We Are the World,We Are the Quake: the Redefinition of Fans as Interpretive Community in Sportswriting About the 1989 Bay Area World Series and Earthquake Disaster

Abstract

This study provides a unique look at the confrontation of societal priorities about sport and life The study examines how the meaning of a sporting superevent changes in a community when it is confronted by a natural disaster such as a major earthquake. Press coverage of the 1989 baseball World Series played between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics is used as a case study to understand how sport is variantly placed into the context of everyday life as social conditions and interpretations of a disaster change A reader-oriented critique of press coverage focuses on the changing construction of the interpretive community ofsports fans during four phases (1) the pre-series period, (2) the pre-quake playing period, (3) the moratorium period, and the (4) the post-quake playing period. The often unrecognized struggles of the press to create interpretive communities of fans are most clearly seen in the context of this intervention of a natural disaster into the workings o f a n ongoing process of "naturalizing" sport into everyday life.

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