I need to change schools.

Posted: September 30, 2008 
Filed under: School Days
Tagged: barry bonds, baseball, bates college, Boston, boston red sox, curt flood, jackie robinson, kennisaw mountain landis, major league baseball, pete rose, red sox, red sox nation
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Bates College in Lewiston, Maine has a class that I’m willing to transfer for: “Red Sox Nation: Baseball and American Culture”. While the class is named after the Boston Red Sox, the history / sociology class focuses on more generic concepts related to baseball and American culture. The following snippet from an SI.com piece encapsulates the class syllabus best:

Students are asked to explore baseball’s ties to politics, religion, race, gender and class. They examine what fans eat at games, why umpires dress like they do and how rivalries — does the Yankees-Red Sox bad blood sound familiar? — have helped shape regional identities.

All kidding aside, I’d love to take this class because there are some very important issues in modern America that are influenced or mirrored in modern baseball. The influence of such people as Curt Flood, Jackie Robinson, Pete Rose, Kennisaw Mountain Landis, Shoeless Joe, and Barry Bonds has not been confined to the world of baseball; their contributions have helped shape the contours of the American landscape.