Pinstripe Nation

The New York Yankees in American Culture

William Carlson Bishop

• Publisher: University of Tennessee Press
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781621904038
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Whether loved or reviled, the New York Yankees have had an impact on American culture that extends well beyond baseball. Since the early twentieth century, movies, novels, memoirs, pop songs, and even TV sitcoms have either dealt directly with the Bronx club and its star players or incorporated key elements of Yankee iconography. In Pinstripe Nation, Will Bishop explores the myriad ways in which the Yankees and their successes (and spectacular failures) became interwoven with the nation’s larger cultural narrative. 

In 1920, with their acquisition of Babe Ruth, the Yankees rose to prominence. With his power-hitting style attracting legions of new fans, the “Great Bambino” became a national hero of the Roaring Twenties. In contrast to Ruth’s flamboyance, his less flashy successors Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio captured the spirit of striving and courage that carried America through the Depression and WWII years. The Pride of the Yankees, a popular movie celebrating Gehrig’s career, and the Hemingway novella The Old Man and the Sea, whose protagonist reveres DiMaggio, typified the trend. 

Mirroring the nation’s postwar swagger and confidence, the club of the Mickey Mantle–era remained hugely popular, but “Yankee hating” set in as well. Novels like Mark Harris’s The Southpaw and Douglass Wallop’s The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant signified a widespread resentment of the team’s outsized dominance. Amid the national turmoil of the 1960s, the Yankees also went into decline. In the following decades, as player salaries soared and team infighting grabbed headlines, the once-glowing portrayals of the team gave way to tell-all books like Ball Four and The Bronx Zoo. Yet, as this informative and entertaining book amply shows, the Yankees have, through all their ups and downs, retained a hold on the American imagination unmatched by any other sports franchise. 

Table of contents

• Contents
• Foreword, Brian M. Ingrassia
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. “To Be Young and a Yankee”: Babe Ruth and the First Era of Yankee Success
• 2. “Let Me Tell You about Heroes”: The Pride of the Yankees and the Crystallization of a Cultural Icon
• 3. “Think of the Great DiMaggio”: Joe DiMaggio and the Mythic Dimension of Yankee Success in the Postwar Era
• 4. “Wall Street Brokers and Haughty Businessman”: The Yankees and Brooklyn Doger Fan Identity
• 5. “Those Damn Yankees!” The Popularization of Yankee Hating in the 1950s
• 6. “Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?” Decline, Cultural Change, and the 1960s
• 7. “You’d Never Guess This Was . . . the Yankees”: The “Me” Decade and “The Best Team Money Could Buy”
• 8. “All That Once Was Good and Could Be Again”: Baseball Nostalgia in the 1980s and ‘90s and the Return of the Yankees
• Epilogue: Toward a New Millennium
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index