114 Baseball and the American Century PDF

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Dr. Alexandra Reider [email protected] Office: LC 003 Office hours: TBD

English 114a | Section 21 Monday/Wednesday, 9am-10:15am Location: LC 205

“The Shot Heard ‘Round the World”: Baseball and the American Century What does baseball tell us about the world we live in – and the world we (think we) used to live in? Baseball is still known as the “national pastime,” but it doesn’t always seem that way in today’s increasingly global sports landscape. So how good a barometer is baseball for understanding America and its interactions with the wider world? While we think about these questions in the context of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we will tackle topics such as nostalgia, gender, racism, colonialism, and economics – in addition to reading some classic writing on baseball. In other words, we will think critically about baseball, which is different from criticizing baseball (which some of our readings also do). But no one criticizes something without first thinking it’s important. How and why, then, is baseball important? This course will also train you to analyze academic arguments and write coherent and persuasive academic prose. We will work extensively on five key steps: identifying problems, making claims, supporting these claims with evidence, establishing motive, and providing sufficient warrants. As part of this skillset, we will also develop our close-reading skills and chisel and hone the sentences we write in order to achieve the utmost clarity. After this class, you will be equipped to articulate and undertake the writing and research projects that form the bedrock of a college education, no matter the discipline you choose to pursue.

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Course Materials: Websites: Canvas OWL Purdue: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/ Readings: Articles marked with * are available through online library databases; I have put the others on Canvas. UNIT ONE: National Pastime? *Daniel A. Nathan, “Baseball as the National Pastime: A Fiction Whose Time is Past,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 31 (2014): 91-108

UNIT TWO: There’s No Crying in Baseball A League of Their Own (1992), dir. Penny Marshall excerpt from Eugenie Brinkema, The Forms of the Affects (Duke University Press, 2014) *Amira Rose Davis, “No League of Their Own: Baseball, Black Women, and the Politics of Representation,” Radical History Review 125 (2016): 74-96

UNIT THREE: Baseball in Society, Society in Baseball excerpt from Jackie Robinson’s autobiography, I Never Had it Made (1972) Peter Golenbock, Teammates (children’s book from 1992) *Christopher Stride, Ffion Thomas & Maureen M. Smith, “Ballplayer or Barrier Breaker? Branding through the Seven Statues of Jackie Robinson,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 31 (2014): 2164-96 *Adrian Burgos, Jr., “Playing in the World Jim Crow Made”: chapter in his Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007), 162-76 *Christopher A. Parsons, Johan Sulaeman, Michael C. Yates, and Daniel S. Hamermesh, “Strike Three: Discrimination, Incentives, and Evaluation,” The American Economic Review 101 (2011): 1410-35 *Younghan Cho, “Double Binding of Japanese Colonialism: Trajectories of Baseball in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea,” Cultural Studies 30.6 (2016): 926-48 *Craig Fortier, “Stealing Home: Decolonizing Baseball’s Origin Stories and Their Relations to Settler Colonialism,” Settler Colonial Studies 6 (2016): 1-22

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*Boria Majumdar and Sean Brown, “Why Baseball, Why Cricket? Differing Nationalisms, Differing Challenges,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 24 (2007): 139-56 Henry Luce, “The American Century,” Life Magazine, February 7, 1941 excerpt from Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (Norton, 2004) *Daniel T. Brown, Charles R. Link, and Seth L. Rubin, “Moneyball After 10 Years: How Have Major League Baseball Salaries Adjusted?” Journal of Sports Economics 18.8 (2017): 771-86

UNIT FOUR: Cultural Criticism John Updike, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” The New Yorker, publ. Oct 22, 1960 Roger Angell, “The Web of the Game” Philip Roth, “My Baseball Years” excerpt from Doris Kearns Goodwin, Wait Till Next Year

Course Requirements: 1. Attendance and participation. Your success in this course begins with your careful preparation of the assigned materials and your courteous and enthusiastic participation in class discussions. For more information, see the Course Policies below. 2. Meeting with your instructor outside of class at least three times during the semester. 3. Successful completion of all required posts to the course blog. 4. Three scholarly essays (and the draft versions of two of them), one short oral presentation, and one final cultural critique. I will provide prompts for each essay and directions for the final paper preview presentation.

Grading Distribution: Paper 1: Close Reading for Argument: 10% Paper 2: Controlled Research Argument: 20% Paper 3 annotated bibliography and working claim: 5% Paper 3: Research-Based Argument: 30% Paper 4: Cultural Critique: 15% Short online writing: 10% * A semester of satisfactory responses will be calculated into your final grade as a B+. You can raise your reading response grade by posting consistently above average

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responses or several excellent ones. Late responses (posted before the following class) will receive half credit. Participation (including Canvas discussions and instructor conferences): 10% * As outlined above in “Course requirements,” participation includes in-class participation and three meetings with me. * I will email out midterm participation grades so that you know how you’re doing.

Important Due Dates: P1V1 (= paper 1, version 1): P2V1: P2V2: P3 research proposal and working bibliography: P3 annotated bibliography and working claim: partial P3V1: full P3V1: P3V2: P4:

Friday, September 13, 11:59pm Monday, September 23, 11:59pm Friday, October 4, 11:59pm Monday, October 14, 11:59pm Friday, October 25, 11:59pm Thursday, October 31, 11:59pm Friday, November 8, 11:59pm Wednesday, November 20, 11:59pm Friday, December 6, 11:59pm

Class Policies: In Class: 1. Reading is an active process: print out and annotate the course readings. Electronic copies of the articles (on your laptop, tablet, etc.) are not permitted. 2. Refrain from using electronic devices, such as laptops and cell phones, in class unless instructed to do so; doing so can prove distracting to those around you. That said, do talk to me outside of class individually if you need a workaround for this policy. 3. No eating, please, but drinking is fine. 4. You are allowed one unexcused absence per semester. More than two unexcused absences will automatically result in a lowering of your grade and more than four unexcused absences will automatically result in failure of the course. This is an official English 114 course policy that is beyond my control as your instructor. 5. You are granted an excused absence if you are sick; have a family emergency; are observing a religious holiday; or are required to participate in a sporting event. For an absence to be excused, you must notify me as far in advance as possible. 6. Everyone gets delayed sometimes, but latecomers can be a real distraction. If you are ten minutes late (or more) twice, that will count as an unexcused absence.

Outside of Class: 1. Part of your participation grade comes from three instructor meetings with me. I hold regular office hours (TBD) and am also available by appointment. 2. I usually answer email pretty quickly, but I do not check my email after 7 pm; I also do not reply to essay-related emails sent under 12 hours before papers are due (i.e., after 11:59am).

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3. You are encouraged to use any form of legitimate aid to help you write papers. Good writing is not often the result of a solitary process; rather, it emerges from a writer’s thinking about his or her work in relation to its potential readers, so even the most skilled writers try to find real readers willing to listen to plans or read drafts. Yale offers a wealth of writing resources: take advantage of as many kinds of recommended assistance in the writing of your papers as possible. To ensure that you are given full credit for having done so, the final version of each major paper must include a statement acknowledging any assistance that you have received as you wrote or rewrote the paper. Obvious sources of legitimate assistance include Yale’s college writing tutors and writing partners, who can offer advice on all stages of the writing process (contact information for both programs is available at http://www.yalewco.com/index.php). Additional information can be found on the Writing Center website: http://writing.yalecollege.yale.edu/.

Paper Conventions: 1. All papers should be double-spaced and in a standard 12-point serif font. Send them to me in a .doc format. 2. On the first page, you should have your name, the date, and the class in the upper righthand corner; include a title that is centered. 3. Subsequent pages should have your last name and a page number in the upper right-hand corner. 4. I must receive all papers at the start of the class in which they are due. 5. All papers, even drafts, must be in a complete form: that is to say, they must have an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. The more complete a draft is, the more help I will be. 6. A late paper loses one plus/minus grade each day (not class meeting) it is late. 7. You have one extension pass that you may use to push the due date of any one assignment, except the first draft of Paper 1, back by two days (i.e., from Friday to Sunday). To activate this extension, you must go to the Writing Center to solicit help on your essay; as proof, email me a selfie of you in the Writing Center and a paragraph describing what you worked on and your plan to revise your paper after getting feedback from a Writing Partner.

Academic Honesty: I cannot stress enough the importance of academic honesty in your work in this class. English 114 is designed to train you to become a clearer, better writer and interlocutor; dishonesty in your contributions to this class wastes your time and opens you up to a range of punitive measures. Yale College takes plagiarism seriously, and please understand that if I see it going on, I am duty-bound to report it to the Yale College Executive Committee; the College’s policies are available at http://catalog.yale.edu/undergraduate-regulations/policies/definitions-plagiarismcheating/. See also the Writing Center’s advice: http://writing.yalecollege.yale.edu/usingsources. If you have any questions about how to use and credit other sources, please do not hesitate to come to me or to go to the Writing Center. Asking for help is honorable.

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Class Schedule: Readings and assignments are due on the day on which they are listed. Readings are subject to change; and students are responsible for keeping track of such changes, which will be posted on Canvas. * denotes a reading you are to find yourself online.

UNIT ONE: NATIONAL PASTIME? Week 1 Wednesday, August 28: Introduction: What Even is Baseball? Friday, August 30: -- *Daniel A. Nathan, “Baseball as the National Pastime: A Fiction Whose Time is Past” -- 300-word reflection on Canvas about Nathan’s argument, using one of the terms from the “Elements of an Argument” handout. -- Paper #1 assigned

Week 2 Wednesday, September 4: -- *Nathan, “Baseball as the National Pastime” (again)

Week 3 Monday, September 9: Workshop 1 -- paragraph of close reading on Canvas Wednesday, September 11: -- A League of Their Own (1992), dir. Penny Marshall Friday, September 13: -- P1 due

UNIT TWO: THERE’S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL Week 4 Monday, September 16: -- excerpt from Eugenie Brinkema, The Forms of the Affects (Duke University Press, 2014) -- reading response due on Canvas

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Wednesday, September 18: -- *Amira Rose Davis, “No League of Their Own: Baseball, Black Women, and the Politics of Representation,” Radical History Review 125 (2016): 74-96 -- reading response due on Canvas

Week 5 Monday, September 23: -- P2V1 due Wednesday, September 25: P2V1 workshop

UNIT THREE: BASEBALL IN SOCIETY, SOCIETY IN BASEBALL Week 6 Monday, September 30: -- excerpt from Jackie Robinson’s autobiography, I Never Had it Made (1972) Wednesday, October 2: -- Peter Golenbock, Teammates (children’s book from 1992) -- *Christopher Stride, Ffion Thomas & Maureen M. Smith, “Ballplayer or Barrier Breaker? Branding through the Seven Statues of Jackie Robinson,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 31 (2014): 2164-96 -- Paper #3 assigned Friday, October 4: -- P2V2 due

Week 7 Monday, October 7: Bass Library Day Wednesday, October 9: -- *Adrian Burgos, Jr., “Playing in the World Jim Crow Made”: chapter in his Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007), 162-76 -- reading response due on Canvas Week 8 Monday, October 14: -- *Christopher A. Parsons, Johan Sulaeman, Michael C. Yates, and Daniel S. Hamermesh, “Strike Three: Discrimination, Incentives, and Evaluation,” The American Economic Review 101 (2011): 1410-35 -- research proposal and working bibliography due

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Wednesday, October 16: no class!

Week 9 Monday, October 21: -- *Younghan Cho, “Double Binding of Japanese Colonialism: Trajectories of Baseball in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea,” Cultural Studies 30.6 (2016): 926-48 -- reading response due on Canvas Wednesday, October 23: -- *Craig Fortier, “Stealing Home: Decolonizing Baseball’s Origin Stories and Their Relations to Settler Colonialism,” Settler Colonial Studies 6 (2016): 1-22 Friday, October 25: -- annotated bibliography and working claim due

Week 10 Monday, October 28: -- *Boria Majumdar and Sean Brown, “Why Baseball, Why Cricket? Differing Nationalisms, Differing Challenges,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 24 (2007): 139-56 -- reading response due on Canvas Wednesday, October 30: -- Henry Luce, “The American Century” Thursday, October 31: -- partial P3V1 due

Week 11 Monday, November 4: -- excerpt from Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Wednesday, November 6: -- *Daniel T. Brown, Charles R. Link, and Seth L. Rubin, “Moneyball After 10 Years: How Have Major League Baseball Salaries Adjusted?” Journal of Sports Economics 18.8 (2017): 771-86 Friday, November 8: -- full P3V1 due

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Week 12 Monday, November 11: P3V1 workshop Wednesday, November 13: Beinecke Day!

UNIT FOUR: CULTURAL CRITIQUE Week 13 Monday, November 18: -- John Updike, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” The New Yorker, publ. Oct 22, 1960 Wednesday, November 20: -- Roger Angell, “The Web of the Game” -- full P3V2 due

Week 14: no class!

Week 15 Monday, December 2: -- Philip Roth, “My Baseball Years” Wednesday, December 4: -- excerpt from Doris Kearns Goodwin, Wait Till Next Year Friday, December 6: -- P4 due

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