Week 13 - Trujillo

               The article for this week written by Nick Trujillo is titled “Hegemonic Masculinity on the Mound:  Media Representations of Nolan Ryan and American Sports Culture.” This article discusses how media plays a big role in how the public views certain athletes, with this article focusing on how media represented Nolan Ryan as a masculine hero of sorts.

                Nolan Ryan is arguably one of the best pitchers in baseball history. During a career spanning parts of four decades, Ryan played for 4 different teams (Mets, Angels, Astros, and Rangers), and set many pitching records, including the most no-hitters by one pitcher in Major League Baseball history (Seven such games). Throughout his career, the media painted Nolan Ryan as an extremely masculine hero in various ways, in articles, advertisements, and features on TV.

                Hegemonic masculinity is defined as “the culturally idealized form of masculine character.” In American culture, hegemonic masculinity has five features, 1. Physical force and control, 2. Occupational achievement, 3. Familial patriarchy, 4. Frontiersmanship, and 5. Heterosexuality. In this article, Trujillo examined various pieces of media and how they portrayed Nolan Ryan in each of these five categories.

                Ryan’s athleticism was represented in stories saying that his pitches were recorded as some of the fastest in history. Stories about Ryan’s various baseball records pictured him as a tireless worker. Other stories would focus on Ryan as a family man, describing his great relationships with his wife and his two sons. He was also portrayed as a sex symbol in various advertisements.

                The media as a whole represented hegemonic masculinity through Nolan Ryan. If you had to pick a current version of this model, I would probably think about LeBron James first. His records are glorified, he is regarded as an unbelievably hard worker, the media portrays him as a great father figure to his sons. You could almost even go as far as to say that James may be the first black athlete to be viewed this way. I see a lot of comparisons between how Ryan was portrayed in the media and how LeBron is currently portrayed.