THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF BASEBALL
AMH 3930H AND LIT3930H
SPRING, 2008
Mondays 6:00 – 8:50PM
BA 126
"Baseball is like church. Many attend but few understand" (Wes Westrum)
Instructors:
Dr. Richard Crepeau Dr. Richard Astro
CH 544 BUS II – 113
Phone -32897 Phone - 31518
crepeau@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu astro@drexel.edu
Required
Rader, Baseball
Coover, The Universal
Baseball Association, Inc.
Kinsella, Shoeless Joe
Malalmud, The Natural
Tygiel, Past Time
Suggested Additional
In addition to the required readings, students are encouraged to explore the vast resources on baseball history and literature that are available in the UCF Library.
HISTORY
The standard works on baseball history are the following:
Voigt, David. American Baseball. – this is a comprehensive, three-volume history
Seymour, Harold.
Baseball: The Early Years
Baseball: The Golden Years
Baseball: The People’s Game
In addition to these important works, the most recent significant
book on the origins of baseball is David Block’s Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game
LITERATURE
There is no single definitive source of information about the literature of baseball, although several are currently being written. But there are useful chapters on the subject in the following books:
Coffin, Tristam. The Old Ball Game
Higgs, Robert.
Messenger, Christian. Sport
and the Spirit of Play in American Literature
Oriard, Michael.
Dreaming of Heroes: American Sports Fiction – 1868 to 1980
Smith, Leverett. The
American Dream and the National Game
Umphlett, Wiley. The Sporting Myth and the American Experience
This is just a sampling of the resources in the UCF Library. In addition, the Library has several journals specializing in sport history, literature and baseball history. The following are worth consulting:
Aethlon: The Journal
of Sport Literature
The Journal of Sport
History
Sport History Review
(The Canadian Journal of the History of Sport)
NINE: A Journal of
Baseball History and Culture
There are two other interesting journals on the literature
of baseball that are not available in the Library: Spitball and Elysian Fields
Quarterly. Dr. Crepeau has copies of many issues of each journal and you
should contact him to see them. Finally, there are numerous anthologies of
baseball poetry. Among the best is Don Johnson’s Hummers, Knucklers and Slow Curves, and Booke Horvath and Tim
Wiles', Line Drives:100 Contemporary
Poems.
COURSE OUTLINE
Spring Training
January 7
General introduction to the course: Literature and History: The Same Yet Different. How to Read a Novel. How to read Baseball. The Power of the Game. The National Pastime?
January 15
The Origins of the Game
The Growth and Development of Baseball
The Commercialization of the Game
Standardization and Rationalization
The Struggle for Monopoly Power
History, Literature and Myth
Rader, Chapters 1-5
Tygiel, Chapters 1-2
January 21
Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday
The Regular Season
January 28
Baseball in a New Century
Rader, Chapters 6-8
Tygiel, Chapter 3
Research Topic Choices due no latter
than Jan.28
February 4
The Crisis
Kinsella, Shoeless Joe
February 11
The Golden Age
Tygiel, Chapter 4
Rader, Chapter 9
February 18
The Second Crisis: Depression and World War II
Rader, Chapter 10 and Tygiel, Chapter 5
February 25
Desegregation at last
Rader, Chapter 11
Tygiel, Chapter 6-7
March 3
Desegregation and its impact
March 10
Spring Break
March 17
Possible Guest Speaker
March 23
Trip to Mets Spring Training, Port St. Lucie
March 24
The Transformation of the Game
Rader, Chapter 12-13
Tygiel, Chapter 7
March 31
Baseball as Myth and Allegory
Malamud’s The Natural
The Post Season
April 7
The Age of the Player and the MLBPA
The Television Factor
Rader, Chapter 14-15
Tygiel, Chapter 8
April 14
Contemporary Baseball
The Juice Factor v. Greenies -The Mitchell Report-Full Text Available on-line
Tygiel, Chapter 9
April 21
The Games Beyond the Games-Coover
April 28 – Final Exam
is Scheduled this night and you will be expected to be in attendance whether or
not there is a final exam.
OTHER MATTERS
In addition to the guest speakers coming into the class over
the course
of the semester, we are arranging a trip to Tradition Field in Port St. Lucie
to attend a Mets Spring Training game. Time and date will be set soon but
obviously it will be in late March and at this point is tentatively set
for March 23(Sunday Afternoon) or March
20 (Thursday Night).
This course will stress reading and classroom participation. In addition
there will be writing assignments designed to allow you to express your
knowledge of the game and to integrate the related materials from history
and literature.
There will be written assignments to be completed outside of class
and based upon the reading materials for the class. These assignments will
be made periodically through the term.
Each written assignment will be weighted approximately equally in
determination of the final grade in the course. Attendance and
participation will play heavily in grade determination given that the class
meets only once per week and given the heavily reliance on classroom
discussion. Above all, we want this class to be a genuine experience in active
and engaged learning. The more engaged you are, the more interactive we all
are, the better the class will be!
Each week a group of students (perhaps four) will be responsible for beginning the discussion on the major topic of the evening. This can be done in any way you see fit using whatever techniques you find suitable. It will however require some additional research or reading in preparation to lead the discussion.
In addition each student will be expected to conduct a research project on some
aspect of baseball history or literature over the course of the semester.
We hope that this would be something of a creative nature that would build
on some aspect of the course or explore an area that is not developed in
the course or is given less than adequate treatment in the course. The written
research
reports will be due during the last week of class. However oral presentations
of these reports, the early ones will be progress reports, will begin in
February. Each report is to be approximately 15 to 20 minutes in length and may
take any form of the student's choosing e.g. power point, film, video, audio,
drama, or some combination of these.
These can be individual or group projects and indeed the latter would be
preferred with
a group being defined as two to four people. Time allowances will increase with
multi-person presentations. Each research project must go beyond the internet
for sources. This will mean making use of traditional tools such as the
library.
Please note the due date for topic selection. Each topic will need to be
approved by Dr. Astro and Dr. Crepeau. The paper itself should be in a
traditional academic format acceptable in any Literature of History class. No
length is required but certainly nothing less than ten pages nor more than 30
pages will be acceptable.
In the past a wide range of topics have been chosen such as:
Fantasy Baseball
The Impact and Techniques of Ichiro
Baseball in
Baseball Poetry
Baseball Art
Baseball Films-comparative approach
A detailed look at one film.
Comparison of a film and the novel on which it is based.
The Bill James Factor
Drugs and Baseball-from Greenies to HGH
Jackie Robinson’s Legacy (or some more focused aspect of his life)
Other towering figures of the past be they players or executives.
What is important in choosing a topic is to follow your creative instincts and your passion for some facet of the game, historical or contemporary. Remember that this is a history and literature course and one of these should be reflected in some way in the paper and presentation.
Plus and minus grades will not be given as a final grade for
the course.
All matters discussed in this document are subject to change without
notice at the whim of the Dr. Crepeau and Dr. Astro are very likely to
do so.
Sometime in the first week of class (preferably today) send us an e-mail.
We will create a list for the class that will be used to send materials to
you. It is important that you are on this list as writing assignments will
also be communicated to you in this fashion. Changes in the Syllabus will
also be announced here.
"It ain't over 'till it's over" (Yogi Berra)