20th Cooperstown Symposium
on Baseball and American Culture

A presentation from a recent Symposium is given in the Hall of Fame's Bullpen Theater. (Milo Stewart Jr.)

The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, co-sponsored by the State University of New York College at Oneonta and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, examines the impact of baseball on American culture from inter- and multi-disciplinary perspectives.

Download registration information for the 2008 Symposium (.doc), to be held June 4-6. For more information on the Symposium, please e-mail Jim Gates, Hall of Fame Librarian.

The 2007 Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture was held in early June.

Coverage from the 2007 Symposium:

2008 program listing

The 20th Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture will feature the largest number of invited presentations since the program's inception. We have scheduled several special sessions, along with our normal program of panel sessions, which cover many aspects of baseball and its role in our history and culture.

Wednesday, June 4

1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. — Keynote Address (Grandstand Theater)

2:15 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. — Concurrent Session 1

    Panel: Fierce Competitors and Driven Men (Bullpen Theater)

  • A Bat Boy's Perspective of Ty Cobb
    Millard Fisher; Stone Mountain, Georgia

  • Cobb(1994): The Dark Side of the American Dream
    Ron Briley; Sandia Preparatory Schho

  • Durocher as Machiavelli: Bad Catholic, Good American
    Jeffrey Marlett; College of Saint Rose

    Panel: Literary Baseball (Education Gallery)

  • A View from the Bullpen: Jim Brosnan and Jim Bouton, Two Baseball Diarists
    Charles DeMotte; Onondaga Community College

  • Now Batting - Peter Pan: Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" and Baseball's Boyish Culture
    Elizabeth O'Connell; Stony Brook University

  • Willie Morris: A Mississippi Writer's Infatuation With Baseball
    Thomas Wolfe; Chapel Hill, North Carolina

3:45 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. — Concurrent Session 2

    Panel: African American Pioneers (Bullpen Theater)

  • A Different Approach to Integration - Tom Alston
    Lloyd Barrow; University of Missouri

  • Gene Baker: Unsung Hero in the Integration of Major League Baseball
    Richard Puerzer; Hofstra University

  • Half-Broken Barriers: Frank Robinson, Major League Baseball and American Race Relations
    Brian Richards; Cooperstown Graduate Program

    Panel: Mysteries and Legends of the Game (Education Gallery)

  • Haunted Baseball: Ghosts, Curses, Legends and Eerie Events
    Dan Gordon; Providence, Rhode Island and Mickey Bradley; Schenectady, New York

  • The House That Words Built: How Language Creates Baseball Legends
    Roy Fox; University of Missouri

  • Chasing Moonlight Through Fiction, Film and Fact: The Evolution of a Biography
    Brett Friedlender; Willamsburg, Kentucky and Bob Reising; University of Kentucky

6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. — Plenary Session 1 (Grandstand Theater)

  • Baseball and Freedom: Umpires and the Roots of Order and Freedom
    George Nicholson; Judge, Court of Appeals - State of California
    William Shubb; Judge, United State District Court, Eastern District, California
    Branch Rickey III; President, Pacific Coast League
    CeCe Carlucci; Umpire, Pacific Coast League
    Bob Motley; Umpire, Negro Leagues and Pacific Coast League
    Vince Miles; Actor
    Steve Gotan; Senior Analyst, United State District Court, Eastern District, California

Thursday, June 5

9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. — Plenary Session 2 (to be determined)

  • The Trial of Rube Waddell
    Alan Levy; Slippery Rocky University and Roger Abrams; Northeastern University

10:45 a.m. to noon — Plenary Session 3 (Bullpen Theater)

  • Baseball as Art and Poetry Via the Camera's Lens
    Stephen Wood; University of Rhode Island and David Pincus; University of Arkansas

1:15 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. — Concurrent Session 3

    Panel: Baseball and Music (Bullpen Theater)

  • Miss Kate Said No: The First Century of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game"
    Tim Wiles; National Baseball Hall of Fame

  • I Never Get Back: An Analysis of Melodic Shape in "Take Me Out to the Ball Game"
    Timothy Johnson; Ithaca College

  • Black Baseball and the Sounds of Music
    Larry Hogan; Union County College and Robert Cvornyek; Rhode Island College

    Panel: Baseball Commissioners (Education Gallery)

  • Carl Mays, The Rise of the New York Yankees, and the Demise of Ban Johnson's Influence
    Ed Edmonds; University of Notre Dame

  • Bud Selig's Use of "Smart Power"
    Robert Lewis; University of New Mexico

  • The Pragmatic Change Agent: A Reconsideration of Ford Frick as Commissioner
    David Bohmer; DePauw University

2:45 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. — Concurrent Session 4

    Panel: Black Baseball (Bullpen Theater)

  • Baseball in the Segregated 'North'
    Geri Strecker; Ball State University

  • Effa Manley and the Politics of Passing
    Lisa Alexander; Wayne State University

  • Joe Bostic, Militant Rhetoric, and the Integration of Major League Baseball
    Harry Phillips; Central Piedmont Community College

    Panel: Baseball Regionalism (Education Gallery)

  • The Wrong Half of the Yankees: How the Kansas City A's Became a Major League Farm Team
    Jeff Katz; Cooperstown, New York

  • The Braves Departure
    Michael Civille; Boston College

  • The Baseball Reliquary: The West Coast Alternative Approach to Baseball History
    Jean Hastings Ardell; Corona Del Mar, California

5:00 p.m. to 6:45 p.m. — Plenary Session 4 (Cooper Park)

Town Ball Game

7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. — Dinner (Hall of Fame Gallery)

Friday, June 6

9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. — Concurrent Session 5

    Demonstration Event (Cooper Park - weather permitting)

  • Pesapallo: Finnish Baseball
    Kevin Casebolt and Shawn Munford; East Stroudsburg University

    Panel: Seasons Past (Bullpen Theater)

  • The Fall of the 1977 Phillies: How a Baseball Team's Collapse Sank a City's Spirit
    Mitchell Nathanson; Villanova University

  • Baseball Used to Be Better, But the Players Were Too
    Steve Jacobson; New York, New York

  • Riots and RBIs: The City of Detroit and the 1968 Tigers
    Bruce Markusen; Cooperstown, NY

10:45 a.m. to noon — Concurrent Session 6

    Panel: Baseball and Business (Bullpen Theater)

  • The Role of Player Agents
    Paul Staudohar; California State University - East Bay

  • Baseball and Player Agents: Understanding The Imaging of Player Agents
    Tom Haic and Peggy Beck; Kent State University

  • Building a League One Dollar at a Time: The Story of the Early Success of the American League
    Ken Winter and Michael Haupert; University of Wisconsin - LaCrosse

    Panel: The Early Game (Education Gallery)

  • Mutual Benefits and Close Connections: Baseball and America's Streetcars in the 19th Century
    Robert Cullen; American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials

  • Intemperance on the Emerald Diamond
    Jerrold Casway; Howard Community College

  • No Dummies: Deafness, Baseball and American Culture
    Rebecca Edwards; Rochester Institute of Technology

1:00 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. — Concurrent Session 7

    Panel: Minority Issues (Bullpen Theater)

  • The Prairie Diamond: Native American Ballplayers and the National Pastime
    Trey Strecker; Editor, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture

  • Barthes and Baseball: What "Myth" and Semiotics Can Tell Us About MLB's Communiques About African American and the Game
    Dave Ogden; University of Nebraska, Omaha

  • Jim Crow Plays Here: Black Baseball and the African American Business Community
    Joel Nathan Rosen; Moravian College and Roberta Newman; New York Univesity

    Panel: Six-Pointed Diamond - Jews and Baseball (Education Gallery)

  • The Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Experience with Baseball
    Alan Patterson; Central Connecticut State University

  • In the Beginning - and in the End: The Genesis and Destruction of the Israel Baseball League
    Bill Simons; SUNY-Oneonta

  • Baseball: As Israeli Perspective
    Yair Galily; Zinman College - Wingate Institute, Israel

2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. — Concurrent Session 8

    Panel: Baseball and the Law (Bullpen Theater)

  • Umpires and Rules: Reducing Rule Equivocality through Communicative Interaction
    Guy Smith; University of Washinghton

  • Do Not Rebroadcast Under Penalty of Law: America's Pastime and Copyright Law
    Rebecca Butler; Northern Illinois University

    Panel: Women and Baseball (Education Gallery)

  • Life After the League: The Long Term Impact of Playing in the AAGPBL
    Kat Williams; Marshall University

  • Framing Our All-American Girls: Newspaper and Magazine Coverage of the AAGPBL
    Brandi Laubach; Syracuse University

3:45 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. — Concurrent Session 9

    Panel: Potpourri 1 (Bullpen Theater)

  • Sharing the Dream: A Baseball Life in Transition - Mario Ramos
    Oren Renick: Texas State University and Mario Ramos; San Marcos, Texas

  • Baseball Literature for Children and Young Adults: A History
    Jay Hurd; Harvard University

  • Play Ball [Baseball and Autism]
    Catherine Mays; Marshfield, MA

Panel: Potpourri 2 (Education Gallery)

  • Forget-Me-Nots: Japanese Internment and Baseball
    Terumi Rafferty-Osaki; Edison, New Jersey

  • America's Yankee: Bobby Murcer's Life In and Out of Baseball
    Willie Steele; Cascade College

  • One Hundred Percent American: Nationalism, Masculinity and American Legion Baseball
    Jacob Bustard; University of Kansas