ABSTRACT
All sorts of Californians played on the margins of professional baseball during the first four decades of the twentieth century. While Californians' interest in watching others plays baseball flagged at times, the "mixed multitudes" expressed a constant love of playing the game themselves. But, as elsewhere, this love of baseball was often nurtured within the context of changing power relationships in California and nationally. In baseball, social reformers often saw a way to divert poor, often immigrant, youths from gambling, substance abuse, prostitution, and crime. In baseball, employers often saw a way to divert laborers from trade unions. In baseball, civic boomers often saw a way to make money at the expense of neighboring towns and cities. In baseball, school administrators and student bodies often saw a way to assert their school's supremacy at the expense of other schools.
