Baseball author, professor
reflects on America’s pastime
RADER from page 1
But from the sport’s first profession
al team - the Cincinnati Red Stockings
in 1869-to the multimillion dollar rent
a-teams like today’s Florida Marlins, he
says the players, die fans and the game
have been unique.
“Baseball is richer in history than
other sports,” he said. “Mainly because
it’s a slow enough game to be etched in
the memories, etched in your conscious.”
Its sometimes-snail-like pace,
Rader said, helps the game forge its own
history.
“I think that is its biggest attraction
because the memories can become so
vivid,” he said. “No other sports have a
moment like Bobby Thompson’s home
run in 1951 - moments that are singled
out so clearly.”
Rader, 62, was a 14-year-old boy in
now-extinct Delaware, Mo., when he
gathered with friends by the radio and
experienced Thompson’s “shot heard
round the world” that won die National
League pennant for die New York Giants.
“It was quite a dramatic moment for
a kid,” he said, nodding his head as he
remembered die moment.
urowing up m southern Missouri,
Rader was naturally a die-hard St. Louis
Cardinals fan. But holding to his rela
tively non-purist outlook on the game,
his allegiance has changed.
Now he’s cheering for the Cleveland
Indians. Not because of their tradition in
the league, not because he loves the
team, but because his daughter and her
family now live there.
“I don’t really have a favorite team
or player now,” he said.
His favorite subject, however, is his
tory - American history.
Rader, who bears a resemblance to
the famous former commissioner of
baseball, Judge Kennesaw Mountain
Landis, has been teaching history at
UNL since 1967, after receiving, his
doctorate from the University of
Maryland in 1964.
He spent five years teaching at the
University of Montana before coming
to Nebraska.
“Baseball history is my main pas
sion from an intellectual standpoint,”
the former seven-year chairman of the
UNL history department said. “History
in general is my passion though.”
150 years in 216 pages
It took historian Ken Bums nine
two-hour episodes to chronicle base
ball’s past in his award-winning PBS
series.
After a few years of research and a
year away from the classroom, Rader’s
“Baseball: America’s Game” does it in
just 216 pages.
An introductory book to the game’s
textured past - it includes figures and
tables to help the reader compare teams,
players and eras - the work is used as a
textbook in sports history classes
throughout the nation.
Randy Roberts, an American histo
ry professor at Purdue University, who,
with Rader, is the co-editor for a small
series of sports tjooks, said Rader’s
piece was die perfect tool for student
sports enthusiasts.
“Ben’s book is the best one-volume
treatment of the history ofbaseball there
is,” he said.
It includes the triumphs and
tragedies of the sport, from an entire
chapter on Babe Ruth to another devot
ed to the fixing of the 1919 World Series
- with every little detail in between.
He includes both of his passions in
the book. It’s not just a baseball history
book, he said, it’s an American history
book.
“It looks at the external history,
where I like to call outside the foul
lines,” he said. “It looks at the game’s
relationship with the history of
American society and culture.”
Roberts said that is-what separates
Rader’s book from every other baseball
history book on shelves today.
“That’s the genius of that book,” he
said. “It ties baseball in with America’s
cultural and social context.
Most ot the people who consider
themselves baseball history buffs may
not be all that knowledgeable of
American history. They don’t see the
relationship.”
To see that relationship, Rader said,
look no further than what he called in
his book “Baseball’s Great Experiment”
- Jackie Robinson’s entry into the
league in 1946.
“Baseball is somewhat a pioneer in
race relations,” he said. “When Jackie
came into the league it was before
Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education
was decided.
“Baseball was a forerunner of the
breakdown of racial segregation.”
The game has continued to follow -
and sometimes determine - racial prac
tices in the United States, he said.
As more Hispanics and Latinos
have come to the United States and
become an integral part of society, the
game has, in turn, become more diverse,
Rader said.
To look at baseball’s place in soci
ety, one also must look at how changes
in Americans’ free-time activities have
affected the game.
“Baseball has suffered from a
change in American leisure activities,”
he said. “Baseball’s golden age was
before TV That was when it truly was
the national game.”
Since the 1950s, he said, television
has tied people to their homes, and
“other sports televise better.”
Rader has such strong opinions on
television’s effect on not only baseball,
but sports in general, that he has written
two books on the subject: “American
Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to
the Age of Televised Sports” and “In Its
Own Image: How Television Has
Transformed Sports.”
Baseball, Rader said, is a game that
can only be absorbed completely while
sitting in the bleachers or in a cramped
stadium seat, not by watching it on a 13
inch screen.
“It’s not as interesting as other sports
on TV?’ he admitted, going as far as say
ing he doesn’t even watch regular-sea
son games on TV anymore.
“But I love going to the ballpark,” he
said. “You can see the entire field, the
position of the players - how they are
separated from each other.
“That is what helps forge a special
relationship with the fans - much better
than football or basketball can.”
Remaining America’s game
The relationship between baseball
and the baseball fan has been strained in
recent years.
Player strikes in 1981 and 1994have
soured fans on the game. Labor disputes
had fans wondering what was more
important to the league’s players; the
game or the money.
Many fans vowed to never return to
a stadium. In fact, 1996 attendance fig
ures were 15 percent less than those
before the 1994 strike.
But each year, Rader said, the fans
start trickling back.
“It’s bounced back pretty well from
the last strike,” he said.
As a fan, he issued a warning to the
bigwigs in baseball front offices.
“Baseball needs to set its house in
order businesswise,” he said. “Owners
need to worry about the welfare of the
game rather than their own personal
benefits.”
He said he was worried about the
leagues’ smaller-funded teams, like the
Minnesota Twins and Milwaukee
Brewers, being outgunned by the
leagues’ financial powerhouses in New
York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
“There isn’t much hope for those
smaller-market teams, I’m afraid,” he
said.
But it would take more than the relo
cation or elirtiination of a couple of
teams to completely ruin the game that
has been the glue between millions of
fathers and sons nationwide, Rader
said.
Former Detroit Tigers manager
Sparky Anderson said it this way:
“We have tried and tried to ruin this
game, and we just can’t do it.”
The future of baseball will be left up
to its fans, players and team owners,
Rader said.
“It may not be as popular as it once
was,” he said. “But it will be a strong
game in the future.
“Baseball is especially resilient to
change. It has a place in American cul
ture that will remain.”
«
Baseball is especially resilient to change.
It has a place in American culture that will
remain
Benjamin Rader
author, UNL history professor
Crowning glory
' LaneHickenbottom/DN
QUEEN Jisella Veath, a senior psychology and pre-law major, and King
Viet Hoang, a senior finance major, celehrate their coronation
Saturday during halftime at Memorial Stadium. ,
Oldfield, Cather, Bryan inducted
into state Journalism Hall of Fame
OLDFIELD from page 1
Spirit of Notre Dame.”
For no reason at all, “I wrote my
idea of a review” he said, and put it on
the desk of the woman whose job it was
to do the weekly theater page at The
Lincoln Star.
On that day, Oldfield became the
newspaper’s new movie editor, and a
new career started.
That career took him to Hollywood
where he would become a publicist for
some of the day’s biggest stars - includ
ing Errol Flynn, Elizabeth Taylor and
Ronald Reagan.
He spent time writing television and
radio scripts, writing speeches for politi
cal personalities and as a war correspon
dent during World War II and Korea.
He also served as a lifelong coun
selor for another former actor, who may
be better known for his boxing accom
plishments: George Foreman.
He has practiced his profession in
81 countries.
But Alan Beerman, executive direc
tor of the Nebraska Press Association,
said that through all of that, Oldfield has
remained true to Nebraska.
“He’s known all the greats of the
world,” he said, following Friday night’s
festivities. “But he never forgot his roots
- where he came from.”
Perhaps Oldfield’s greatest work
has come from his philanthropic efforts,
Beermansaid.
There are more than 250 scholar
ships in his name in at least five states.
“For all of his journalistic efforts,
the fact that he has opened his heart, his
hands and his home for others - to have
him here while he is alive is an honor,”
Beermansaid.
Following Oldfield’s induction into
the hall came the surprise for everyone
on hand.
William Jennings Bryan (portrayed
by Omaha attorney Donald Fiedler)
entranced the audience with a retelling
of the former presidential candidate’s
“Cross of Gold” speech.
Advocating a currency based on sil
ver, the speech is regarded as one of the
greatest orations ever.
Bryan, who was the first Nebraskan
Democrat elected to Congress, was also
the former editor of the Omaha World
Herald and founder of the populist
newspaper, The Commoner, in 1901.
One of the greatest novelists who
ever lived, Willa Cather, became just die
fifth woman to be inducted.
She won the Pulitzer Prize for her
novel, “One of Ours,” the story of a
Nebraska farm boy who went to World
War I.
Induction into the Hall of Fame is
the highest honor accorded by the NPA
and the University ofNebraska-Lincoln
College of Journalism and Mass
Communications.
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