"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).