"Boys Who Wanted to Write About Baseball"

Sam Regalado Responds

ASA president Lisa Duggan’s remarks to interviewer Sarah Mesle about baseball as a discussion topic at the 2014 conference were disappointing, to say the least. Mesle, who demonstrated a narrow understanding of the humanities, seemed incredulous at the notion that such a subject might make its way onto the program. Duggan, unfortunately, all but reinforced the reporter’s take, which effectively questioned sport as a legitimate area of study. And, to me, this is no small matter. First, the president’s retort painted the organization, of which she presides, as one that is out-of-touch. Second, it smacked of academic elitism. Indeed, Duggan, who could probably use some coaching on this matter, could have taken Mesle to task as to where sport-related research stands in the world of academe. The OAH and AHA, for instance, have long held panels on this topic (some that were strictly on baseball) in their own conferences and placed them in highly desirable slots in their programs. As well, publishers like Oxford, Illinois, Yale, and others, have since the 1980s produced sport-related monographs and anthologies, many which have enjoyed extended editions and high recognition, such as Jules Tygiel’s epic “Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy,” a 1984 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award winner. Several high-ranking universities feature sport studies programs, and history departments themselves now routinely hire scholars who hold this area of expertise. THIS is the kind of answer that should have appeared in the interview, along with the parting phrase to Mesle, “where have YOU been?”


Instead, we were treated to a dismissive response and one that, at the very least, appeared at odds with the ASA creed which describes its membership as a body that “hold in common the desire to view US history and culture from multiple perspectives.” Certainly, no one expects Duggan, or any other president of an academic association to be an expert on every research topic that makes it onto the respective conference programs. But leaders, like Duggan, when speaking publically on such matters, should also demonstrate an appreciation for topics like, say, sport, which has recognized standing as a viable and important area of research. So, how about it President Duggan, where have YOU been?

Sam Regalado, is author of Viva Baseball: Latin Major Leaguers and Their Special Hunger, published by the University of Illinois Press, now in its third edition; and Nikkei Baseball: Japanese American Players from Immigration and Internment to the Major Leagues. He is a professor of History at Cal State Stanislaus.  

 "Boys Who Wanted to Write About Baseball:"

Some Brief Thoughts About the American Studies Association Meetings in Los Angeles

In case you missed it (and given that it was 2pm on Sunday, I don't blame you if you did), Noah Cohan, Pellom McDaniels, Dan Nathan, Sam Regalado, Dan Gilbert and I - joined by Lucia Trimbur, Jennifer McClearen, Frank Guridy and perhaps some others - had an excellent discussion of sports fandom at the American Studies Association conference in Los Angeles. Our conversation was honest, critical, and, given the centrality to sports fandom to institutions of higher education in the United States, highly relevant to an academic conference. And there were others sponsored by the Sports Studies Caucus. The session that I attended on excess delved into the politics and poetics of competitive eating, body building in the late 19th century, and even the collecting methods of Andy Warhol. A later session that I was unable to attend on the politics and economics of sports stadia, ethnicity and community identity was the subject of important conversations heard throughout the rest of the conference.

Unfortunately, there was somewhat of a pall over my experience at this event this year. On the morning after I arrived in LA, I woke to an interview of ASA President Lisa Duggan by Sarah Mesle published in the Los Angeles Review of Books. The interview contained the following exchange:


Mesle: When I was first thinking about disciplinary issues in the early ’90s, I would have described American Studies as a department for boys who wanted to write about baseball!

Duggan: Well we still have that! I’m laughing, but that does describe a part of the field. But, if you look through the conference program, you see primary contractions of work in black studies, ethnic studies, histories and politics of sexuality, in addition to more overtly political work on settler colonialism or on US relations with other parts of the world. And then, while I’m not sure there are panels on baseball specifically, remember that this is a conference on “The Fun and the Fury.” So there’s a lot of interest in play, and games, and leisure — there are panels on games, on drug cultures and economies, and so forth. I think American Studies is interested in pleasure, and also in political economies of pleasure. So, you know [laughs]: there are a lot of parties, and then there are panels about parties!

I understand how a president of an organization like ASA might get thrown a lot of questions for which it might be a challenge not to offer a non-offensive answer. However, as a boy who wants to write about baseball, I feel compelled to respond. American Studies has long been a safe zone within academic circles to address sports as an aspect of culture and society in a serious manner. Out of this has emerged excellent work on all kinds of sports by children of all genders - please see Amy Bass' excellent overview of sports scholarship, "State of the Field: Sports history and the 'Cultural Turn'" - in the June, 2014 issue of the Journal of American History. The glib tone of Mesle's question, and Duggan's answer, not only do a disservice to sports scholarship and the hard work of American Studies scholars who have understood sports to be every bit as important a part of culture as music, literature or film, its dismissiveness hurts everyone because it mocks scholarship that even people who have no interest in sports might find useful. I can't help but think that if Lisa Duggan had been familiar with our work, she would have taken a moment to defend it. Of course, I understand that one cannot be familiar with every type of scholarship, especially in a field as wide ranging as American Studies, but I call upon my fellow members of ASA who might otherwise feel sports do not merit intellectual attention to at least not assume that a particular interest in a topic is foolish without at first reading some of it.

For me, probably the most enduring image from our panel came from Pellom's comments. While most of us know him as an archivist, in a former life, he was an NFL player. He provided a perspective upon big time, commercial sports fandom looking back at the stands. He recollected how, in uniform, he was literally worshipped by a woman who, only hours later when he was out of uniform, clutched her purse and veered away from him in a grocery isle. We all noted the problematic and alienating nature of a sports fandom that can emerge from consumer identities and fantasies, even if we still find those same fan identities to be compelling and pleasurable - something we revealed at the beginning of the session in a series of fan auto-ethnographies. Sam Regalado and Dan Gilbert both discussed the intensity of fan identity when it emerges out of community and family - Sam drawing upon his research on Nisei baseball in Washington state during the 1920's and 1930's, and Dan upon recollections of watching his sister compete in marathons and triathlons.

In dialogue with those comments, I offer below a sequence of photos I took on my iPhone from the start of the Pennsylvania AAA high school girls cross country state championships in Hershey on Saturday, November 1, 2014. We were there to watch our niece, Haily Midgley, compete (she finished with a PR).

Snotrocket: A Fictional Story Based upon True Events

           A summer day in Santa Rosa, like most of coastal northern California, most often begins in a bleak, cold fog. By about 10am, a shaft of sunlight might reflect off a car window or the leaves of a eucalyptus tree, or the golden, burned out grass that covers the ground of the rolling coastal hills like velvet. In about 15 minutes, the sky is a deep shade of blue and the sun is so bright it hurts.

            Every day began this way during my family’s last visit from Pennsylvania to see my parents. My dad had the TV on each morning when we arrived at their apartment, operating at a decibel level in the high 20’s. We spent each morning conversing with my mom and one another in a general state of loudness, our voices like salmon fighting against a swift current of political talking points flowing from a coaxial cable connected to an endless watershed of cable news.

            The day began just this way on the Sunday of our visit. In the afternoon, my dad took his usual post lunch nap on his recliner. When he woke up, he gripped his shaky, weak right hand around the television remote and turned on the television, which had been at rest, allowing everyone else to enjoy a respite of quite conversation during his 90 minutes of slumber.

The Giants were on, playing the Arizona Diamondbacks. The day before, when we got him registered for hospice, the nurse asked my father about his passions in life, not including his family. He mentioned only the San Francisco Giants and the Democratic Party, in that order.

            It was the bottom of the fourth, and the Giants already had a 4-1 lead. Their starting pitcher, Madison Bumgarner, stood at the plate, batting with bases loaded. Like most pitchers in the National League, he stood just a little bit upright, making him appear very slightly more awkward than most hitters.

            “Buster Posey’s already hit a grand slam in this game,” said the play-by-play announcer.

            “Did you hear that dad?” I said. “Posey’s hit a grand slam.”

            My dad nodded his head while raising his eyebrows.

            Bumgarner waited for the first pitch. The sun had broken through the fog in San Francisco too, and reflected off his black batting helmet in flashes of white that projected sharply on the high definition screen. The camera angles cut from behind the Diamondbacks’ pitcher, to the pitcher’s face, to fans cheering on Bumgarner. My father reclined, his feet elevated, swollen like two small loaves of bread dough rising in their pans. He wore sweatpants and a brown sweater, although the outside temperature by this time was in the high 80’s. At one time, he would have been leaning forward in his chair at a moment like this, eating a large liverwurst and tomato sandwich on rye with a can of Coors or a bottle of Heineken.

            On television, a fan leaned over the railing in the front row near the right field foul pole, the camera catching him from behind. He wore a gray jersey with Bumgarner's number 40. Sewn across his shoulders in black letters bordered with orange embroidery was the word “Snotrocket.”

            “There you go Mike,” the play by play announcer said. At the volume that my dad set, it felt like a fog horn. “A Snotrocket for a Snotrocket!”

            “He-he,” from the color commentator. “That’s a Snotrocket for sure, he-he-he!”

            I looked at my dad, who remained staring at the screen without expression. The camera was behind the pitcher. He wound and delivered a fastball so straight even a casual fan could identify it as a fastball. Bumgarner swung, suddenly looking confident and in control. The ball ricochet off the barrel of his black bat, traveling in a straight line out of the screen almost faster than one could detect. The camera angle quickly changed to the view from the press box behind home plate. The ball continued to travel in an upward trajectory until it was well into the outfield, and didn’t show any sign of turning downward, even after it landed fair, about four rows into the outfield bleachers.

            Cut to the fans in orange hysterically cheering, slapping high fives, hugging, Bumgarner rounding the bases, Diamondbacks’ pitcher staring at his feet, Bumgarner greeted at home plate by adoring teammates, announcers marveling at the pitcher’s second grand slam of the season, the guy with the Snotrocket jersey.

            We watched, my son Nick and I cheered, my dad sat up a little, did a small punch of the air with his fist. With the first smile on his face all day, he turned around and said, “Hey, how ‘bout that!”

            “Now that’s a Snotrocket if I’ve ever seen one!” Came a voice from the television. The camera seemed to be frozen on the guy with the Snotrocket jersey.

            “Dad,” I said. He turned his head from the screen to look at me. “Is Bumgarner’s nickname ‘Snotrocket?’”

            In a deep baritone, deeper than that of the baseball announcer, more authoritative than Walter Cronkite, the voice my father could conjure to get nearly anyone to listen to his valued expertise on all subjects, the voice of GOD, he said, “NO.”

            My dad used to like to say that he was only wrong once, when he thought he was wrong but he wasn’t. That was a tugboat that towed him a long way down the foggy, comedic Tropic of Cancer dividing self-deprecation from hubris, so with that, I sat back on the couch. Nick gave me a small shrug and returned his eyes to the screen. The announcers continued to focus upon the guy with the Snotrocket jersey, apparently finding that more compelling than having just witnessed the first time in major league history that a pitcher and catcher had hit grand slams in the same game.

            “He wore the right jersey today!”

            “Snotrocket! That’s great!”

            This was a scab I couldn’t keep from scratching. “Dad, are you sure that Bumgarner’s nickname isn’t Snotrocket?”

            “No, it’s not.” Same voice, punctuated by a kind of short grunt and clearing of the throat.

            Dad continued to stare at the screen. The camera followed Bumgarner descending the steps into the dugout, teammates slapping his helmet, tugging his brown beard, high fiving.

            Bumgarner didn’t smile, or stare at the camera. After sitting on the bench, he raised his right index finger to his right nostril. As fast as he turned on the fastball a moment earlier, he blew, sending a white shot of mucus toward the bottom of the screen, perhaps only visible in high definition.

            “There he goes! Another Snotrocket!” The announcers were now beside themselves in laughter. The nostril shot got replayed two more times.

            I looked over at my dad. He continued to stare at the screen. I couldn’t help myself.

            “Dad, I think Madison Bumgarner’s nickname is definitely Snotrocket.”

            He finally turned his head toward me. He raised one eyebrow, an expression that he could still execute after all these years. It was a brilliant look, cultivated and practiced at cocktail parties spanning over the entire latter half of the 20^th century. It was a gently mocking expression that communicated his attempt to masquerade his boredom with a labored gesture of surprise.

            “Is that so,” he said. He returned his gaze to the high definition television.