Baseball Memories
Grade: 6-10
Subject: History, Language Arts
Introduction:
In this lesson, students investigate the impact of baseball on prior generations
through an “oral history” exercise; that is, interviewing a parent, grandparent, or
other older relative about attending major or minor league baseball games with a
relative or friend.
Background:
Before beginning the lesson, the teacher may wish to introduce it by having
students view various segments (many at the beginning of each of the episodes)
where celebrities reminisce about viewing baseball games. Examples would be
recollections by author Studs Terkel, comedian Billy Crystal, and historian Doris
Kearns Goodwin. Terkel, for example, discusses Babe Ruth’s “called shot” home
run against the Chicago Cubs in the 1932 World Series, while Crystal and
Goodwin discuss their affection for the New York Yankees and Brooklyn
Dodgers, respectively. Crystal and Goodwin also note the family loyalties of
baseball in the film. See Goodwin’s essay, “Fan” at the end of this lesson.
The teacher may also note that historically in literature and in films, baseball has
been used as a way to cement the “bond” between parent and child as a shared
experience, and that frequently team loyalty (or rivalries) have been handed
down from generation to generation.
In this lesson, students will act as historians, and will collect “oral history”
information from relatives and neighbors who have recollections of attending
either major league or minor league baseball games. They can either report on
these recollections in class, or they may wish to collect and make them available
online on the school Web page.
The teacher should next discuss the impact of oral history on the overall study of
history, and may wish to lead the class in a review of similar oral history
projects, most notably, the Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project
(1936-1938), which are now housed in the Library of Congress. The Web site for
the Slave Narratives collection is
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html
.
Once the discussion on the impact of oral history is concluded, the teacher will
want to discuss the specific Baseball Memories project. One way the teacher might
introduce the project to students is through a statement such as this:
“For many adults, there is no stronger memory than going with their
parents or grandparents to a major or minor league baseball game. It
often is a defining moment in their lives.”
Explain to students their assignment is to select an adult to interview, create a list
of questions you think are appropriate to ask regarding what they recall about
attending their first big league ballgame, interview that person, and report their
findings back to the class.
(Note: Depending on the age-level and ability level of the class, the teacher may
elect to create a question set personally and direct students to ask those
questions. A sample questionnaire sheet is provided below.)
Next, either distribute the question sheets or ask students to begin to consider
what questions they might wish to ask their interview subjects. If the teacher
elects to have students write their own questions, it is suggested that the teacher
actively assist students in that task.
Once students have generated questions, they can actually interview their oral
history subjects. The teacher will want to allot adequate time for the students to
contact interview subjects and ask questions. Also, the teacher may wish to
allow students to not only record responses in writing, but also in audio-visual
forms, such as audiocassettes or videotape.
WRAP-UP
At the end of the project, the teacher can ask students to either play their
recorded interviews, or report back to the class in regard to what information
their subjects shared.
Resources:
Major League Baseball (The Official Site)
http://www.mlb.com)
The Major League Baseball “History” page
http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/history/mlb_history.jsp
John Skilton’s Baseball Links
http://www.baseball-links.com/
National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
(http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/)
The Baseball Almanac
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/
Baseball-Reference.com
http://www.baseball-reference.com/
Minor League Baseball
http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/
Exploratorium “Science of Baseball”
http://www.exploratorium.edu/baseball/
The Field Museum, Chicago, “Baseball As America”
http://www.fmnh.org/baseball/index.html
Links for examples of oral histories
Holt, Rinehart, and Winston
http://go.hrw.com/resources/go_ss/teacher99/toolkit/TOOLKT15.pdf
)
The University of California (Berkley) “One Minute” oral history checklist
http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/1minute.html
“A Farm Girl Plays Baseball”
(http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WWII_Women/FarmGirlBaseball.html
)
The American Memory section of the Library of Congress
(http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/oralhist/ohguide.html)
Standards:
This addresses national content standards established by the Mid-Continent
Research for Education and Learning (McREL)
(http://www.mcrel.org/standards-benchmarks/)
History
Understands that specific individuals and the values those individuals held had
an impact on history
Knows different types of primary and secondary sources and the motives,
interests, and bias expressed in them (e.g., eyewitness accounts, letters, diaries,
artifacts, photos; magazine articles, newspaper accounts, hearsay)
Understands that change and continuity are equally probable and natural
Language Arts
Generates questions about topics of personal interest
Gathers data for research topics from interviews (e.g., prepares and asks relevant
questions, makes notes of responses, compiles responses)
About the Author:
Michael Hutchison teaches social studies at Lincoln High School in Vincennes,
Indiana, and at Vincennes University. In 1998, Compaq named Michael a first-
place prizewinner in its Teacher Lesson Plan contest, and in 1999, Michael was
named the Midwest regional winner in Technology & Learning magazine's
Teacher of the Year program. In 2002, Michael was named "Teacher of the Year"
by the Indiana Computer Educators and "Technology-Using Teacher of the Year"
by the International Society for Technology in Education. In addition, Michael
hosts a weekly social studies forum for TAPPED IN, works as a staff member for
ED Oasis, and serves as a faculty member of Connected University, as well as a
member of the PBS TeacherSource Advisory Group and has written curriculum
for several PBS programs, including The Civil War and Empire of the Air.
Baseball Memories
Interview sheet
Introduction: Please help me by answering the following questions. I will be
asking you questions about your experiences attending baseball games, and your
recollections of those games.
What is your name?
What is your age?
What was he first baseball game you attended? What year was it? What teams
played? How old were you?
What stadium was the game played in?
Which team won the game? Do you remember the score?
Who did you attend the game with?
What are some of your favorite recollections about seeing this game?
Do you feel that going to this baseball game was an important event in your life?
Please explain your answer.
Was your opinion of baseball as a sport enhanced or diminished by seeing a
game in person?
Are there any other things you would like to add about the game or what you
remember about the day?
FAN
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN
My continuing love of baseball is inseparably linked to memories of my father.
On summer nights, when he came home from work, the two of us would sit
together on our porch, re-living that day's Brooklyn Dodger game, which I had
permanently preserved in the large red scorebook he'd given me for my seventh
birthday.
I can still remember how proud I was when I first mastered all the miniature
symbols that allowed me to record every movement, play by play, of our favorite
players, Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese and Gil Hodges. With
the scorebook spread between us, my dad would ask me questions about
different plays, whether a strikeout was called or swinging, and if I'd been
careful in my scoring, I would know the answers. At such moments, when he
smiled at me, I could not help but smile, too, for he had one of those contagious
smiles that started in his eyes and traveled across his face, leaving laugh lines on
either side of his mouth.
Sometimes a particular play would trigger in my dad a memory of a similar
situation, framed forever
in his mind, and suddenly we were back in time recalling the Dodgers of his
childhood — Casey Stengel, Zack Wheat, and Jimmy Johnston. Mingling
together the present and the past, our conversations nurtured within me an
irresistible fascination with history, which has remained to this day.
It fell to me to be the family scorekeeper not only because I was the third
daughter and youngest child, but because my idea of a perfect afternoon was
lying in front of our ten-inch- screen television, watching baseball. What is more,
there was real power in being the one to keep score. For all through my early
childhood, my father kept from me the knowledge that the daily papers printed
daily box scores, permitting me to imagine that without my symbolic renderings
of all the games he had missed while he was at work, he would never have been
able to follow the Dodgers in the only proper way a team should be followed,
day by day, inning by inning. In other words, without me, his love for baseball
would be forever un-requited.
In our neighborhood in Rockville Centre, New York, allegiance was equally
divided among Dodger, Yankee, and Giant fans. As families emigrated from
different parts of the city to the suburbs of Long Island, the old loyalties
remained intact, creating rival enclaves on every street. Born and bred in
Brooklyn, my father would always love the Dodgers, fear the Giants, and hate
the abominable Yankees.
