by Roger Crain

Created on: April 27, 2009   Last Updated: April 29, 2009

Baseball is the one sport that can have you rooting for your favorite team one moment and the next shouting colorful phrases at the umpire who ruled your favorite player out. It is the only sport that can cause a former major leaguer and baseball great to receive hate mail sent to his home. Thus, this article will give 4 reasons why baseball always has been and always will be the national pastime:

1.) When you think of baseball as the national pastime, your thoughts are reflected back to those woe-begone-days in which segregation ruled: There were no black players in the majors, not even the minors; there were, in fact, the aforementioned leagues and a separate league for black players called "The Negro League." Great stars came out of the negro league to show their talent on the baseball diamond and to break definitive race and class barriers.

2.) One of the first such stars to break baseball's color barrier was Jackie Robinson. This former negro league great was drafted by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Robinson went on to not only break race and class barriers, but also compile outstanding stats during his tenure with the Dodgers.

3.) Another great star who played in the now-defunct negro league is Henry "Hank" Aaron. When Hank Aaron was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers, he continued his zeal of clubbing those baseballs out of the ball park, but it wouldn't be until he was traded to the Atlanta Braves that he would make baseball history by breaking Babe Ruth's record. Yet, up until he hit that magic 715th home run, his mailbox was inundated with hate mail galore! He was threatened by these anonymous dispatches of doing bodily harm to him and his family; he was even called "a nigger." Still, Hank Aaron took all of that in his stride and went on to seal his fate as the new home run king.

4.) The outstanding example that Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron have set for these younger yet gifted baseball stars of today. Robinson and Aaron paved the way for this generation of baseball stars to dominate the baseball diamond and thus, to permanently fixate in the minds of Americans Baseball's status as the national pastime.

Finally, these reasons are the author's picks as to why baseball is considered the national pastime and thus, will always have a place in the hearts and minds of Americans. When we emblazoned with a zeal for recognition, then our future and that of baseball is intertwined.

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