The Conference on Baseball in Literature and American Culture has consistently produced a strong body of scholarship since its inception in 1995. Essays presented at the 2008 and 2009 conferences are published in the present work. Topics covered include religion; class and racial dichotomies in the literature of cricket and baseball; re-reading The Natural in the 21st century; the feminist movement; Don DeLillo’s Game 6; baseball in Seinfeld; Robert B. Parker; Harry Stein’s Hoopla; Negro league owner Tom Wilson’s impact on Nashville; Major League Baseball’s postwar boom; and overwrought baseball editorials, among others.

Ronald E. Kates is an associate professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University.

Warren Tormey is an assistant professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University. They are co-chairs (along with Crosby Hunt) of the Conference on Baseball in Literature and American Culture.

Edited by Ronald E. Kates and Warren Tormey

Foreword by John N. McDaniel

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 243
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2010
pISBN: 978-0-7864-3681-1
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5673-4
Imprint: McFarland
Series: Baseball in Literature and American Culture Conference Series

Foreword by John N. McDaniel      1
Preface: Working the Count: Continuing Diversity in Baseball Studies
RONALD E. KATES AND WARREN TORMEY      3

I. BASEBALL IN SCHOLARLY AND SPIRITUAL CONTEXTS
Baseball Studies: Where Have We Been? Where Are We Going?
PETER CARINO      9
Proselytizing Pastime: Appropriating Jesus at Coors Field
ANDREW HAZUCHA      21
“Blasphemous Youths” and Sunday Baseball: A Cincinnati Tale from 1885
KEVIN GRACE      29

II. BASEBALL IN CULTURAL AND LITERARY CONTEXTS
What’s “Not Cricket” Ain’t Necessarily Baseball Either: Class and Racial Dichotomies in the Literature of Cricket and Baseball
JEREMY LARANCE      38
“Minds of Fleetful Thoughts”: Rube Foster, Dave Malarcher, and the Intellectual Project of Negro League Baseball
DANIEL ANDERSON      50
Staging a Feminist Movement in Baseball: Rida Johnson Young’s The Girl and the Pennant
TRAVIS STERN      64
Baseball at the D.C. Diamond: October 3, 1951—The Day the Earth Stood Still
STEVE ANDREWS      72
Re-Reading The Natural in the 21st Century
REBEKAH BILLINGS      89
“An Offense Against Memory”: The Buckner Moment in Don DeLillo’s Game 6
CROSBY HUNT      96
“What the Hell Did You Trade Jay Buhner For?”
Baseball in Seinfeld
AARON W. MILLER      102
Hard-Boiled Baseball: The National Game in the Fiction of Robert B. Parker
GARY LAND      109
Change of a Nation: Boxing, Baseball, and the Birth of a New American Hero as Depicted in Harry Stein’s Hoopla
NICHOLAS X. BUSH      120
Putting the Ball Cap on James Joyce: Beer and Bars, and Echoes of Ulysses in Coover’s Universal Baseball Association
WARREN TORMEY      125
The Inevitable Last Pitch: Lit Fans Bid Rabbit Adieu
PHIL OLIVER      141

III. FICTION
Politics as Usual
TOM WELLS      151
A Wicked Curve
STEVEN L. WALKER      164

IV. BASEBALL IN HISTORICAL AND REFLECTIVE CONTEXTS
The Day the Part-Timers Were Champions: June 13, 1926,
Muzzy Field, Bristol, Connecticut
DOUGLAS S. MALAN      181
The Contributions of Tom Wilson: A Negro League Team Owner’s Impact on the Nashville Community
HARRIET HAMILTON      187
Pumpsie Green: The Last of the Firsts
THOMAS D. VEVE      192
When Every Mudville Joined a League: Minor League Baseball’s Postwar Boom, 1945–1955
ROBERT G. BARRIER      197
How to Write a Great Baseball Story
R DEAN JOHNSON      202
Nothing’s Wrong with Baseball: Overwrought Baseball Editorials and the Most Frequent Complaints
About the Game
SARAH D. BUNTING      209
What Baseball Makes
CARL SCHINASI      216

About the Contributors      223
Index      227

“worth the expense for any serious student of baseball”—Bookgasm.