The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2007–2008

This anthology gathers selected papers from the 2007 and 2008 meetings of the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, the long-running academic conference held annually at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Essays included employ the national pastime to comment on issues transcending the playing field, and are divided into six sections: “Cultural Perspectives on the Game,” “Literary Baseball,” “Baseball at the Movies,” “Minority Standard Bearers,” “New Leagues,” and “The Business of Baseball.”

William M. Simons is professor of history at the State University of New York–Oneonta.

Edited by William M. Simons
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 278
Bibliographic Info: tables, notes, index
Copyright Date: 2009
pISBN: 978-0-7864-3569-2
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5331-3
Imprint: McFarland
Series: Cooperstown Symposium Series

Acknowledgments      vii
Introduction
William M. Simons      1

PART I: CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE GAME
The Baseball Reliquary: The Left Coast’s Alternative to Interpreting Baseball History
Jean Hastings Ardell      22
Durocher as Machiavelli: Bad Catholic, Good American
Jeffrey Marlett      38

PART II: LITERARY BASEBALL
Homecoming: Family, Place, and Community in Sara Vogan’s In Shelly’s Leg and Thomas Oliphant’s Praying for Gil Hodges
Thomas Wolf      52
Now Batting—Peter Pan: Jim Bouton’s Ball Four and Baseball’s Boyish Culture
Elizabeth V. O’Connell      61
“Chasing Moonlight” Through Fiction, Film, and Fact: The Evolution of a Biography
Brett Friedlander and R.W. Reising      79

PART III: BASEBALL AT THE MOVIES
Patriot’s Game? Images of American Nationalism in Baseball Films
Robert Rudd and Marshall Most      92
The Dark Side of the American Dream: Ron Shelton’s Cobb
Ron Briley      106

PART IV: MINORITY STANDARD BEARERS
No Dummies: Deafness, Baseball, and American Culture
R.A.R. Edwards      120
Asians and Baseball: The Breaking and Perpetuating of Stereotypes
Terumi Rafferty-Osaki      131

PART V: NEW LEAGUES
Building a League One Dollar at a Time: The Story of the Immediate Success of the American League
Michael J. Haupert and Kenneth Winter      148
The Israel Baseball League and the Jewish Diaspora
William M. Simons      164

PART VI: THE BUSINESS OF BASEBALL
Baseball’s Ultimate Umpires: Labor Arbitration in Our National Game
Roger I. Abrams      190
Taxing the Fan Who Catches the Ball: Looking Back on Record-Breakers, the 1998 Season and the IRS’s Turn at the Plate
Patricia L. Bryan      200
The Role of Agents in Baseball
Paul D. Staudohar      217
The Brave Departure
Michael Civille      234
The Great Dodgers Pitching Tandem Strikes a Blow for Salaries: The 1966 Drysdale-Koufax Holdout and Its Impact on the Game
Ed Edmonds      248

Index      263