATB) in 1893. Swimming, sailing, athletics and other sports swiftly followed suit. By soon after the turn-of-the century these types of organisations had spread to other European states. In 1913 worker sport associations representing Germany, England, Belgium, France and Austria, met at a congress in Ghent and formed the first International Workers’ Sports Association. The advent of world war the following year however put the IWSA’s activities in abeyance for the duration¹⁴.
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♜ in this formative stage of the Soviet Union, “Socialism in One Country” was the prevailing strategy of the Party (advanced by Stalin) – consolidating the ‘progressive’ and revolutionary conditions within the USSR, which meant postponing its export to the outside world ♔ originally known as the International Red Sports and Gymnastics Associations, underscoring gymnastics’ place in organised recreational pursuits in this period ♕ both worker sports associations (especially SASI) railed against the IOC for its practice of social exclusion, racist attitudes and failure to promote policies of gender equality at the Games
♚ the same year RSI held an All-Unions Spartakiad in Berlin ♤ the 1937 Summer workers’ event was preceded by an Arbeiter Olympiade Winter in Czechoslovakia
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References:
¹ a succession of aristocratic heads of the IOC (de Coubertin, de Baillet-Latour, Brundage) accentuated the elitist nature of the organisation and the event
² more pragmatically, the government also understood that the proletarian sports meets would provide youth with valuable training for later national military service
³ B Keys, ‘Soviet Sport and Transnational Mass Culture in the 1930s’, Journal of Contemporary History, 38(3), 2003, www.blogs.bu.edu
⁴ the Spartakiad took its name from Spartacus, the 1st century Thracian gladiator who led the slave rebellion against Rome, a deliberate contrast with the Modern Olympics movement which took its inspiration from the Ancient Olympics with its aristocratic nod to the mythology of Greek Gods, ‘Spartakiad’, (Wikipedia), https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartakiad
⁵ ‘A Workers’ Olympics?’, Workers’ Liberty, 01-Aug 2012,www.workersliberty.org
⁶ DA Steinberg, ‘The Workers’ Sports Internationals 1920-28′, Journal of Contemporary History, 13(2), Apr 1978
⁷ B Kidd, ‘Radical Immigrants and the Workers’ Sports Federation of Canada, 1924-37′, in G Eisen & DK Wiggins [Eds], Ethnicity and Sport in North American History and Culture
⁸ ‘A Workers’ Olympics?’, op.cit.
⁹ ‘Socialist Workers’ Sport International’, (Wikipedia), https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SocialistWorkersSportInternational; ‘Red Sport International’, (Wikipedia), https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedSportInternational; Kidd, op.cit.
¹⁰’1937 Workers’ Summer Olympiad’, (Wikipedia),https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 1937WorkersSummerInternational
¹¹ Keys, op.cit.
¹² ibid ; J Riordan, International Politics of Sport in the Twentieth Century
¹³ R Edelman, Serious Fun: A History of Spectator Sport in the USSR
¹⁴ G Kuhn, Playing as if the World Mattered: An Illustrated History of Activism in Sports
Considering the United States of America’s origins as an English colony it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that in the 18th century the English colonists brought their emblematically English game of cricket to the “Thirteen Colonies”. But it was American citizens themselves, albeit largely those of Anglo descent, who planted the foundations of the first cricket clubs and playing grounds all over the country and in particular the Eastern Seaboard. What might come as surprising is that in the land where baseball is THE bat-and-ball sport, quite a few of these have survived, at least in name, as cricket clubs.
St George’s CC Prospect Park ground, NY
Philadelphia Club of gentlemen cricketers
Dwight F Davis, donor of the eponymous cup
(J) Bart King
Brian Palmer et al has pointed out the role marketing played in advancing the cause of baseball after the Civil War. The promoters of baseball sensing an opportunity at a formative point in its development, established the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players in 1871. This unified the sport as well as professionalising it (refer also to PostScript 2 for more on this), meanwhile cricket stayed regionalised and amateur, a sport of and for gentlemen and their social strata✧. Many top cricket players made the switch to baseball and the fans followed[13]. Cricket historian Tom Melville contends that a secondary element in baseball’s meteoric climb was that whilst many of the top baseballers succeeded in cricket, the opposite was less inclined to be the case[14].
AG Spalding
Never before had a modern games been manipulated for propaganda purposes to the extent that the Germans under Hitler did at Berlin. When the Summer Games were awarded in 1931 Germany was still under the governance of the democratic (but ill-fated) Weimar Republic, but with Hitler coming to power two years later Germany swiftly took on a more unsavoury and increasingly sinister complexion. The Third Reich was soon savagely attacking the liberties of Jews, communists and the Roma (gypsies) … and much worse was to come!
International opposition to the Nazi Olympics remained very vocal in the lead-up to the event. Spain and Barcelona in particular had a vested interest, having lost the bid to hold the 1936 Games to Berlin (the German city won easily, 43 votes to 16)♔. SASI (the international federation of workers’ sports) decided to hold the next instalment of its Workers’ Olympiads (see my previous post) in Barcelona in 1936. The Catalan Committee in Favour of Popular Sport (CCEP), boosted by the election of the leftist Popular Front in Spain in February 1936, worked with SASI to plan and prepare the Barcelona Olympiad♕, scheduled to begin just two weeks before the start of the official (Berlin) Games … clearly timed to steal Nazi Germany’s (and the Führer’s) thunder!
The organising committee for the Peoples’ Olympiad employed an emblem which reinforced the SASI themes of solidarity, brotherhood and world peace … three male athletes standing defiantly side-by-side, one white, one coloured and one (to all appearances) of mixed or Asian ethnicity (no females in the poster to be seen however … inclusiveness apparently hadn’t extended that far by then!)[5].
El Estadio de Montjuic
As it got closer to the event there were questions asked within the Olympic community about whether the Games should go ahead in Berlin. The Nazi regime’s transparent violations of human rights at home, and it’s failure to behave like a good international citizen (eg, pulling out of the League of Nations in 1933, illegally occupying the Rhineland in March 1936, etc), prompted a number of nations to consider boycotting the event.
Politics and sport, the National Socialist way
