Baseball
and American Culture
Across the Diamond
THE HAWORTH PRESS
Contemporary Sports Issues
Frank Hoffmann, PhD, MLS
Martin Manning
Senior Editors
Minor League Baseball: Community Building Through Hometown Sports by Rebecca S. Kraus
Baseball and American Culture: Across the Diamond edited by Edward J. Rielly
Dictionary of Toys and Games in American Popular Culture by Frederick J. Augustyn Jr.
Baseball
and American Culture
Across the Diamond
Edward J. Rielly, PhD
Editor
First published by
The Haworth Press, Inc.
10 Alice Street
Binghamton, N Y 13904-1580
This edition published 2012 by Routledge
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
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New York, NY 10017 | Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
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Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN |
2003 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Cover design by Lora Wiggins.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baseball and American culture : across the diamond / Edward J. Rielly, editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 0-7890-1484-X (alk. paper)ISBN 0-7890-1485-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. BaseballSocial aspectsUnited States. 2. BaseballUnited StatesHistory. I. Rielly, Edward J.
GV867.64 .B36 2003
796.357'0973dc21
2002015134
This book is dedicated to the people who first talked or played baseball with me: my father, Harold Rielly, and my brother Lawrence. They set me on the right path.
CONTENTS
E. Michael Brady
Theresa M. Danna
Derek Catsam
Frank Hoffmann
Brian Carroll
Kevin J. Grzymala
Alar Lipping
David C. Ogden
Carol J. Pierman
Martin Manning
Roberta Newman
Richard J. Puerzer
George Grella
Rob Edelman
Connie Ann Kirk
Seth Whidden
Dan Zamudio
Thomas L. Altherr
Karen Shallcross Koziara
Gary Land
Larry Moffi
William W. Wright
Loren Coleman
Edward J. Rielly, PhD,chairs the English Department at St. Joseph's College in Standish, Maine, where he teaches, among other courses, The Modern Novel, Baseball and Society. His publications include Baseball: An Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, eight books of poetry, a book on Jonathan Swift, and many short stories, articles, and book reviews. His baseball writings have also appeared in Spitball, Fan, and Elysian Fields Quarterly.
Thomas L. Altherr is a professor of History and American Studies at Metropolitan State College of Denver. He has taught an American baseball history course since 1991, as well as an occasional class on the history of American humor. He has published several other baseball history essays, especially on pre-1839 baseball, and he has co-authored Safe by a Mile, Charlie Metro's autobiography. Joining vocation with avocation, Tom Altherr also plays on Denver-area over-forty and over-fifty men's baseball teams.
E. Michael Brady is a professor of Adult Education at the University of Southern Maine, where he teaches graduate courses in adult education theory, action research, facilitation, and gerontology. He was recently appointed Senior Research Fellow at the university's new Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. One week each summer he teaches a travel-based undergraduate course titled Baseball and American Society: A Journey. He reads widely on the subject of baseball and occasionally writes about it, having recently published three sandlot memoirs in The Maine Scholar. Mike would still rather play a game of catch with his son Ryan than do almost anything else.
Brian Carroll is a Park PhD Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Journalism and Mass Communication. His dissertation topic is the role of the black press in achieving baseball's integration, including spring training and the minor leagues. Carroll is ebusiness editor for Cahners Business Information, where he has reported on the furniture industry since 1992. Carroll was for ten years a sportswriter for the Greensboro (NC) News and Record, at which time he also was chaplain to the Greensboro Bats, the Single A affiliate of the New York Yankees.
Derek Catsam is a PhD candidate at Ohio University's Contemporary History Institute. His dissertation undertakes the first full-fledged exploration of the Freedom Rides. In his work he examines United States and South African history, with an emphasis on race, politics, and social movements. He does this when he is not feverishly following Boston sports teams and especially his beloved Red Sox. He insists that this is the year that the Sox win it all. Seriously.
Loren Coleman grew up in a baseball family in Decatur, Illinois, where his father and grandfather worked for the local Commodores minor league team. A Little League coach, he also teaches at the University of Southern Maine, serves as a consultant in suicide-prevention programs, and is a cryptozoologist. His seventeen published books include Suicide Clusters and Mothman and Other Curious Encounters. His research on the suicides of baseball players has been covered in Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, The Sporting News, and on ESPN.
Theresa M. Danna has a bachelor's degree in journalism from Rowan University (Glassboro, New Jersey) and a master's degree in professional writing from the University of Southern California. She says that many of her life's lessons have revolved around baseball. She dedicates her essay about backyard baseball diamonds in memory of her late brother-in-law, Jimmy Bassano, from whom she learned all the baseball basics, including the art of watching one game on TV while listening to another on the radio.
Rob Edelman is the author of Great Baseball Films (Citadel Press) and Baseball on the Web (MIS: Press), which Amazon.com cited as one of the top ten Internet books of 1998. He has lectured on the manner in which baseball films reflect America in the Speakers in the Humanities program sponsored by the New York Council for the Humanities. With his wife, Audrey Kupferberg, he has authored Meet the Mertzes (Renaissance Books), a double biography of Vivian Vance and fabled baseball fan William Frawley. Their latest book is Matthau: A Life (Cooper Square Press), a biography of Walter Matthau.
George Grella is a professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Rochester, where he teaches American literature, modern British literature, and film. In addition to many publications on baseball, he writes about detective fiction and related forms, popular literature and culture, and film. He is the film critic for
