Ethnicity and Baseball.

Baseball was considered the American game, played by real, true blooded Americans. Prior to the 1930s, the game was almost completely subjugated by the American ethnicity of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, or WASP. There was an invisible barrier put around the game of Organized Baseball, to keep the other 'inferior' ethnicities from joining in. For years, only true 'whites' could play the game, ball players with other ethnicities would be faced with stereotyping by sport commentators …

…and DiMaggio's careers were obvious enough" (94). DiMaggio and Greenberg had crossed the invisible boundary that many people thought existed between WASP, and other ethnicities, that supposedly made the minorities lesser ball players. "They had become superstars and Hall of Famers by demonstrating that, at one level, a man's ethnic status was inconsequential if the man could play ball" (94). In the end, all that really matters is how well a player can pitch, hit, or field.