Baseball/Literature/Culture

The Indiana State University Conference on Baseball in Literature and American Culture has consistently produced a strong body of scholarship since its inception in 1995. This work is comprised of 18 essays from the ISU conferences of 1995 through 2001. “I Just Hit .300–Time to Renegotiate My Contract” explores how major American writers such as Hemingway, Faulkner, and Ellison have challenged the pastoral idea of baseball envisioned by Whitman. “The Durable Relic” argues that Donald Hall, one of the foremost poets of today, uses baseball in much the same way that William Butler Yeats used Irish mythology to create “frozen moments, unchanging and durable; ageless heroes, Oisin on the Island of Eternal Youth and Ruth pointing to centerfield.” “Baseball, the Market and the Public” analyzes the tension between the game as a business and the game as public trust, tracking the game to its present state of overpaid players and greedy owners. “The Story of Toni Stone” considers race and gender in both the game and culture by looking at one of the most remarkable but least known women in the sport, the only one to play in the Negro Leagues. These are just four of the essays, which cover a wide variety of topics.

Peter Carino is an English professor at Indiana State University and is also the editor of Baseball/Literature/Culture: Essays, 2004–2005 (2006) and Baseball/Literature/Culture: Essays, 2002–2003 (2004). He lives in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Edited by Peter Carino

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 211
Bibliographic Info: bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2003
pISBN: 978-0-7864-1643-1
eISBN: 978-0-7864-8318-1
Imprint: McFarland
Series: Baseball in Literature and American Culture Conference Series

Preface
PETER CARINO      1

Part I: Baseball in American Literature
1. God, Gambling, and the Game
DEANNE WESTBROOK      9
2. “I Just Hit .300—time to renegotiate my contract”:
Baseball as a Symbol of Capitalism in Hemingway, Faulkner, and Ellison
GREG AHRENHOERSTER      22
3. Hemingway’s Black Sox Stories
FRED ROBBINS      33
4. The Dixie Association: Where Jefferson Davis and Martin Luther King Intersect
CAROLINE CARVILL      41
5. “HBP-Runners Advance”: Postmodernism and Baseball in Richard Ford’s Independence Day
CHRISTOPHER YORK      51
6. The Durable Relic: Time, Poetry, Baseball, and Donald Hall
STEVE CONNELLY      60
7. “The Afternoon of My Imagination”: Rhetorical Considerations in the Contemporary Baseball Essay
CROSBY HUNT      69
8. James T. Farrell’s My Baseball Diary: The Memoirs of a Radical Baseball Lover
ANDREW ANDERSON      83
9. America’s Passed Time: Baseball and Race in August Wilson’s Fences
KEITH BYERMAN      94
10. Teaching Baseball, Teaching Race: Charles Fuller’s A Soldier’s Play and August Wilson’s Fences
RONALD KATES      101
11. Playing the Subs: Teaching a Class on Literature and Baseball to General Education Students
FRANK ROTSAERT      111

Part II: Baseball in American Culture
12. Baseball, the Market, and the Public: Whose Interests Are the “Best Interests”?
JOHN FAIRFIELD      125
13. Baseball as National Pastime Revisited: And a Little Town Shall Lead Them
MYLES SCHRAG      140
14. The Field of Dreams Mystique: Quest for the American Ideal
JOAN M. THOMAS      151
15. Idols and the 1934–36 Diamond Stars Card Set
RON REMBERT      161
16. The Story of Toni Stone: When Baseball Began to Be Truly the National Pastime
KARLA FARMER STOUSE      170
17. Youth League Umpiring: Teaching Coaches, Players, and Parents the Proper Call
KEN MOON      177
18. Baseball in a Small Midwestern Town: A Depression Kid Remembers
WILLIAM BICKERS      189

Contributors      195
Index      199