SPORTS USE
Zero to one Sax with a twist October 20,j 1997
Nebraska’s defense posted a 29-0 shutout of Kadri Gopalnath perfoms theCamatic music of
Texas Tech Saturday and vaulted to the No. 1 spot his native India with an accepted variation of the That’S Why THEY CALL It BLUES...
in both The AP and USA Today polls. PAGE 10 ancient style —- the alto saxophone. PAGE 15 Cloudy and cool, high 53. Wi pnight, low 30.
Sandy Summers/DN
UNL HISTORY PROFESSOR BENJAMIN RADER holds the glove he used as a kid playing ball in southern Missouri. Rader’s “Baseball:
America’s Game” has been called one of the greatest single volume histories of the game ever.
By Ted Taylor
Senior Reporter
Double
play
Baseball author,
UNL professor
reflects on
America’s
pastime
Baseball is our game.
“(It) has the snap, go, fling of the American
atmosphere - belongs as much to our institutions,
fits into them as significantly, as our constitu
tions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of
our historic life.”
Those are hie words of poet Walt Whitman.
“Regardless of wars, economic catastrophes,
natural disasters, or personal tragedies, the mem
ories remain. In a world of seething changes,
baseball continues to offer comfort and reassur
ance; it remains America s Game.”
These are the written words of Benjamin
Rader.
A James L. Sellars professor of American history and sport at the University
of Nebraska-Lincoln, Rader , is also a baseball author and historian of sorts - a
baseball historian who’s not exactly historic and anything but a purist.
He is certain the Marie McGwires of today could hack it with the Mickey
Mantles of old. He believes Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax had it easy
compared to the shrinking strike zone and better athletes Greg Maddux faces
today.
And he never really thought twice about Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-games
played streak being broken by Cal Ripken Jr. two years ago.
He isn’t bothered by the game and the players today because he takes heart
that they evolved from the game and players of yesterday.
About the only problem he has with baseball right now (besides artificial
turf) is the growing number of teams in the league.
“It’s harder to keep up with the game mentally,” he said. “When I was a kid,
there were azillion of us who could tell you everything about all the teams. That
isn’t the case anymore.”
Please see RADER on 2
Regents OK
$1.7 million
deficit request
By Erin Gibson
Senior Reporter
Despite some dissent, the NU Board of Regents
Friday approved the university’s budget deficit
request of $1.7 million, which the Legislature will
consider granting in its spring session.
The request, approved during the Regents’
monthly meeting in Lincoln, consists of $1.4
million to cover the university’s tuition revenue
shortfall, $197,000 to maintain 55 acres of land
in Ak-Sar-Ben that was donated to the universi
ty’s Omaha campus and $93,538 to pay opera
tions and maintenance costs of new space in the
Nebraska Union.
The regents unanimously approved funding
for the union, but Regent Drew Miller of
Papillion said the university should cover the
remaining budget request.
“I think it’s a big mistake to go back to the
governor and the Legislature and the taxpayers
and ask for money,” Miller said. “Let’s do some
belt-tightening here.”
Miller voted against the tuition revenue
aspect of the request and abstained from voting
on requesting maintenance funds for the Ak
Please see REGENTS on 6
Oldfield, Bryan
inducted into
Hall of Fame
By Ted Taylor
Senior Reporter
The first American journalist to become a
paratrooper leapt into the Nebraska Journalism
Hall of Fame Friday, with two of the state’s most
important historical figures on his wing.
Living Nebraska journalism legend, Col.
Barney Oldfield (USAF-ret.), along with Pulitzer
Prize-winning novelist Willa Cather and three-time
presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan
were added to the exclusive list of 39 journalists
already in the hall.
And surprisingly, on Friday two of the three
new inductees were on hand to accept their awards.
The journalist, whom more than 80 guests -
including Gov. Ben Nelson and Secretary of State
Scott Moore - expected to be there, called his
induction “unbelievable”
“I wasn’t even aware they had this thing,”
Oldfield said of the Hall of Fame. “But to go in
with these other two is a staggering thing for me.”
A Tecumseh native, Oldfield began his jour
nalism career as a stringer for the venerable enter
tainment magazine, Variety, and as a sports stringer
at The Lincoln Star.
His career took an accidental step forward in
1931 after receiving a free movie pass to see “The
Please see OLDFIELD on 2
Read the Daily Nebraskan on the World Wide Web at http:/ / www.unl.edu /DailyNeb
