The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2002

This is an anthology of 24 papers that were presented at the Fourteenth Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, held in June 2002, and co-sponsored by the State University of New York at Oneonta and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
Subsequent to initial presentation, papers were revised and edited for publication. The anthology is divided into five parts: Timebend: Baseball as History; The Business of Baseball; Race: Soul of the Game; Baseball Media: Literature, Journalism, and Cinema; and Baseball Culture: Age, Sexuality, and Religion. Timebend: Baseball as History ruminates on the lingering resonance of the game’s past. The Business of Baseball examines sport from a commercial perspective. Race: Soul of the Game chronicles the African-American experience in baseball. Baseball Media: Literature , Journalism, and Cinema analyzes depictions of the game in the popular arts. Baseball Culture: Age, Sexuality, and Religion explores the social fabric of sport. Each part contains multiple essays related by theme and topic. A guide to the paper follows.

William M. Simons is professor of history at the State University of New York–Oneonta.
Alvin L. Hall is director of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania.

Edited by William M. Simons. Series Editor Alvin L. Hall
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 379
Bibliographic Info: notes, tables, index
Copyright Date: 2003
pISBN: 978-0-7864-1570-0
eISBN: 978-0-7864-8171-2
Imprint: McFarland
Series: Cooperstown Symposium Series

Acknowledgments      viii
Preface     1
Introduction     3

PART 1. TIMEBENDS: BASEBALL AS HISTORY
Keynote Address: Baseball Lives in the Depression Era     15
Country Baseball on the Eastern Shore of Maryland (1867–1921)     29
Pitcher at Twilight: Bill Monbouquette and the American Dream     40
The Segregation of Professional Baseball in Kansas (1895–1899)     61

PART 2. THE BUSINESS OF BASEBALL
Engineering Baseball: Branch Rickey’s Innovative Approach to Baseball Management    81
The Pitch Men: Ty Cobb, Yogi Berra, and Cal Ripken, Jr.     95
Assessing Outcomes of Baseball Labor Negotiations     110
Letting the Gini Out of the Bottle: A Look at Inequality in Major League Baseball Since 1985     122

PART 3. RACE: SOUL OF THE GAME
In the Tradition of Jackie Robinson: Ozzie Virgil and the Integration of the Detroit Tigers     137
Jim Crows of a Feather: A Comparison of the Segregation and Desegregation Eras in Professional Baseball and Football     154
The Social Significance of Sport: Implications for Race and Baseball     169
Blacks in Baseball: Up from Neglect to Center Stage     182

PART 4. BASEBALL MEDIA: LITERATURE, JOURNALISM, AND CINEMA
Baseball and Ernest Hemingway     199
The Black Press and the Integration of Baseball: When to Stop the Cheering     216
Portrayals of Racial Minorities in Baseball Films     232
When New York Was the Capital of Baseball: Remembering Bob Cooke and the Herald Tribune    244
Types and Archetypes: The Characters of Baseball     257
The Changing Language of Baseball Writers in Historical Context (1900–2001)    269

PART 5. BASEBALL CULTURE: AGE, SEXUALITY, AND RELIGION
On Being Gay in Major League Baseball     287
When Baseball Players Wore Skirts: The Promotion of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League     300
Baseball Heroes and Femme Fatales     315
Baseball and Its Appeal to Older Americans     330
Believing in Baseball: The Religious Power of Our National Pastime     339
Theology and Celebrity: How Celebrity Affects the Practice of Faith in Baseball    357

Index      365