Yankees Dominance.

If box scores were the only clue to what happened in Major League Baseball during the 1950s, then one would have to conclude that baseball had changed little. The American League's New York Yankees remained the class outfit of the big leagues and continued their winning ways. Although by the beginning of the decade it was clear to all who followed the sport that the career of the great Joe DiMaggio, whose brilliant hitting and fielding had dazzled fans at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, was coming to an end, the team had an abundance of pinstriped talent to pick up where he left off. But, despite the Yankees' continued tradition of winning, America's favorite pastime was changing in the 1950s, and the changes were drastic in their social and cultural impact.

Baseball's Watershed Decade.

Baseball had begun to integrate in 1947, and fans...