Uncle Sam at bat.

• Position: 'The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Sold U.S. Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad' - Book review

The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Sold U.S. Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad

By Robert Elias

The New Press. 418 pages. $27.95.

Even though Bud Selig is under growing pressure to move next year's All-Star Game out of Phoenix due to Arizona's new antiimmigration law, some people say that baseball should stay out of politics. But as Robert Elias lays out in his terrific new book, The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Sold U.S. Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad , baseball has always been involved in politics.

Elias traces America's pastime from its mythical beginnings and reveals baseball's prominent role in how America has projected itself at home and abroad.

Militarism and baseball have been intertwined since the get-go. Forms of baseball were played at Valley Forge during the Revolutionary War. George Washington played baseball, and his soldiers did, as well.

The game was first played by troops for fun, despite Thomas Jefferson's claim that "base ball was too violent for the body and stamped no character on the mind." Soldiers regularly played baseball for recreation, but this diversion evolved into military training exercises. For example, a sharp batting eye was seen as a way of developing rifle marksmanship.

Baseball also played a crucial role in the conquering of the western frontier. The game was the main form of recreation for troops during the Civil War and Indian Wars. "In these bloody Indian campaigns, baseball often rode along," writes Elias.

And while General George Custer's Seventh Cavalry defeat by the Sioux at Little Big Horn is well known, what's often forgotten is that among the casualties were the regiment's best ball players. Elias quotes from soldier Thomas Everts's diaries about the Seventh's star player--who was expected to go professional--getting wounded in the battle and ruining his career.

Elias writes, "The military rubbed off on baseball as well." The term "bullpen" most likely refers to "a square military enclosure, used to contain captured Indians. The word carried over into colloquial speech as a place of confinement and was applied to pitchers, who were restricted to their warm-up space until needed."

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As the American empire extended its reach, so did baseball. The game followed Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan and Admiral George Dewey to the Philippines. Troops and expats taught locals how to play. "Spreading through the increase in trans-Pacific...