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Baseball, 8/1/07
Key Lecture Points:
• In arguably the best baseball movie of all time, Field of Dreams, James Earl Jones (playing the character of Terrance Mann, a disillusioned radical author) says to main character Ray Kinsella, “The one constant through all the years…has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past…It reminds of us of all that once was good and could be again.”
• From the 1919 Chicago White Sox scandal to the Curse of the Bambino and Jackie Robinson, baseball’s history is littered with bigger-than-life stories and legendary personalities. It is thus no surprise that the game is ‘America’s Pastime’, perhaps inseparable from the American character itself.
• Indeed, baseball’s struggles have often mirrored those of the nation as a whole—for example, with racial discrimination (mirrored in the Negro Leagues) and earlier with governmental corruption (mirrored in the Black Sox scandal).
• Over the past several years the MLB has dealt with many difficult issues, not least revelations of widespread steroid use. After revelations, beginning in 2003, that MLB players, including San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds, were using steroids, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig appointed former Senator George Mitchell to head up an investigation into the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
• The 2007 baseball season will be remembered for the controversial story of Bonds chasing Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record while undergoing an investigation by Mitchell as well as a federal grand jury as to whether he perjured himself in 2003.
Exploration Questions:
• What do you think explains why baseball is considered by many to be “America’s Pastime”?
• Baseball has frequently been caught up in scandal. In what ways is the current steroid scandal similar to scandals of the past, such as the Black Sox scandal of 1919?
Reflective Questions:
• What is your favorite baseball story?
• Tell about the first time you went to a Major League baseball game.
• Many people recall where they are at a historical moment. Do you recall where you were when a famous baseball moment occurred (such as when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record)?
For More Information:
• History of the Major Leagues: http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/history/index.jsp
• PBS Baseball Website: http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/baseball/timeline/
• The 1919 Chicago Black Sox: www.1919blacksox.com
Books For Further Reading:
• Posnaski, Joe. The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America. William Morrow and Co., 2007. 276 pages.
Description: Kansas City sports columnist, Posnaski, traces the history of baseball through the eye’s of one of its greats, Buck O’Neil. O’Neil played in the Negro Leagues, and the story is told primarily through his stories.
Click here to order.
• Asinof, Eliot. Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series. Owl Books, 2000. 302 pages.
Description: First published in 1963, Asinof’s work reconstructs the the scandal in which eight Chicago White Sox players arranged with the nation's leading gamblers to fix the World Series in Cincinnati.
Click here to order.
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