The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture 2007–2008 PREVIOUS WORKS IN THIS SERIES FROM MCFARLAND The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2005–2006 (edited by William M. Simons) The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2003–2004 (edited by William M. Simons) The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2002 (edited by William M. Simons) The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2001 (edited by William M. Simons) The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2000 (edited by William M. Simons) The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 1999 (edited by Peter M. Rutkoff ) The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 1998 (edited by Thomas L. Altherr) The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 1997 (Jackie Robinson) (edited by Peter M. Rutkoff ) The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture 2007–2008 Edited by William M. Simons McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London The Cooperstown symposium on baseball and American culture, 2007–2008 edited by William M. Simons. ISSN 1536-1195 ISBN 978-0-7864-3569-2 (softcover : 50# alkaline paper) ©2009 State University of New York, College at Oneonta. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover art ©2009 Wood River Gallery Manufactured in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com Table of Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction William M. Simons 1 PART I: CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE GAME The Baseball Reliquary: The Left Coast’s Alternative to Interpreting Baseball History Jean Hastings Ardell 22 Durocher as Machiavelli: Bad Catholic, Good American Jeffrey Marlett 38 PART II: LITERARY BASEBALL Homecoming: Family, Place, and Community in Sara Vogan’s In Shelly’s Leg and Thomas Oliphant’s Praying for Gil Hodges Thomas Wolf 52 Now Batting—Peter Pan: Jim Bouton’s Ball Four and Baseball’s Boyish Culture Elizabeth V. O’Connell 61 “Chasing Moonlight” Through Fiction, Film, and Fact: The Evolution of a Biography Brett Friedlander and R.W. Reising 79 PART III: BASEBALL AT THE MOVIES Patriot’s Game? Images of American Nationalism in Baseball Films Robert Rudd and Marshall Most 92 The Dark Side of the American Dream: Ron Shelton’s Cobb Ron Briley 106 v vi TABLE OF CONTENTS PART IV: MINORITY STANDARD BEARERS No Dummies: Deafness, Baseball, and American Culture R.A.R. Edwards 120 Asians and Baseball: The Breaking and Perpetuating of Stereotypes Terumi Rafferty-Osaki 131 PART V: NEW LEAGUES Building a League One Dollar at a Time: The Story of the Immediate Success of the American League Michael J. Haupert and Kenneth Winter 148 The Israel Baseball League and the Jewish Diaspora William M. Simons 164 PART VI: THE BUSINESS OF BASEBALL Baseball’s Ultimate Umpires: Labor Arbitration in Our National Game Roger I. Abrams 190 Taxing the Fan Who Catches the Ball: Looking Back on Record-Breakers, the 1998 Season and the IRS’s Turn at the Plate Patricia L. Bryan 200 The Role of Agents in Baseball Paul D. Staudohar 217 The Brave Departure Michael Civille 234 The Great Dodgers Pitching Tandem Strikes a Blow for Salaries: The 1966 Drysdale-Koufax Holdout and Its Impact on the Game Ed Edmonds 248 Index 263 Acknowledgments William M. Simons Alvin L. Hall created the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and Amer- ican Culture and continues to provide institutional memory. National Baseball Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson was a gracious host. Hall of Fame librarian Jim Gates rendered invaluable help at every step of the way, including service on the Abstract Committee and Editorial Board. The contributions of Tim Wiles, director of research at the Hall of Fame Library, and the library’s superb staff greatly facilitated the scholarship underpinning this volume. Bill Francis, Gabriel Schechter, and Russell Wolinsky, stalwarts of the Hall of Fame’s A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Center, provided much appreciated copyediting, fact checking, and other editorial assistance. SUNY College at Oneonta professor Daniel Payne made valuable contri- butions to the Editorial Board. Mark Boshnack, reporter for the Daily Star (Oneonta), and Maureen Mullen, contributor to the Boston Globe, offered insightful criticism. The following SUNY College at Oneonta faculty read this book’s mate- rials and provided critiques: economists William O’Dea and Michael McAvoy; political scientists Dennis Shea, Paul Conway, and Rob Compton; historian Jeffrey Fortin; psychologist Geoffrey O’Shea; physical educator John Hurley; and sociologists Eugene Obidinski and Edward Wesnofske. SUNY College at Oneonta reference librarian Nancy Louise Cannon also read manuscripts and assisted with research. SUNY College at Oneonta president Nancy Kleniewski and provost and vice president F. Daniel Larkin contributed institutional support. Fawn Hol- land spent many hours producing the index and generously helped in diverse ways. The book is dedicated to my nephew, Jon Derr. He is a Special Olympics medalist, Red Sox loyalist, and all-around great sport. Jon’s courage, enthusi- asm, and compassion give inspiration to all of us who know and love him. vii This page intentionally left blank Introduction William M. Simons The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2007– 2008 is a collection of learned articles that employ the national pastime to comment on issues transcending the playing field. The essays, chosen on the basis of scholarship, contribution to baseball literature, and interest to read- ers, are based on sixteen of the premier presentations from the two most recent proceedings of the annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and Ameri- can Culture, held from June 6 to 8, 2007, and from June 4 to 6, 2008. By tra- dition the conference begins on a Wednesday and ends on a Friday in early June while Cooperstown is still unhurried, just prior to the beginning of the K–12 school vacation season that crowds the village with tourists and denizens of baseball camps—and sends hotel rates soaring. Co-sponsored by the State University of New York College at Oneonta and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, the conference shares a name with this book. The informed, analytical, and engaging articles that pro- vide ballast to this book provide testament to the Symposium’s commitment to hosting significant baseball scholarship. Generally acknowledged as the pre- eminent gathering of baseball academicians, the Symposium has made singu- lar contributions to baseball pedagogy and research, and its influence continues to grow. When Alvin L. Hall, then dean of continuing education at the State Uni- versity of New York at Oneonta, created the Symposium in 1989, he initially envisioned it as a one-time conference, prompted by the fiftieth anniversary of the Hall of Fame. An intellectual and popular success at its inception, the Symposium, however, immediately generated a demand that it continue, and so it has each June for twenty years—and counting. Over his long tenure, Al Hall served, with distinction, as the director of the Symposium before I assumed the position. Honored as our founder, Al continues to provide the conference with institutional memory, a strong link between new and veteran participants, and gracious welcoming remarks. In the early years of the Symposium, part of the conference’s appeal derived 1 2INTRODUCTION from the affirmation that it gave to serious students of the game at a time when they often felt marginalized in academia. A generation ago, many skeptics ques- tioned the intellectual significance of baseball research: that is no longer the case. The Symposium generated impetus for the legitimization of baseball studies in college and university curriculum. Many books, essays, master’s theses, Ph.D. dissertations, and teaching strategies have evolved from papers initially presented at the Symposium. As a result, baseball provides content for many liberal arts course offerings, monographs in university presses, arti- cles in academic journals, and research grants. A unique synthesis of rigorous scholarship and baseball amity invests the Symposium with enduring appeal. It is a forum for understanding America through its national game, and enjoy- ing the company of like-minded enthusiasts. Through the years, many important print and electronic media, includ- ing the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Chron- icle of Higher Education, National Public Radio, and CBS News, have commented on the Symposium, recognizing its unique features. Pundits invariably note that the setting is special. There is no better locale to host a baseball conference than Cooperstown, birthplace to the game’s creation myth, site of Doubleday Field, and domicile to the Hall of Fame. With its baseball memorabilia stores, hospitable restaurants, local legends, history, small-town ambiance, proxim- ity to open land, and access to beautiful Lake Otsego (the Glimmerglass of novelist James Fenimore Cooper’s iconic frontiersman Natty Bumpo), Coop- erstown charms Symposium participants. If Cooperstown is baseball’s sacred town, the Hall of Fame is its most treasured shrine. Renovation and enlargement now allow the Hall of Fame to host all Symposium sessions. The 2007 conference inaugurated something new with the relocation of two Thursday evening traditions. The town ball game, a mid–nineteenth-century ancestor to today’s game, moved to Cooper Park, adjacent to the Hall of Fame, and the dinner was held in the hallowed Hall of Fame plaque gallery. The Thursday night dinner still features vintage wine donated by businessman-baseball maven Nick McIntosh—as well as the game’s song and poetry, including the recitation of baseball’s most famous verse by the Hall of Fame’s Tim Wiles, uniformed appropriately as the mighty Casey.