The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2017–2018

Widely acknowledged as the preeminent gathering of baseball scholars, the annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture has made significant contributions to baseball research. This collection of 15 new essays selected from the 2017 and the 2018 symposia examines topics whose importance extend beyond the ballpark. Presented in six parts, the essays explore baseball’s cultural and social history and analyze the tools that encourage a more sophisticated understanding of baseball as a game and enterprise.

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: 228
Bibliographic Info: 3 photos, notes, index
Copyright Date: 2019
pISBN: 978-1-4766-7015-7
eISBN: 978-1-4766-3631-3
Imprint: McFarland
Series: Cooperstown Symposium Series

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction (William M. Simons) 1
Part I. The Women’s Game: Leaders, Players
and Writers
Skirting the Issue VII: The High Times and Challenges of Women
Who Play Baseball (Jean Hastings Ardell, Gabrielle K. Augustine,
Martina Sementelli, ­Justine Siegal and Kat D. Williams) 15
Written Out of History: Women Baseball Writers, 1905–1945 (Donna L. Halper) 26
Baseball Americana—Baseball in the Community (Carla Hayden) 38
Part II. Getting It Right: Numbers, Analytics and Validations
“What were we thinking?” The History of Ignoring Competitive ­Advantage (Brian Kenny) 42
WAR, Race and Ethnicity: Collector Discrimination for ­Hall-of-Fame Player Baseball Cards (Michael R. McAvoy) 48
Part III. Baseball Outliers: Radical Jews, Mayans, Affirmative Action and Prisoners
Sam Nahem: The ­Right-Handed Lefty Who Integrated Military Baseball in World War II (Peter Dreier) 70
Branch Rickey, Affirmative Action and “Merit” in Baseball
and Education (Evan Caminker) 97
The Golden Era of Prison Baseball and the Revenge of Casey Coburn (Thomas Wolf) 116
What Team Do I Belong To? (Gerardo D. Canul) 126
Part IV. Other Robinsons: Jackie as Republican and Writer
Robinson Agonistes: The Curious Bromance and Breakup of Jackie Robinson and Richard Nixon (Johnny S. Moore) 132
“Jackie Robinson Says”: Robinson’s Surprising, Lengthy,
Multifaceted Career in Journalism (Brian Carroll) 150
Part V. Road Trips: The Global Game
Albert Spalding as an Agent of Foreign Policy: Baseball,
International Relations Theory and American Diplomacy (Anthony Calandrillo) 170
“If we had known he wanted to be a dictator, we would have made him an umpire”: An Exploration into Cuba’s and Fidel Castro’s Love of Baseball (Lee Lowenfish) 180
Part VI. The Arts: Poetry and Sculpture
Poems as Submarine Sinkers: The Striking Words of Dan Quisenberry (Joseph Stanton) 190
Sculpture as Narrative: The Giamatti Bench (Mark Aronson) 195
Index 205