I’ve always loved baseball. As a child I spent many long summer nights with my family gathered around the television, cheering for our favorite team. To me, baseball has always been synyomous with America. It’s the national sport, our collective pastime.
To hold the title of the “American pastime” is not a light task, it places baseball as a representation of American culture and values. This made me wonder, what does the representation of race within the sport say about the country? Does it accurately represent the American people?
This project, Diversity On Deck, focuses on the racial demographics of players of all 30 Major League Baseball teams. First, through a mobile app that allows users to directly view the statistics of a selected team and to compare them to other teams, sports, cities and the country as a whole. Next, I brought the project into the physical world by applying interesting points of data to baseball caps, tote bags, shirts and as patches for jerseys. By making this data easily accessible the user is then able to reflect on the sport and the image that it presents of America.
Diversity On Deck challenges the viewer to explore, investigate and decide: Does Major League Baseball, as the American pastime, portray an accurate image of the country? This project asks fans to hold baseball accountable in fulfilling its title as “the national Sport.”