This course is designed to provide students with a broad appreciation of the place that baseball holds within America by attempting to explain how and why baseball became "the national past time".  Of course a part of the course will include the celebration of statisitics that baseball fans are constantly throwing at each other (and no doubt those "debates" will flavor some of our class  meetings). Likewise, baseball lore will be visited regularly. However,the focus of the course will be an assessment of what baseball reflects about American culture and society.

Required Text:

Benjamin Rader, Baseball: A History of America's Game
Nicholas Dawdoff (ed), Baseball, A Literary Anthology
Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White.

(Tentative class schedule)

Week 1:  From Rounders to Red Legs
Week 2:  Becoming a Profession
Week 3:  Town Teams: Making of a Baseball Society
Week 4:  Rumble Seats, Radios, and Ruth
Week 5:  Depression and War Baseball Style
Week 6:  Only the Ball Was White
Week 7:  What Made the "Golden Age" Golden?
Week 8:  A Way to Become American
Week 9:  Labor on the Diamond
Week 10: Baseball Literature: A Great Game - a Great Read.
Week 12: Baseball Art and Music
Week 12: Baseball after Curt Flood
Week 13: The "Modern" Game
Week 14:  Extra Innings

                                Student Assignments:
1. Each student will participate in a class "Bulletin Board" presentation.
2. Each student will prepare a semester baseball scrapbook
3. Each student will be part of a group project dealing with the art and music of baseball
4. There will be three writing assignments
            a. a personal "greatest" moment
            b. a brief (7 to 10 pages) research paper
            c. a critical essay about an assigned topic
 

Any idea whose license plate this was?