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

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About the Book

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.”

About the Author(s)

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

Bibliographic Details

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

Table of Contents

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