19th Baseball in Literature and Culture Conference, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro TN April 4, 2014

1. Nineteenth Conference
on Baseball in
Literature and Culture
April 4, 2014
On the campus of Middle Tennessee State
University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee

2. "Coming Home: reflections
on time, memory, and
baseball's eternal return
(prompted by the revival of
Nashville's Sulphur Dell)"

3. Last
game
9.8.63
timeline

4. May 9, 1867 At a called meeting of the
Nashville Baseball Club, a resolution of tribute is
passed to James Maguire, a worthy and
esteemed member of the club who had just died
suddenly. Members voted to wear the usual
badge of mourning at all matches in which their
club is a party to during the current season. The
resolution is signed by James Boner, chairman,
William Moore and James Doherty,
committeemen, and M. J. McKee, secretary
September 24, 1867 The Phoenix nine is
victorious over the Nashville base ball club 25-
20 at the Phoenix team's home grounds in
Edgefield

5. February 12, 1897
Representatives from Nashville,
Terre Haute, Washington,
Evansville, Paducah, and Cairo
meet in Evansville to finalize plans
for the Central League. W. L. Work
is the Nashville representative.
Uniforms are selected as follows:
Evansville, cadet blue, white
trimmings; Terre Haute, gray and
blue; Paducah, old gold and
maroon; Washington, brown and
red; Cairo, gray and black; and
Nashville, blue and maroon.
Nashville will host Evansville on
opening day April 28th to open the
season

6. July 19, 1904 Dan Lowney, Nashville
shortstop, is arrested and fined for
throwing a bat at spectators in the
grandstand in Memphis
April 12, 1919 The Tennessee Supreme Court
today renders a decision which permits Sunday
baseball in the state. The Court holds that the blue
laws of 1893 do not apply to baseball, as the game
was not then being played
April 7, 1927 The 65th General Assembly of
Tennessee adjourns early to see Babe Ruth and the NY
Yankees at Sulphur Dell. A resolution had been
adopted to invite Ruth to address the Senate, but he
sent word that it would be impossible for him to
appear because of a lack of time

7. 1.27.14

8. “Present time lost is all time lost.”
“Lost time is never found.”
“Time flies but leaves its
shadow.”
“Time wasted is existence,
time used is life”
A.C. Grayling, The Good
Book: A Humanist Bible

9. ―Remembrance of things past is not
necessarily the remembrance of
things as they were.‖
There is a moment in Proust when
Marcel stumbles on the uneven
stones in the Guermantes‘
courtyard, and memory opens itself
up. Wood, LRB

10. Brit Peter Taylor loves the symbolism of
baseball‘s journey home.
John Feinstein's Where Nobody Knows
Your Name quotes an old pitcher who
staged an improbable comeback:
"sometimes going full circle in life isn't a
good thing‖... But baseball almost always
supports rounding the bases & touching
‗em all.

11. LONDON — In a fascinating recent essay
in The London Review of Books, called
―On Not Going Home,‖ James Wood
relates how he ―asked Christopher
Hitchens, long before he was terminally ill,
where he would go if he had only a few
weeks to live. Would he stay in America?
‗No, I‘d go to Dartmoor, without a doubt,‘
he told me. It was the landscape of his
childhood.‖

12. It was the landscape, in
other words, of unfiltered
experience, of things felt
rather than thought
through, of the world in its
beauty absorbed before it is
understood, of patterns and
sounds that lodge
themselves in some
indelible place in the psyche
and call out across the
years.

13. ...this process of retrospective
comprehension in fact constitutes a
life – is indeed how life is lived.
Freud has a wonderful word,
‗afterwardness‘, which I need to
borrow, even at the cost of
kidnapping it from its very different
context. To think about home and
the departure from home, about
not going home and no longer
feeling able to go home, is to be
filled with a remarkable sense of
‗afterwardness‘: it is too late to do
anything about it now, and too late
to know what should have been
done. And that may be all right.
LRB
On Not
Going Home
James Wood

14. Most of us have to leave home, at
least once; there is the need to
leave, the difficulty of returning,
and then, in later life as one‘s
parents begin to falter, the need to
return again. Secular homelessness,
not the singular extremity of the
exile or the chosenness of biblical
diaspora, might be the inevitable
ordinary state. Secular
homelessness is not just what will
always occur in Eden, but what
should occur, again and again.

15. When a philosopher
references “eternal return”
(or recurrence), you might
expect a subtle discourse
on Nietzsche...
or Murray.

17. Or maybe...
I bet you‟ll not object if I duck Existential
metaphysics, Buddhism, and theology, and
just stick to the “pattern of the seasons for
primitive peoples... “

18. Hope springs eternal
A scientist discovers a formula
that makes a baseball which is
repelled by wood. He promptly
sets out to exploit his
discovery. imdb

19. It‟s the perennial sense of
“eternal” we‟re celebrating
here, the feeling of
renewed energy and
optimism for another shot
that indeed comes every
spring, even for my
daughter‟s team. (This
slide‟s for you, Katie.)

20. Of course we all know the
feeling of tedium and
repetitive overfamiliarity
that can overtake us at
some ballgames.
The famous 33-inning game between the Rochester Red Wings
and Pawtucket Red Sox in 1981 started on April 18, was
suspended in the 32nd inning at 4:09 a.m. on April 19 and was
finally resumed (and completed) two months later on June 23.

21. Waiting for a scoreless
pitchers‟ duel to end can
feel like an eternity. But
anticipating the final out of
a no-hitter is something
else again.

22. Life‟s like that. There‟s no
denying the repetitiveness
of existence. Often enough,
though, something great
and surprising happens just
when you least expect it.
That‟s what fuels the “wait
„til next year” optimism for
even the most cynical
Cubs‟ fan. (Him again.)

23. The season-opening thrill of another blank slate and fresh
start is the gift we open year after year. I write this on
Opening Night (not counting that exhibition in Sydney, of
course).My team plays tomorrow in Cincy. [Update: 1-0
Cards!] Life resumes, as it has for generations. Cue
Terence Mann.

24. The game also gives those of us marginalized or alienated by the cultures of
business and popular entertainment (Kardashians et al) a feeling of being at home
here. In a way, and to an extent, it reconciles us to our country. It‟s been the glue
for generations of immigrants, as Ken Burns and Terence Mann document so well.
When I was 6 & still without siblings, the new (fundamentalist) neighbors made
me feel at home with our shared passion for baseball. To this day, I‟m confident,
that would still bridge enough of our differences to make a reunion not just
tolerable, but delightful.
Pity those who‟ve never found their pastime, “lost in the cosmos,” permanently not
at home in the universe.

25. So many of us academics who continue to feel hero-worship for the old athletes
of our childhoods admire and envy how at home they seem in their own skins.
They don‟t think too much. (That‟s a compliment!)
When we achieve excellence at work-when we articulate a perfect explication of
eternal recurrence, say- the world littles notes nor cares.
We have no Hall of Fame.
That’s a home.

26. ...all to no end save
beauty
the eternal—
(WmCWms, “The crowd at
the ballgame”)

27. I need to think something
lasts forever, and it might
as well be that state of
being that is a game; it
might as well be that, in a
green field, in the sun.
“Green Fields of the Mind”

28. The Nashville Sounds' recent
announcement that they're
coming home next season to their
storied ancestral digs near the
state capitol at Sulphur Dell (as
renamed in 1908 by legendary
sportswriter and Murfreesboro
native Grantland Rice, from the
less fetching "Sulphur Springs
Bottom") invites reflection, with
just a bit of sentimental self-
indulgence, on baseball's
perennial theme: completing the
circuit and heading for home. For when the One Great Scorer comes
To mark against your name,
He writes - not that you won or lost -
But HOW you played the Game.
Gene Autry: "Well, Grantland Rice can go
to hell as far as I'm concerned."

29. GAME CALLED
Game Called by darkness — let the curtain fall.
No more remembered thunder sweeps the field.
No more the ancient echoes hear the call
To one who wore so well both sword and shield:
The Big Guy‟s left us with the night to face
And there is no one who can take his place.
Game Called — and silence settles on the plain.
Where is the crash of ash against the sphere?
Where is the mighty music, the refrain
That once brought joy to every waiting ear?
The Big Guy‟s left us lonely in the dark
Forever waiting for the flaming spark.
Game Called — what more is there for us to say?
How dull and drab the field looks to the eye
For one who ruled it in a golden day
Has waved his cap to bid us all good-bye.
The Big Guy‟s gone — by land or sea or foam
May the Great Umpire call him “safe at home.”
The original version of this poem was published in 1910 by
The Tennessean Company. In 1948 Rice changed it into a
eulogy for Babe Ruth.
April 7, 1927: Babe & the Yankees
visit Sulphur Dell. [timeline]

30. The old Nashville Vols were the Dell's last
occupants, closing it down 50 years ago,
before the quirky park (with its uniquely
short-and-sloping right field) was finally
demolished later in the '60s. It was at that
time the oldest park in the land, having
hosted professional play (including Negro
League teams) since 1870.

35. My first game in Nashville was at Greer,
seated behind a rope in the outfield in the
summer of 1980. The place has become kind
of a dump, frankly, and it's past time for it to
be left behind; but that won't hold back the
flood of memories sure to come when we
attend our last game there, this summer.

36. I taught our older daughter
to “touch „em all”-
so she made sure to go
back and tag 2d, one night
at Greer. It didn‟t end well.

41. There was a surprisingly stable group of core players that were with the expansion team all four years in Municipal...

43. In the „85 series, game 5,
he led the Royals to a 6-1
win in St. Louis. My only
series game. The 1st base
ump gave them the series
next game. But I‟m not
bitter.

44. We like the new place..

46. When I arrived in town the Sounds were
entering their 3d season, and their first as a
Yankees affiliate. It was the Don
Mattingly/Willie McGee era.
I recall an exhibition at the end of Spring
Training some time in the early ‗80s when
the big club came to town. I found myself
unexpectedly seated just behind The Boss,
George Steinbrenner.
Team history

47. Skeeter Barnes, ―not as
easy as it looks‖...
but a terrific memory!
...I had not quite disgraced the player whose glove
I borrowed for the contest: the one and only
"Skeeter" Barnes, a very good career minor
leaguer who had many cups of coffee in The
Show with Cincinnati, St. Louis, Montreal, and
Detroit. You could look it up.
But you'll have to take my word for what Skeeter
said to me as I returned his glove to him and
hustled back to my hiding place in the
grandstand. "It's not as easy as it looks, is it?"
No, sir. It's not.

48. Home may be
sublime,
or...

50. “All countries are
home to the wise.”
The Good Book

51. You can‘t talk home and ballparks
without thinking of Wrigley, as did
Luke Epplin in the Daily Beast
recently.
―I should disclose my considerable bias.
As a southern Illinois [in my case
―Greater St. Louis‖] native, I was raised a
devoted St. Louis Cardinals fan and an
equally passionate Cubs despiser. The
two sentiments usually come bundled
together, and cut both ways...

52. ―In a column from 1990, George Will
wrote: ‗Cardinals fans probably should
be allowed to vote, and perhaps even
to enjoy most other civil rights, but
Cardinals fans were (and probably still
are) insufferable.‘ Fair enough, and
guilty as charged.
(But, ‗insufferable‘? Some of us don‘t
know the meaning of the word. Or the
spelling. ―GO USA‖)

53. I have owned T-shirts that
reference 1908, and take
pride that baseball is one of
the few activities that St.
Louis does better than
Chicago.
I would interpret a World Series
championship by the Cubs as a sign
that the end is near.

55. A Splendid homecoming
9.28.60
44 others
"I've found that you
don't need to wear a
necktie if you can hit."

56. John Updike, ―Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu‖
New Yorker, 10.22.60
“He knew how to do even
that, the hardest thing -
quit.”

58. Ted‘s ultimate homecoming, as
envisioned by his misguided son, is
improbable.
Slideshare09; MoL12

59. “Bodies ascending” (Bodyworlds)
Completing the circuit and coming
home to the museum - one way to
do it.
We‟ve heard of being undressed by
a pitch, but this is extreme.
U@d 2.28.14.

60. Baseball
by John Updike
It looks easy from a distance,
easy and lazy, even,
until you stand up to the plate
and see the fastball sailing inside,
an inch from your chin,
or circle in the outfield
straining to get a bead
on a small black dot
a city block or more high,
a dark star that could fall
on your head like a leaden meteor...

61. Baseball was
invented in America, where beneath
the good cheer and sly jazz the chance
of failure is everybody's right,
beginning with baseball.

63. “Carl Sagan admired William James‟s
definition of religion as a “feeling of
being at home in the universe”...” He
thought “science opens the way to
levels of consciousness that are
otherwise inaccessible to us.”
Ann Druyan, ed., The Varieties of
Scientific Experience

64. “....cherish the Pale Blue Dot...
the
only
home
we‟ve
ever
known”

65. In development:

66. How much greater weight our
memories acquire when we attach
to them the gravity of exclusivity,
when we reject or repudiatie the
thought that anything else than “the
same dog barking” or the same
game re-commencing might
possibly be “forever”...

67. Of course we all know the
feeling of tedium and
repetitive overfamiliarity
that can overtake us at
some ballgames, before
something happens. Like
life. The repetitiveness of
existence. Often enough,
then, something great and
surprising, fueling the “wait
„til next year” mindset for
even the biggest losers.

68. My every walk is a circuit,
but I never risk
being/feeling out at home.

69. Proust‟s madeleine, and
the ballpark‟s dog-&-beer

70. the moment in Proust when Marcel stumbles
on the uneven stones in the Guermantes‘
courtyard, and memory opens itself up.

71. George Carlin on the significance of "home"
in baseball - there's nothing like it in football.

72. Carl Sagan - "human beings born ultimately
of the stars have begun their long voyage
home"... ―preserve & cherish the Pale Blue
Dot, the only home we‘ve ever known‖

73. Jennifer Hecht on hanging signs on trees and
considering the "forest" home...

74. T.S. Eliot on returning to the place whence
we came and knowing it at last...

75. My parks: Sportsman‘s, Busch 1 & 2, KC‘s
Municipal Stadium ‗69 & Kauffman ‗70(?),
[Didn‘t make it to Twins game in ‗69…],
Wrigley & Comiskey ‗72, Anaheim (?),
Atlanta Fulton County & Turner Field, Spring
Training (Al Lang, Casey Stengel (?),
Intrasquad with Joacquin Andujar and Andy
Van Slyke, Jupiter- Ray Lankford, Mark
McGwire, Vero Beach, Bradenton, Sarasota...

76. Emma running the bases at Greer… sitting on
the outfield grass at first game, later behind
George Steinbrenner… Mattingly, McGee et
al… Skeeter Barnes (―not as easy as it
looks‖)...

77. Cooperstown, b‟ball‟s
mythic home.
Happy Flight: coming home
after a road sweep.