Baseball Memories Grade
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Baseball Memories Grade: 6-10 Subject: History, Language Arts Introduction: In this lesson, students investigate the impact of baseball on prior generations through an “oral history” exercise; that is, interviewing a parent, grandparent, or other older relative about attending major or minor league baseball games with a relative or friend. Background: Before beginning the lesson, the teacher may wish to introduce it by having students view various segments (many at the beginning of each of the episodes) where celebrities reminisce about viewing baseball games. Examples would be recollections by author Studs Terkel, comedian Billy Crystal, and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Terkel, for example, discusses Babe Ruth’s “called shot” home run against the Chicago Cubs in the 1932 World Series, while Crystal and Goodwin discuss their affection for the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers, respectively. Crystal and Goodwin also note the family loyalties of baseball in the film. See Goodwin’s essay, “Fan” at the end of this lesson. The teacher may also note that historically in literature and in films, baseball has been used as a way to cement the “bond” between parent and child as a shared experience, and that frequently team loyalty (or rivalries) have been handed down from generation to generation. In this lesson, students will act as historians, and will collect “oral history” information from relatives and neighbors who have recollections of attending either major league or minor league baseball games. They can either report on these recollections in class, or they may wish to collect and make them available online on the school Web page. The teacher should next discuss the impact of oral history on the overall study of history, and may wish to lead the class in a review of similar oral history projects, most notably, the Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project (1936-1938), which are now housed in the Library of Congress. The Web site for the Slave Narratives collection is http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html. Once the discussion on the impact of oral history is concluded, the teacher will want to discuss the specific Baseball Memories project. One way the teacher might introduce the project to students is through a statement such as this: “For many adults, there is no stronger memory than going with their parents or grandparents to a major or minor league baseball game. It often is a defining moment in their lives.” Explain to students their assignment is to select an adult to interview, create a list of questions you think are appropriate to ask regarding what they recall about attending their first big league ballgame, interview that person, and report their findings back to the class. (Note: Depending on the age-level and ability level of the class, the teacher may elect to create a question set personally and direct students to ask those questions. A sample questionnaire sheet is provided below.) Next, either distribute the question sheets or ask students to begin to consider what questions they might wish to ask their interview subjects. If the teacher elects to have students write their own questions, it is suggested that the teacher actively assist students in that task. Once students have generated questions, they can actually interview their oral history subjects. The teacher will want to allot adequate time for the students to contact interview subjects and ask questions. Also, the teacher may wish to allow students to not only record responses in writing, but also in audio-visual forms, such as audiocassettes or videotape. WRAP-UP At the end of the project, the teacher can ask students to either play their recorded interviews, or report back to the class in regard to what information their subjects shared. Resources: Major League Baseball (The Official Site) http://www.mlb.com) The Major League Baseball “History” page http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/history/mlb_history.jsp John Skilton’s Baseball Links http://www.baseball-links.com/ National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum (http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/) The Baseball Almanac http://www.baseball-almanac.com/ Baseball-Reference.com http://www.baseball-reference.com/ Minor League Baseball http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/ Exploratorium “Science of Baseball” http://www.exploratorium.edu/baseball/ The Field Museum, Chicago, “Baseball As America” http://www.fmnh.org/baseball/index.html Links for examples of oral histories Holt, Rinehart, and Winston http://go.hrw.com/resources/go_ss/teacher99/toolkit/TOOLKT15.pdf) The University of California (Berkley) “One Minute” oral history checklist http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/1minute.html “A Farm Girl Plays Baseball” (http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WWII_Women/FarmGirlBaseball.html) The American Memory section of the Library of Congress (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/oralhist/ohguide.html) Standards: This addresses national content standards established by the Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) (http://www.mcrel.org/standards-benchmarks/) History Understands that specific individuals and the values those individuals held had an impact on history Knows different types of primary and secondary sources and the motives, interests, and bias expressed in them (e.g., eyewitness accounts, letters, diaries, artifacts, photos; magazine articles, newspaper accounts, hearsay) Understands that change and continuity are equally probable and natural Language Arts Generates questions about topics of personal interest Gathers data for research topics from interviews (e.g., prepares and asks relevant questions, makes notes of responses, compiles responses) About the Author: Michael Hutchison teaches social studies at Lincoln High School in Vincennes, Indiana, and at Vincennes University. In 1998, Compaq named Michael a first- place prizewinner in its Teacher Lesson Plan contest, and in 1999, Michael was named the Midwest regional winner in Technology & Learning magazine's Teacher of the Year program. In 2002, Michael was named "Teacher of the Year" by the Indiana Computer Educators and "Technology-Using Teacher of the Year" by the International Society for Technology in Education. In addition, Michael hosts a weekly social studies forum for TAPPED IN, works as a staff member for ED Oasis, and serves as a faculty member of Connected University, as well as a member of the PBS TeacherSource Advisory Group and has written curriculum for several PBS programs, including The Civil War and Empire of the Air. Baseball Memories Interview sheet Introduction: Please help me by answering the following questions. I will be asking you questions about your experiences attending baseball games, and your recollections of those games. What is your name? What is your age? What was he first baseball game you attended? What year was it? What teams played? How old were you? What stadium was the game played in? Which team won the game? Do you remember the score? Who did you attend the game with? What are some of your favorite recollections about seeing this game? Do you feel that going to this baseball game was an important event in your life? Please explain your answer. Was your opinion of baseball as a sport enhanced or diminished by seeing a game in person? Are there any other things you would like to add about the game or what you remember about the day? FAN DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN My continuing love of baseball is inseparably linked to memories of my father. On summer nights, when he came home from work, the two of us would sit together on our porch, re-living that day's Brooklyn Dodger game, which I had permanently preserved in the large red scorebook he'd given me for my seventh birthday. I can still remember how proud I was when I first mastered all the miniature symbols that allowed me to record every movement, play by play, of our favorite players, Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese and Gil Hodges. With the scorebook spread between us, my dad would ask me questions about different plays, whether a strikeout was called or swinging, and if I'd been careful in my scoring, I would know the answers. At such moments, when he smiled at me, I could not help but smile, too, for he had one of those contagious smiles that started in his eyes and traveled across his face, leaving laugh lines on either side of his mouth. Sometimes a particular play would trigger in my dad a memory of a similar situation, framed forever in his mind, and suddenly we were back in time recalling the Dodgers of his childhood — Casey Stengel, Zack Wheat, and Jimmy Johnston. Mingling together the present and the past, our conversations nurtured within me an irresistible fascination with history, which has remained to this day. It fell to me to be the family scorekeeper not only because I was the third daughter and youngest child, but because my idea of a perfect afternoon was lying in front of our ten-inch- screen television, watching baseball. What is more, there was real power in being the one to keep score. For all through my early childhood, my father kept from me the knowledge that the daily papers printed daily box scores, permitting me to imagine that without my symbolic renderings of all the games he had missed while he was at work, he would never have been able to follow the Dodgers in the only proper way a team should be followed, day by day, inning by inning. In other words, without me, his love for baseball would be forever un-requited. In our neighborhood in Rockville Centre, New York, allegiance was equally divided among Dodger, Yankee, and Giant fans. As families emigrated from different parts of the city to the suburbs of Long Island, the old loyalties remained intact, creating rival enclaves on every street.