15th Annual NINE Spring Training Conference
March 13-16, 2008
Clarion Hotel Tucson Airport
Tucson, Arizona
THURSDAY, MARCH 13
6:00-7:00 p.m. Registration and Welcome
THE RICKEY HENDERSON LEAD OFF SESSION
Chair: Larry Gerlach, University of Utah
7:00-7:25 p.m. Steve Treder, “Frantic Frankie Lane”
No other executive in the history of the sport was as enamored with trades as Frank “Wheeler Dealer” Lane. As GM for the White Sox, Cardinals, Indians, Athletics, and Brewers, he executed great clouds of trades, over 400 in all. Some of his deals were brilliant, but more often Lane’s trades seemed pointless, even reckless. Was there a method to this madness? What drove Frank Lane to act as a nearly manic executive? What were the consequences for Lane, both professional and personal? Who, in the annals of baseball executive history, compares with him?
7:25-7:50 p.m. James R. Walker and Robert V. Bellamy, Jr., “The Announcer in
the Television Age”
The story of announcers and their struggle to capture baseball on both radio and television has been well documented. The most lasting contribution to our understanding of the baseball announcer is Curt Smith’s Voices of the Game and his subsequent books, The Storytellers and Voices of Summer. Smith has chronicled the experiences of virtually every major league baseball announcer. Our task in this paper is not to retell those individual stories but to focus on the special challenges that baseball presents to the television announcer and how announcers, over the decades, have addressed those challenges. This paper will be based on a chapter from our book Center Field Shot: A History of Baseball on Television that will be published by the University of Nebraska Press in June 2008.
7:50-8:15 p.m. David M. Pegram, “’Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?’:
Ballplayers as Role Models in Young Adult Literature, 1995-2007”
If today's baseball players no longer function as positive role models, then who should young adult males look to for examples of character and sportsmanship on and off the field? This presentation suggests that the fictional ballplayers in young adult novels are acting as surrogate role models, filling the void left by today's major leaguers.
THE CY SEYMOUR SESSION
8:15 p.m. Tribute to Bill Kirwin
FRIDAY, MARCH 14
THE LARRY DOBY SESSION
Chair: Bob Gorman, Winthrop University
8:20-8:45 a.m. Brian Carroll, “A Perfect Baseball Day: Black Press Coverage of
the East-West Classic”
This paper analyzes black press coverage of the East-West Classic all-star game. Tracking how the press covered the Classic and to what extent it collaborated with Negro League owners to make the summer event a success are useful ways to mark shifts in coverage of black baseball overall. In the 1930s, for example, the press joined the owners in building up the sport. In the 1940s, when the owners could not overcome their own greed and acrimony, sports writers distanced themselves from ownership and focused instead on the games themselves and the steady march to integration.
8:45-9:10 a.m. Joshua Fleer, “Missionary to the Democracy: Jackie Robinson and
American Civil Religion”
This paper examines how Jackie Robinson's admission into Major League Baseball affected the inclusion of African Americans into the American Creed, as elucidated in the Declaration of Independence, and subsequently afforded their acceptance into the nation's civil religion. In the process, baseball reprioritized America's mission in accordance with the nation's highest vision of the civil religion resulting in a “major new set of symbolic forms” represented in Jackie Robinson. When America was exposed for not extending inalienable rights to all citizens, Jackie Robinson symbolized the commitment to reapply the nation's sacred scriptures and its responsibility as a chosen nation.
9:10-9:35 a.m. Stephanie Liscio, “Bucking the Trend: The 1946 Integration of
the Cleveland Buckeyes”
In 1946 the Negro American League Cleveland Buckeyes signed a left-handed pitcher of mediocre talent and abilities, Eddie Klepp. Fresh from a stunning upset of the powerhouse Homestead Grays during the 1945 Negro League World Series, the Buckeyes hoped Klepp would fortify their 1946 bullpen.
What made Klepp unique wasn’t his lackluster performance, or his reputation as a lawbreaking troublemaker. It was the fact that he was the only white man in the Negro Leagues. Klepp faced hostility and intimidation in the south and was forced to stay in separate facilities when he traveled with the team. While there is no comparison between what Klepp endured and the harsh treatment Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby faced a year later, Klepp still deserves recognition for his experience.
9:35-10:00 a.m. Lisa Alexander, “’Do the Right Thing?’: A Case for Inducting Curt
Flood into Cooperstown”
As sportswriters and HOF voters continue their calls for "integrity," "fairness," and, "doing the right thing," in light of the scandal surrounding performance-enhancing drugs it seems odd that these same sportswriters continue to deny Curt Flood entry into Cooperstown. This presentation will discuss three matters: Flood's on-field statistics and hypothesize where he would stand statistically if he had not been ostracized by MLB; the importance of Flood v. Kuhn on the reserve clause and the current state of free agency; and whether or not Flood meets the induction requirements for the Veteran's Committee.
10:00-10:20 a.m. Coffee
THE BULLET JOE ROGAN SESSION
Chair: Jean Hastings Ardell, Corona Del Mar, CA
10:20-10:45 a.m. Geri Strecker, “Baseball Follows the Flag: Diplomacy and the
National Pastime in the Philippines before World War I”
After gaining control of the Philippines in 1898, the U.S. met strong native resistance. Aside from other pacification methods—military force, education, business investment—Americans introduced baseball, hoping its “civilizing effect” would inspire Filipinos to value democracy. Baseball spread quickly, and Manila hosted touring Major Leaguers plus traveling Japanese, Chinese, and Hawaiian teams, further promoting diplomacy throughout the Pacific. However, while baseball followed the flag, so did segregation. Although the all-black 24th Infantry team (starring Oscar Charleston and Joe Rogan) was probably the best in the islands, the Manila League barred them from all but one half-season. The league’s Manila and All-Filipino teams were multi-ethnic, but the Army, Marines, and Navy teams were all-white. This mixed message on the ballfield reflected the primary obstacle of American diplomacy in the Philippines: a segregated nation cannot force others to value democracy.
10:45-11:10 a.m. Jacob Bustad, “’One-Hundred per cent American’: Nationalism,
Masculinity, and American Legion Baseball in the 1920s”
This paper explores the relationship between amateur baseball in the historical context of the post-World War I period (1920-1930), focusing on the American Legion's baseball program started during that same era. By incorporating the theorization of "hegemonic masculinity," first popularized by sociologist R.W. Connell and subsequently a major theme in the sociology of sport, I argue that amateur baseball constituted a distinct form of nationalist masculinity that figured prominently in both the status of the sport and the status of gender roles within post-war American culture. By documenting the creation of the Legion Baseball program, I demonstrate how nationalism and masculinity converged through the playing of baseball by young American males.
11:10-11:35 a.m. Scott D. Peterson, “Red Press Nation: The Baseball Rhetoric of
Lester Rodney”
My paper will present a rhetorical analysis of Rodney’s work and compare it with the standard “party line” of mainstream sportswriters of the 1930s. Specifically, I will look at Rodney’s use of narrative and identification in his efforts to reach his audience. I will analyze key pieces from his tenure as sports editor of The Daily Worker, drawing from game accounts, interviews, and editorials. The purpose of my paper will be to see if Rodney’s “outsider status” as a writer for a communist paper allows him to treat the game in a fundamentally different way from mainstream sport journalists, and if it does, to characterize those differences.
11:35-12:00 p.m. Giovanni (Nikki) Willis, “Coloring the American Dream:
Rewriting the National Pastime through the Negro Leagues Museum”
Founded in 1990, the Negro Leagues Museum is designed to educate its patrons and complicate the traditional narrative of race in baseball. Rather than reifying simplistic Robinson-centered discourses of race in baseball, the Museum focuses on U.S. history regarding people of color and race relations from the 1800s through the 1960s. The narratives presented examine more than simply the evolution of the game as the Museum openly engages the traditional, dominant narratives regarding the history of race and segregation in the U.S. Here,the problems of segregation and racism are not relegated to the abstract “past,” but rather presented as powerful parts of a cultural history that is still alive today.
This paper examines the following questions: How does the Negro Leagues Museum compliment and complicate the traditional narratives of baseball in the U.S.? How does the Museum’s agenda align with other tensions in contemporary baseball culture regarding racial identity and national origins? What are the implications for such counter-narratives regarding the game and its heroes?
1:00 p.m. Ballgame
Tucson Electric Park
Oakland Athletics v. Chicago White Sox
THE ZACK WHEAT SESSION
Chair: Gary Gershman, Nova Southeastern University
7:30-7:55 p.m. Royse Parr, “Ben Harjo’s All-Indian Baseball Club”
Ben Harjo, a full-blood Creek Indian, formed a professional Indian baseball club that was financed by his oil-rich, full-blood Seminole Indian wife, Susey. After touring Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas by team bus in 1932, the team won the prestigious "Little World Series" in Denver, Colorado. In 1933, the team toured 15 states from their Holdenville, Oklahoma, home to Maine with 46-year-old Jim Thorpe initially as a gate attraction/coach and then as the playing manager.
7:55-8:20 p.m. Beth Mary Bollinger, “’When Nine of Them Died’: The Story of
the 1946 Spokane Indians Minor League Team’s Tragic Bus Crash”
After World War II, minor league baseball started up again in communities everywhere, including Spokane, Washington. The Spokane Indians were doing well when their away-game bus crashed, killing nine players in the worst-ever professional sports accident. Bollinger will discuss the tragedy; players lost; and connection it created to the Dodgers, planting a seed for future teams like the 1970 Indians. She also will discuss the crash’s impact on Ben Geraghty, one of its survivors, who became known as a great minor league manager. Henry Aaron calls Geraghty the best manager he ever had. Did the crash help Geraghty become great?
8:20-8:55 p.m. Karl Lindholm, “Leo Durocher and
the Bricklayer’s Wife”
Leo Durocher was a feisty little Frenchman from Springfield, Mass: banjo-hitter, Babe Ruth’s nemesis, umpire baiter, Willie Mays’ mentor, wooer of beautiful women. Off the field, Durocher loved the fast life and ran with the Rat Pack of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. in Las Vegas and L.A. He gambled and hung out with gamblers, including Bugsy Siegel, and got himself suspended from baseball in the 1947 season for his criminal associations. He also loved the ladies, and this passion brought him to Middlebury, Vermont, a trip he ultimately wished he had foregone.
A few years back, the late Ziggy Livingston, local athletic legend and noted raconteur, held forth for my benefit on Leo and his misadventures that summer of 1964 when Durocher was the third base coach for the L.A. Dodgers. Leo did come to our tiny burg that summer for five days, much to the delight of the local burgers, creating an excitement that has been part of town lore ever since.
SATURDAY, MARCH 15
THE TED WILLIAMS SESSION
Chair: James Walker, St. Xavier University
8:20-8:45 a.m. Chris Kimball and Kristin Anderson, “’A Big Howl from Property
Owners’: A Century of Opposition to Downtown Minneapolis Baseball”
While the Minnesota Twins were first located in the suburbs, they have played more than half their years in a downtown stadium. Their new home is being built across downtown from the Metrodome and very near the site of the 1889 Athletic Park. Both facilities faced stiff opposition over their locations and experienced significant struggles with local landowners. This paper compares and contrasts the nineteenth and twenty-first century ballparks, built within blocks of each other. The obstacles faced by each ballpark represent the common tensions associated with professional sports in the modern city as well as distinctive factors characteristic of each time and setting.
8:45-9:10 a.m. Paul Bursik, Kevin Quinn, and Keith Sherony, “A Test of the
Artificial Selection Hypothesis”
In his 2006 NINE article, Miceli showed how improved screening of baseball talent has had the paradoxical effect of lowering the maximum performance of the best players, whose ability is bounded by human capacity, because they face ever-improving competition. The end result of successful screening is compression – players’ average ability goes up while the measured ability of best players goes down – an effect Miceli termed artificial selection. Likewise, the late Stephen Jay Gould argued that better coaching, equipment and conditioning, and allowing non-whites into the game would have a compressing effect on the maximum performance of the best players. Gould concluded that the standard deviation is the correct statistic by which to evaluate performance. He documented a decline in the standard deviation of batting averages over time.
Our paper examines player performance data from 1903 through 2007 in a time series analysis to evaluate the artificial selection hypothesis. In addition to the sources of artificial selection identified by Miceli and Gould, changes that have occurred in professional baseball that counter the effect of artificial selection are assessed.
9:10-9:35 a.m. Robert Bellamy and David Whitson, “Going South: Professional
Baseball’s Contraction in Canada”
Our paper explains the decline of professional baseball in Canada. The primary emphasis will be on the movement of Canadian Minor League teams to the U.S. One of our major emphases will be to debunk some explanations often cited for baseball’s decline in Canada: poor weather, the weakness of the Canadian dollar, and the “hockey culture.” More significant in the movement of minor league franchises to U.S. regional centers (Albuquerque, Sacramento, Round Rock, and Allentown) is simply the greater profitability and franchise values associated with minor league baseball in the U.S.
What has been even more important, though, is the relative disappearance of baseball coverage (major league or minor league) from the national media in Canada. If interest in baseball has declined in Canada, this has followed from the departure of MLB from national network television in the mid-1990s, and the relatively little coverage that professional baseball (either MLB or local teams) now enjoys in the print media outside Toronto. If media can be understood as “shared information systems” (Meyerowitz) that create communities by enabling widely dispersed audiences to take an interest in the same events and personalities, the marginalization of baseball coverage in Canada’s national media is threatening Canada’s continued place in the “country of baseball.”
9:35-10:00 a.m. Ed Edmonds, “Earl Toolson and His Legacy in Baseball’s Labor
History”
Baseball enjoys a unique antitrust and labor law heritage among professional sports starting with the Supreme Court decision in Federal Baseball in 1922 and continuing with their decisions in Toolson v. New York Yankees and Flood v. Kuhn. Perhaps the least understood of this trilogy is the Toolson case. Earl Toolson signed a minor league contract with the Boston Red Sox in 1942. After stints with the Army Air Corps and the Louisville Colonels, Earl was traded in 1949 to the New York Yankees. The following year the Yankees uncovered an arm injury and decided to demote Earl to Binghamton. When told by New York that they would reduce his contract salary, Earl refused the assignment. Instead, Earl filed suit against Organized Baseball and the reserve clause. In 1951, a district court judge ruled against Toolson. Earl's case came to the Supreme Court in 1953 where the Court also turned aside Earl's appeal. The presentation will focus on Toolson's life, his minor league baseball career, and his lawsuit and appeals.
10:00-10:20: Coffee
THE SATCHEL PAIGE SESSION
Chair: Lisa Alexander, Wayne State University
10:20-10:45 a.m. James Brunson III, “’A Mirthful Spectacle’: Race, Blackface
Minstrelsy and Base Ball (1874-1888)”
“A Mirthful Spectacle”: Race, Blackface Minstrelsy, and Base Ball (1874-1888) queries: was blackness a metaphor for the material excesses of the postbellum Gilded Age—or for the stereotypical notion of colored base ball? One answer examines how blackface minstrelsy penetrated the baseball sporting world—burnt cork artists played ball, journalists narrated colored games as blackface farce and, as stated, colored nines engaged in “negro” comedy. And because St. Louis provides a unique study of race, blackface minstrelsy and baseball, this presentation will concentrate primarily the Mound City.
10:45-11:10 a.m. Roberta Newman, “Send In the Clowns: Reassessing Black
Baseball’s Novelty Acts After the Desegregation of the Major Leagues”
After desegregation took its toll on the Negro Leagues, leading to their swift, steady decline, the Indianapolis Clowns continued to draw crowds. Black baseball for its own sake may have ceased to draw audiences, but not so the blend of baseball and humor offered by the Clowns and other, less prominent novelty acts. Testament to the popularity of black novelty teams, the Clowns, becoming a full-time traveling team after leaving the Negro American League before the 1954 season, by then more fully integrated than the major leagues, continued to barnstorm well into the late 1960s.
This presentation will reexamine the role played by the Clowns and other African American novelty teams, among them Abe Saperstein’s Harlem Globetrotters baseball team and the Kansas City Monarchs under the ownership of TY Baird, in prolonging the life of black baseball, at least in name. It will necessarily consider problems arising from the Clowns’ brand of humor, attempting to position it culturally and historically along side other forms of entertainment generally identified as African American.
11:10-11:35 a.m. Joel Nathan Rosen, “Black Business and Black Baseball: An
(Un)Easy Alliance”
For all of its perceived positive outcomes, the integration of Major League Baseball caused an enormous fissure in burgeoning African American economic circles. While the nation looked on with wonder as Jackie Robinson and later Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, and Monte Irvin made inroads into what had been white baseball, the economic impact throughout black America had just begun to reverberate. In this regard, an often shaky yet rather symbiotic relationship with Negro League baseball drifted downward into a disastrous economic adjustment once black stars saw the Major Leagues rather than the Negro Leagues as the next step in their own professional interests.
This paper will thus explore the relationship between black business and black baseball prior to and following integration. Specific to this investigation will be tracing business models put into practice in many black communities that had as one of its principle foundations Negro League Baseball. Moreover, I will also seek to demonstrate the house of cards effect that underscored this particular economic system while I dispel the increasingly popular and exceedingly uncritical notion that integration in baseball was a predominantly difficult adjustment for the white world.
11:35-12:00 p.m. Ron Briley, “The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars and Motor
Kings (1976): Placing Negro League Baseball in the American
Mainstream”
With their clowning antics, the Travelling All-Stars appear to be a throwback to an earlier era and more representative of the black stereotypes presented by the Harlem Globetrotters. While the flamboyant actions of the Travelling All-Stars may be interpreted as the trickster image often employed by minority groups for survival within the white power structure, the cultural landscape of the mid-1970s made such a reading less palatable for black Americans. This paper will attempt to place The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars and Motor Kings within the historical context of black cultural and cinematic representation in the mid-1970s.
1:00 p.m. Ballgame
Tucson Electric Park
Chicago Cubs vs. Chicago White Sox
6:30 p.m. Banquet
Keynote Speaker: Lee Lowenfish
Introduction by Dick Crepeau
Sunday, March 16
THE PREACHER ROE SUNRISE SESSION
Chair: Steve Gietschier, The Sporting News
8:40-9:15 a.m. John Thorn, “The Magnolia Ball Club of 1843: Overturning
Traditional Notions of Baseball's Origin”
The story begins with a needle-in-a-haystack find: a classified ad in the New York Herald of November 2, 1843, citing a heretofore unknown New York ball club that played at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken. In serpentine fashion, this find links with a printed ticket to a Magnolia Club entertainment on February 9 of the following year, which proves to be the first depiction of men playing baseball; the earliest artifact related to the New York Game; and arguably the first baseball card. But the greater significance of the find is the new understanding it affords of how baseball really began in New York.
9:05-9:30 a.m. Eric B. Salo, “A Disabilities Studies Perspective on Frank
‘Brownie’ Burke and Other Disabled Mascots”
This presentation will analyze the use of persons with disabilities as baseball mascots in the early twentieth century, with relation to disabilities studies and the disabilities rights movement. Particular emphasis will be on little person Frank “Brownie” Burke, whose brief career as mascot was spent with the Cincinnati Reds. He also dabbled in many other professions: as a drum major, actor, vaudevillian, restaurateur, and soldier, among others. His life outside baseball makes him an interesting focus; and broad motifs and examples on the subject of disabled mascots can be drawn from his specific experience.
9:30-9:55 a.m. Rebecca Edwards, “No Dummies: Deaf Players in Baseball”
This paper examines deaf players from the early twentieth century (George Leitner, Billy Deegan, Luther Taylor, and William Hoy), bringing together what little work is being done in both the baseball and deaf studies communities. Writing about Taylor, Cait Murphy tantalizingly suggests that “most of the elder Giants…learned sign language in order to communicate with the likable pitcher.” This would suggest that there was more known about deaf life and language in baseball at the time beyond the players, perhaps even more than we have previously thought. If the Giants signed, does this suggest that the deaf players were better integrated into the team than we might have supposed? If signing support disappeared, is this why deaf players disappeared as well?
In Signs of Resistance: American Deaf Cultural History, 1900 to 1942, Susan Burch suggests that the players were heroes in the Deaf community, “immortalized” in the Deaf press, perhaps not in the hearing. But was this the case? How well known were these players generally? How were they presented in the press? How does coverage from the deaf and hearing presses compare?
This paper will explore these questions and attempt to flesh out the story of baseball’s forgotten “dummies.”
9:55-10:15 a.m. Coffee
THE JOE CARTER LAST-UP SESSION
Chair: Ron Briley, Sandia Preparatory School
10:15-10:40 a.m. Christopher D. Green, “Mind Over Batter: The Cubs and the
‘Headshrinker’ in the Late 1930s”
In the late 1930s, the Chicago Cubs were on the verge of greatness, but could not win the World Series. After the 1937 season, the Cubs’ erratic owner, Philip K. Wrigley, went looking for the missing piece of the puzzle. What he came up with was not another player, but a laboratory-trained psychologist from the University of Illinois named Coleman Griffith. In the spring of 1938, Griffith headed out to the Cubs’ training camp on Santa Catalina Island to apply science to the problem of baseball. The clash of cultures between the professor and the baseball men was immediate. This paper examines Griffith’s attempt to use psychology to help the Cubs make it over the top.
10:40-11:05 a.m. Jim Odenkirk, “A Bitter Rivalry Long Forgotten: The Cleveland
Indians and the New York Yankees, 1947-1956”
The late baseball author Ed Linn, stated emphatically that “there is no rivalry on the face of the earth that can compare with the Yankees and Red Sox.”
Evidence will be presented that for one decade (1947 – 1956), the most intense rivalry in the major leagues took place between the Bronx Bombers and the Tribe.
Among the statistics to be analyzed are the following: cumulative won-loss records; yearly final standings and World Series appearances; attendance figures, and related numerical factors. This author will validate his thesis with demographic studies including the impact of racial integration, newspaper coverage; team ownership and fan reaction.
The contribution of this paper to baseball research will allay the common impression that the great baseball rivalry has always been between the Red Sox and the Yankees.
11:05-11:30 a.m. Gary Gershman, “Why I Hate the Yankees: Sports Rivalry and
Understanding Conflict in America”
Baseball rivalries and the development of iconographic teams who draw both love and hatred provide an interesting view of the social and cultural history of America. America has a knack for producing teams that people love to hate, and the Yankees transcend all other teams in both the vitriol and adoration they invoke.
Traditional rivalries, such as the Dodgers-Giants, Cubs-Cardinals and Yankees-Red Sox, are rooted in pre-World War II conflict, yet seem to transcend their origins and reflect changes in American society. As the Dodgers and Giants have moved from New York to California, their rivalry has moved to a different plane, reflecting old tensions, as well as new.
Thus, in the modern world, what does the rivalry between teams signify? Is it true conflict between those areas and peoples or something else? Has rivalry like many American cultural phenomena become all form and no substance? Or in an American obsessed with correct behavior in the social plane and total polarization in the political, has sports rivalry become the politically correct way to hate another without have to resort to traditional prejudices or offending others.
11:30-11:55 a.m. Robert M. Carrothers, “Dodging a Bullet: The Potential for
Celebratory Riots in Major League Baseball”
Using the theoretical framework constructed by Lewis (2007), the danger of a celebrating riot (vandalism, arson, destruction of property, fighting with other fans and agents of social control following a victory at the given event) in any Major League Baseball city is explored. Lewis provides a series of conditions which increase the likelihood that a celebratory riot will occur following a championship victory. These conditions are used to analyze the city of Cleveland leading up to game five of the 2007 American League Championship Series and generally applied to the thirty Major League Baseball franchises to analyze the possibility for celebratory riots to occur in each community.