Sports in the 1920's

The 1920's is sometimes referred to as the golden age of sports. With city dwellers desire for entertainment and characters such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Red Grange and Jack Dempsey, We can see why the 20's would be called the golden age.

Perhaps the most popular sport in the 1920's was Baseball. Although baseball was invented long before the 1920's, it really gained steam in the 1920's. People would flock to the baseball stadiums to watch the games. With such a demand for seats, it's no wonder why many stadiums were built in the 1920's. Perhaps the most famous of which is Yankee Stadium. "The house that Ruth Built" was constructed in 1923, costing about 2.4 Million dollars, which is about 32 Million dollars today, it could fit about 58 thousand people. Without a doubt, the most famous baseball star of the era was none other than George Herman Ruth, Aka, Babe Ruth. Ruth set the record for most career home runs at 714, which was not broken until 1974. The average professional baseball player made from $4,000-$10,000 a year but Ruth and other baseball greats at the time made much more than that. Character such as Ruth, Gehrig, Dimaggio and others are what helped to cause to people flock in droves to the stadiums and make baseball "Americas Pastime"





Another sport that got big in the 1920's was football. Although the National Football League was founded in 1920, Colleg football was more popular. The first radio broadcasted football game was in 1921 between Texas A&M and The University of Texas. Colleges and universities  all over the nation, such as Duke, University of Washington and Staford would build stadiums to hold big amounts of people. In the 1920's Knute Rockne was coaching The university of Notre Dame. He had an impressive record with 5 undefeated seasons and 3 national championships. Because of his achievements he is considered one of the greatest college football coaches of all time.


But just like in real life, there was segregation in sports too. White boxers would refuse to fight black boxers, Black Players were not allowed in the major leagues. But, the all black universities had sports teams and there were other leagues such as the Nego National Baseball League and the Eastern Colored League. In one occasion, an all black Basketball team called the Harlem Rens went aginst the best team at the time, the Celtics, and won.