Baseball and American Society: A Journey
Presented by Prof. E. Michael Brady and Al Bean
Dates: July 27 – August 3, 2003
Cost: $1,200
Registration open until May 15. Earlier registration is preferred.
To register, call the USM Summer Office: 780-5617
For specific information, call Prof. Brady: 780-5312
Cities on this year’s trip (in order): Brooklyn (NY), Cooperstown(NY), Binghamton (NY), Pittsburgh (PA), Cincinnatti (OH), Louisville, Bluefield (WV), Baltimore (MD), Lowell (MA).
Former USM student Daniel Fields recalled his Baseball and American Society experience by saying, “I had a blast! I loved the people and the entire experience.” With a bright smile, Fields said, “I am just waiting now for my son to be old enough so that I can take him on the trip with my Dad.”
Fields is one of the many students and fans of baseball that have experienced “Baseball and American Society: A Journey,” a course offered by USM’s Summer Session program.
Professor of Human Resource Development E. Michael Brady’s creation began in the winter of 1994 when he saw information on a trip organized by a group in the Midwest for folks interested in a four to five day trip between Newark, New Jersey and Cooperstown, N.Y. The trip involved attending games and visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame.
It took Brady about a year and a half to organize the program for USM. He wanted the program to be a fun and a learning experience. “Our first trip was a six-day course and we tried to cover all the levels of baseball,” said Brady.
That first six-day course soon turned into an up to 10-day rolling extravaganza of education that visits ballparks in all levels of professional baseball and is also the only travel course on baseball in the world. “The teaching and learning comes from the group and the people in the communities that we meet,” Brady said. “The cities, books, ballparks and people we visit vary each year.”
The required reading students complete prior to the trip include books on baseball culture, covering topics such as the Negro Leagues, women in baseball, and baseball in the Dominican Republic. Students also read books on historical baseball along with fictional and biographical novels such as “The Natural,” “Shoeless Joe,” and “The Veracruz Blues.”
This year’s required reading includes a “Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy,” by Jane Leavey; “The Faith of Fifty Million: Baseball, Religion, and American Culture,” by Christopher Hodge Evans; and “Snow In August,” by Pete Hamill.
Some topics covered on trips in previous years have been the integration of baseball, the history, ballpark architecture, and culture surrounding the game.
While reading books about baseball and its culture are required, on the bus going from city to city there are films, debates, group discussions, and lectures to keep the students extremely busy.
The significance of doing the trip on a bus is very symbolic, Brady said. “We compare our trip to the days of the Negro Leagues and the minor leagues of today.” Brady added, “Although we stop and stay in hotels each night, the students have an understanding what it is and was like to be in these leagues.”
The biggest challenges that Brady and Director of Athletics Al Bean face each year when organizing this class is scheduling and arranging speakers for each city the class will visit. While Brady organizes the academic side of the trip, Bean organizes the guest speakers for each city.
Some of the notables that have been guest speakers on the trip are former big league pitchers Jim Beattie and Bob Feller; Larry Doby, the first black player to play in the American League; Gene Benson, Jackie Robinson’s roommate; Ned Garver, former St. Louis Brown and roommate of Satchel Paige; Dottie Collins of the All-American Girls League; and Lou Gorman, former Boston Red Sox general manager.
Last year’s trip had special meaning to many of the students with the passing of Ted Williams. “A lot of people read books about Williams when they were choosing to do their personal reading assignments,” Bean said. “A couple years before that we did a trip that was completely dedicated to the Red Sox on their 25th anniversary.”
While each year is different and the faces may change, there are students that return. One such student is retired judge Robert Paskal of Boothbay Harbor, who has been on the trip seven times. Brady said that Paskal tells the class that he fails the class each year so that he can keep coming back.
Although USM students can receive three credits and also receive USM Core curriculum humanities credit, Brady said, “We have all kinds of people that register for the trip ranging from 14 to 85 years old and have also had trips where we had some three-generation families in attendance.”
“It’s like having the United Nations on wheels,” Brady said. “You can have one man that is left of Karl Marx sitting next to someone that is right of Atilla the Hun and it is their love of baseball that brings them together.”
Recalling highlights of their favorite moment for Brady, Bean and Fields was difficult. Fields said, “The whole trip was a highlight. How many times can you get credit for watching and talking about baseball?”
Bean recalled a visit to Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Mass. “The way the field is set up, they used to have a curtain between left and center field because the sun was so bad.” Bean also said, “There would be two people running out there at a certain point during the game to pull the curtain out so that the hitter could see the ball coming.”
In some of the minor league parks such as Wahconah, there is an all too friendly intimacy with the players on the field. “You also sit so close to the field that you feel like you are almost in danger all the time you are there and that the first good foul ball could take you out for the day,” said Bean.
For Brady, “It was having the help of Susan Collins arranging a visit to the White House on our 2001 trip prior to 9-11 to learn about the connection of the President to baseball and to see the baseball display the President had erected.”
John Schwingle, another former USM student, summed up the rolling classroom experience after returning home from the inaugural trip. “It took me a couple of days to let everything sink in. It was a whirlwind of baseball, baseball, baseball.”