KU professor to deliver literary paper, play 'town ball' at Baseball Hall of Fame

LAWRENCE -- In all of his years of playing, watching and teaching baseball, James Carothers has never seen a doubleheader quite like the one he'll take part in at the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame this week.

First, Carothers, interim associate vice provost and professor of English at the University of Kansas, will deliver his paper, "Baseball in American Fiction: Background and Foreground" at the 15th annual "Baseball and American Culture" symposium on Thursday, June 12, at the hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Then, he and the other conference participants will head outside to the famous Doubleday Field for a game of "Town Ball," the 19th century game from which baseball is a direct descendant.

How is Town Ball different from modern baseball? Even a baseball scholar like Carothers isn't quite sure. He does know, though, that you're allowed to have as many fielders as you like.

"I expect I'll know a lot more about Town Ball when I get back," he laughed.

Carothers, who has taught a class on baseball in literature off and on for the past 30 years, said the course started as a fluke when he and a colleague were joking about dissertations that wouldn't require footnotes.

But the more he thought about it, the clearer it became that there was a legitimate connection between the stories of baseball heroes and the great heroes of literature.

"Everything that happens on a baseball field that strikes us vivid, memorable or significant has its parallels in some of the greatest literature we have," he said. "So Babe Ruth or George Brett are no different than Achilles or Hamlet or Henry V or any of the traditional heroes."

The class, which he will offer again during the Spring 2004 semester, mixes fiction with history, statistics, mythology, folklore, journalism, poetry and drama to show that there's more to the national pastime than just the box score.

In fact, baseball figures prominently in the works of some of the greatest American writers of the late 19th and 20th centuries, from Twain to Faulkner to Hemmingway to Kesey.

Baseball is such a perfect metaphor for writers because the pace of the game allows spectators to record every pitch and its pastoral setting reminds us of the simpler times we've left behind, he said.

"When baseball appears in serious works of American Literature, it usually represents the pure and uncomplicated childlike activity against which all adult experience is measured and found wanting," Carothers said.

Although he's been to the hall of fame several times before, this will be the first time Carothers delivers an academic paper there. Still, he said he's most excited about seeing the George Brett memorabilia they added since his last visit, and he'll definitely drop by the exhibit of his childhood hero, Stan "The Man" Musial.

"Stan was, and always will be my hero, in an ethical way as well as being an outstanding ball player," he said.

And though he still needs to brush up on those Town Ball rules, he said he's excited to play on the same diamond that the greats often use to give hitting exhibitions when they return to the hall.

"To be on that sacred ground will be pretty interesting," he said.

Carothers said he never would have imagined that he would be teaching his baseball class 30 years later.

"I had no idea this would be more than a one semester class," he said.

And although Lou Gehrig said it first, Carothers wouldn't be too far off if he felt like the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

"It's a very lucky accident for me that in this one instance my hobby - my passion - intersects with my vocation," he said.