This anthology gathers selected papers from the 2007 and 2008 meetings of the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, the long-running academic conference held annually at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Essays included employ the national pastime to comment on issues transcending the playing field, and are divided into six sections: "Cultural Perspectives on the Game," "Literary Baseball," "Baseball at the Movies," "Minority Standard Bearers," "New Leagues," and "The Business of Baseball."

Generally acknowledged as the preeminent gathering of baseball scholars, the annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture has made significant contributions to baseball research and pedagogy. This collection of 17 new essays is selected from the approximately 100 presentations of the 2013 and the 2014 symposia, covering topics whose importance extends beyond the ballpark. Presented in six themed parts, the essays consider the congruence of culture and baseball, the importance of ballpark itself, the myths, legends and icons of the baseball imagination, international and ethnic game variations, the work of baseball museum curators and a context for the game's rules of play and labor.

Widely acknowledged as the preeminent gathering of baseball scholars, the annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture has made significant contributions to baseball research. This collection of 15 new essays selected from the 2015 and the 2016 symposia examines topics whose importance extend beyond the ballpark. Presented in six parts, the essays explore Biography: From Mythology to Authenticity, Gender and Generations, Race and Ethnicity on the Base Paths, Ballparks Abandoned and Envisioned, Baseball Cinema, and Business, Law and the Game.

Widely acknowledged as the preeminent gathering of baseball scholars, the annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture has made significant contributions to baseball research. This collection of 15 new essays selected from the 2017 and the 2018 symposia examines topics whose importance extend beyond the ballpark. Presented in six parts, the essays explore baseball's cultural and social history and analyze the tools that encourage a more sophisticated understanding of baseball as a game and enterprise.

The 2011-2012 volume in the Cooperstown Symposium series is a collection of new scholarly essays that use baseball to examine topics whose import extends beyond the ballpark. The essays represent 16 of the leading presentations from the two most recent proceedings of the annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, held on June 1-4, 2011, and May 30-June 1, 2012. The essays are divided into six parts. "Baseball History, Myth, and the American Past" considers the distinction between reality and remembrance. "Decade of Transition: The 1960s in Baseball and America" explores a critical passage in the evolution of the nation and the game. "Baseball Economics: Owners, Profits, and the Public" provides perspectives on sports as business. "Out of the Bleachers: Women Umpiring and Playing" links the game to those who participate and care about it despite the expectations of atavistic gender roles. "Casting the Game: Stage and Screen" examines theatrical and cinematic treatments of baseball. Part 6, "Game of Numbers: Statistical Baseball," examines the sport and its artifacts quantitatively.

The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2009-2010 is an anthology of scholarly essays that utilize the national game to examine topics whose import extends beyond the ballpark and constitute a significant academic contribution to baseball literature. The essays represent sixteen of the leading presentations from the two most recent proceedings of the annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, held, respectively, on June 3-5, 2009, and June 2-4, 2010. The anthology is divided into five parts: Baseball as Culture: Dance, Literature, National Character, and Myth; Constructing Baseball Heroes; Blacks in Baseball: From Segregation to Conflicted Integration; The Enterprise of Baseball: Economics and Entrepreneurs; and Genesis and Legacy of Baseball Scholarship, which features an essay written by the co-creator of baseball scholarship, Dorothy Seymour Mills.

Selected from the two most recent proceedings of the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture (2019 and 2021), this collection of essays explores subject matter centered both inside and beyond the ballpark. Fifteen contributors offer critical commentary on a range of topics, including controversial decisions on the field and in Hall of Fame elections; baseball's historical role as a rite of passage for boys; two worthy catchers who never received their due; the genesis and development of the minor leagues; and baseball's place in popular culture.

Ty Cobb called baseball a “red-blooded game for red-blooded men,” warning that “molly coddles had better stay out.” By this, Cobb meant that baseball was the ultimate expression of the masculine ideal – a game of aggression, rivalry, physical and mental dexterity, self-reliance, and primal honor. For over twenty years, Cobb expressed his fierce brand of manhood in ballparks throughout the American Northeast, gaining for himself a level of celebrity that was unsurpassed in the early twentieth century. Fans idolized Cobb not only because he was the best player in the game, but because his boisterous and combative style of play satisfied their desire for exhibitions of visceral manhood. They found in Cobb an antidote for what they feared were the corrupting influences of over-civilization. With balance, precision, and empathy, Steven Elliott Tripp brings the era to life in a narrative Publisher’s Weekly has called “stunning.” In contrast to recent biographies of Cobb that have tried to minimize his more brutish behavior and minimize his racial antipathies, Tripp contextualizes Cobb, placing him squarely within the cultural milieu of both the rural South of his birth and the Northern sporting culture of his professional career. Moreover, Tripp’s reconstruction of early twentieth-century sporting culture isolates an important source of modern America’s culture of hyper-masculinity. Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood is both an important work of social and cultural history and an absorbing tale of ambition and the quest for dominance. Tripp has written the rare narrative that is as appealing to scholars as it is to general readers and sports enthusiasts.

The 1934 St. Louis Cardinals were one of the most colorful crews ever to play the National Pastime. Sportswriters delighted in assigning nicknames to the players, based on their real or imagined qualities. What a cast of characters it was! None was more picturesque than Pepper Martin, the “Wild Horse of the Osage,” who ran the bases with reckless abandon, led his team­mates in off­ the­field hi­jinks, and organized a hillbilly band called the Mississippi Mudcats. He was quite a baseball player, the star of the 1931 World Series and a significant contributor to the 1934 championship. The harmonica player for the Mudcats was the irrepressible Dizzy Dean. Full of braggadocio, Dean delivered on his boasts by winning 30 games in 1934, the last National League hurler to achieve that feat. Dizzy and his brother Paul accounted for all of the Cardinal victories in the 1934 World Series. Some writers tried to pin the moniker Daffy on Paul, but that name didn’t fit the younger and much quieter brother. The club’s hitters were led by the New Jersey strong boy, Joe “Ducky” Medwick, who hated the nickname, preferring to be called “Muscles.” Presiding over this aggregation was the “Fordham Flash,” Frankie Frisch. Rounding out the club were worthies bearing such nicknames as Ripper, “Leo the Lip,” Spud, Kiddo, Pop, Dazzy, Ol’ Stubblebeard, Wild Bill, Buster, Chick, Red, and Tex. Some of these were aging stars, past their prime, and others were youngsters, on their way up. Together they comprised a championship ball club. “The Gas House Gang was the greatest baseball club I ever saw. They thought they could beat any ballclub and they just about could too. When they got on that ballfield, they played baseball, and they played it to the hilt too. When they slid, they slid hard. There was no good fellowship between them and the opposition. They were just good, tough ballplayers.” — Cardinals infielder Burgess Whitehead on "When It Was A Game," HBO Sports, 1991

Baseball and law have intersected since the primordial days. In 1791, a Pittsfield, Massachusetts, ordinance prohibited ball playing near the town's meeting house. Ball games on Sundays were barred by a Pennsylvania statute in 1794. In 2015, a federal court held that baseball's exemption from antitrust laws applied to franchise relocations. Another court overturned the conviction of Barry Bonds for obstruction of justice. A third denied a request by rooftop entrepreneurs to enjoin the construction of a massive video screen at Wrigley Field. This exhaustive chronology traces the effects the law has had on the national pastime, both pro and con, on and off the field, from the use of copyright to protect not only equipment but also "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" to frequent litigation between players and owners over contracts and the reserve clause. The stories of lawyers like Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Branch Rickey are entertainingly instructive.