In the mid-19th century, various social spheres experienced a shift toward greater competition and a focus on performance. These developments are linked to statistics and rankings, which also played an important role in shaping the modern workforce. Clelia Minnetian examines how quantification emerged in sports as a result of – and as a driving force for – an orientation toward competition that is also characteristic of capitalism.
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From world rankings in tennis to league tables in football to medal tables at the Olympic Games, rankings are an integral part of sports today. They organize quantified performances, create hierarchies, and enable comparisons. It seems ‘natural’ that we perceive athletic performances this way. How else could we discuss performance?
Rankings seem like an inherent part of sports, but that was not always the case. The connection between rankings and sports only emerged in the mid-19th century in the US. In the following, I will show how rankings in sports, specifically baseball, began and how modern competitive sports emerged from them.
The early days of baseball
From the 1830s onward, social developments such as urbanization, industrialization, and a growing media system increased the popularity of leisure activities. In the US, cricket, brought over from England, and early forms of baseball were particularly popular. The baseball community, which I will take a closer look at here, was highly fragmented at that time. Local communities mostly played among themselves according to their own rules. This slowly changed in the 1840s when the first clubs were founded.
In the early days of baseball in the 1840s and 1850s, the game was played primarily for fun and as a social activity. The focus was on fun, healthy exercise, and ideals such as fair play. However, from the late 1850s onward, this orientation changed, and there was an increasing focus on competition, performance, and success. This shift did not occur suddenly, but rather was the result of a series of developments both within and outside the sport. Within the realm of sport, rules were standardized, which became a necessity as communities wanted to play against each other. Additionally, baseball culture expanded with the founding of new clubs, and the sport became more organized with the establishment of sports associations. As baseball culture expanded and public interest in it grew, commercial interests also began to emerge. Clubs began to fence in their fields and charge admission fees.
Fundamental societal developments included new transportation and communication technologies, such as railroads and telegraphs, which connected scattered communities. These developments made it possible to play games against teams in other parts of the country and quickly transmit game results. The sports press was established in the 1850s and wrote for the baseball community and its fans. The sports press expanded further when it was recognized that sports sold newspapers.
From the beginning, establishing a national discourse had a formative effect on baseball. It created a cohesive entity that connected individual cultures, clubs, and games. However, the content of the communication and how it developed were equally crucial, especially in the 1860s. During this period, a sport emerged whose structures and logic are still recognizable today. Three major discursive developments can be identified in the media discourse. A detailed elaboration of these findings, based on a joint research project with Tobias Werron, was published in the article “Redefining Achievement.”
Changes in media discourse
The first discursive development is based on a cultural shift: baseball was no longer primarily understood as a social activity but rather as a competitive practice focused on ambition, commitment, and winning games. This development, which occurred alongside the growing popularity of baseball, was strongly supported by media discourse. Journalists no longer primarily praised the players’ gentlemanly behavior, but rather focused on the results of the games and the performances of teams and individuals.
The second discursive development was the expansion of performance evaluation from a focus on a single game to a broader horizon of comparison. Increasingly, connections were made between games. Comprehensive tables were gradually developed, creating a new continuity of games. This perception of games as part of a flow – rather than as isolated events – made it possible to view them as part of a whole, such as a season.
The third development in media discourse was the emergence of a system of statistics that compared baseball teams and players continuously over the course of a season and beyond. This is particularly relevant to our current understanding of the connection between sports and rankings. While statistics had appeared sporadically in baseball prior to its professionalization, they became more widespread in the 1860s and were further developed to observe, compare, and evaluate the game in new ways. Over the course of a decade, a relationship developed between quantification, statistics, and rankings, on the one hand, and competitive sports, on the other. This relationship remains dominant today and seems self-evident to us. To question this ‘natural’ understanding, I will take a closer look at the origins of four elements.
Four elements of quantification
The first element is the box score, which is a quantitative summary of a game. The first box score dates back to 1845, but it wasn’t until 1860 that virtually no baseball game coverage was complete without one.
A system for recording individual plays was developed for the second element, scoring. Henry Chadwick, a renowned sports journalist and key developer of baseball statistics, played a significant role in its development. This scoring system allowed the course of the game to be broken down, attributing the overall performance to individual players.
This new system fueled the development of new indicators and the general relevance of statistical categories. For instance, the new statistical category of hits was developed to measure a player’s performance when they reach at least first base after batting. Another example is the batting average, which, after some refinement, is defined by the formula hits per at-bat. The batting average takes into account all games over the course of a season, so it can be used to assess a player’s overall performance – a purpose it still serves today.
Fourth, a new presentation format combining individual and team performances in table form was introduced. Over time, tabular presentations that reviewed performances throughout a season created a new understanding of what constituted a good player or team. Initially, the tables were arranged alphabetically, reflecting a non-hierarchical understanding of the Fraternity of Gentlemen. However, this changed in 1867 when the first ranked table, which is still in use today, was printed in the form of a leaderboard.
These four new statistical elements in media discourse significantly influenced the understanding of performance. They led to individual games being perceived as equal in their contribution to a season’s overall performance. Performance was measured less by individual games and more by a continuous, cumulative understanding of performance. Renowned sports reporter Henry Chadwick provides a vivid example: The real victor is not the dashing general player, but rather, “the modest but efficient worker, who has played earnestly and steadily through the season, apparently unnoticed.”
The league system and the league table
One powerful consequence of this development was the introduction of the first league system in 1871. It replaced the challenge system for the championship title that had been in place since the 1860s.
For the first time in history, the league system established a season-long competition that quickly spread to other sports and became a central element of modern team sports. With the introduction of the league system, statistics and rankings gained additional relevance as league tables became essential for tracking the competition for the championship. A presentation format was developed that summarized the games played and documented the current standings. The league system and the league table were co-constitutive modes of organizing competition and representing performance, respectively. This is why they seem so ‘natural’ together today.
The modern meritocracy
Rankings were just one step in a complex process that followed social changes, such as the introduction of railroads and telegraphy, as well as the emergence of a sports press. This process culminated in a series of statistical developments in sports media discourse. The result was modern competitive sports as we know them today – a concept that would be almost unthinkable without rankings.
Does this ultimately mean that the development was linear and inevitable? Absolutely not. At many points, history could have taken a different turn. Nevertheless, similar developments toward greater competition and performance orientation emerged in various social fields in the mid-19th century. These developments are related to statistics in general and rankings in particular. Rankings function as both the result of and driver for competition, not only in sports but also in other areas of society.