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Identify and compare the ‘birth stories’ of American baseball and Australian Rules football. How have historians tried to distinguish between ‘myth’ and ‘reality’ in both these cases?

American baseball and Australian Rules football are both seen as the national games for their respective countries, as they have the greatest exponents of the game and the greatest leagues. The public of these nations sees each respective game as to be truly their own, from creation to current status. This has occurred over time, with the origins of the sports becoming surrounded in myth, with the true creation stories of these games being replaced by more ‘popular’ birth stories. This essay will show that both of these games have English origins but over time each of their ‘birth stories’ have both an actual and mythical origin. This has occurred because of the way historians have either perpetuated fictions or been unable to influence public opinion with revisionist interpretations of the sporting past.

The origins of Australian Rules Football
Australian Rules football is uniquely Australian and it is seen as the only game that Australia has truly i...

Posted by: John Mayes

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