Essays on Pastime

American Pastime opens with a Japanese family living in Los Angeles. This is the Nomura family and it is evicted from its home and business after Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066. The family is rounded up into Topaz, an internment camp in Utah’s arid area. Here, they meet many other Japanese from different parts of the country. Nomura starts a baseball league in the camp. While in the camp, Lyle, Nomura’s son gets into a relationship with Billy Burrell’s daughter, Katie. Billy Burrell is one of the guards at Topaz. The climax of ...

Introduction

The evolution of baseball has taken it from America’s greatest pastime, to the means of endorsing integration and diversity. In 1871, Major League Baseball (MLB) was launched as a traditional game. From 1945-47, Baseball made political and legal history through major league baseball. In 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first African-American players in the major league. His number 42 is worn by all players as a memory of Jackie Robinson overcoming the colour barrier on 15 April, and the day is celebrated as Jackie Robinson Day. In honour of Jackie Robinson, Allan Selig, the MLB commissioner stated, “Jackie ...

The reason I have chosen such a weird title for this essay is my personal experience with pastimes. Some of it was good, some of it was bad. Yet, all of it was and is extremely precious, as any experience teaches us something. Any person enjoys having free time, no matter how old they are. Children have time off studies, while adults have time off work. There can be various ways to spend free time and they depend on a person’s interests (or the lack of them). Personally, I think that there are two major categories of pastimes – ...