OPINION|
The 35th Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture will be held at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum at the end of May. I will be there.
Co-sponsored by SUNY-Oneonta, the premier academic baseball conference in the United States “examines the impact of baseball on American culture from interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary perspectives.”
I have been to the Hall of Fame and Cooperstown Symposium on one other occasion. Nate Rueckert, the artist-founder of Baseball Seams Company, and I partnered on a project. Nate created a map of the United States completely from baseballs. Each state was crafted by baseballs obtained from that particular state in correlation to a specific story. I wrote the stories for the accompanying coffee table book, “America at the Seams.” The map was unveiled for the first time in front of the Hall of Fame, mere moments after I pulled into town. We took a picture. What you can’t see in the picture are the storm clouds approaching at a rapid pace. The map is currently on display at Ballparks of America in Branson.
The Cooperstown Symposium started in 1989, the same year the Oakland A’s defeated the San Francisco Giants in a World Series that might be best remembered for the earthquake captured on TV during the game. SUNY-Oneonta Professor Al Hall designed the event as a way of celebrating the 50th anniversary of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Hall thought the gathering, which drew a few dozen people, would be a one-time endeavor.
Scholarly studies of baseball
My first experience at the Symposium was eye opening. Scholars of all disciplines from all over the country gave presentations covering a great multitude of topics. During my three days, I befriended Thomas McDonald, who went by the nickname “Porky.” Porky was from Astoria, New York. He was an incredibly prolific baseball poet and New York Mets fan and we hit it off immediately. Porky was at the Symposium to share some of his poetry as well as to honor a friend — by flushing his cremains down a toilet.
“Roy Riegel was a plumber extraordinaire. The final count on flushing his ashes in the bathrooms of ballparks was 14 Major League parks, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, an Irish pub in Minneapolis (where the whole idea was hatched) and the final flush in Durham Athletic Park,” Porky told me in an email.
After the Symposium, Porky and I kept in touch via email and Facebook. We talked about reconnecting again at a future Symposium.
Porky sent me a letter after he read “A Year of Playing Catch.“ He told me about his first glove and his best glove and his experiences at several of my catch-playing venues. He compared my catch-playing year to Ray Kinsella’s baseball field building exercise in Iowa (forever immortalized in “Field of Dreams”) and loved the stories about my daughters. He thought that playing catch was “something special” and sent me a poem he wrote about playing catch with his dad.
“NO ONE could have written A Year of Playing Catch but you. Your greatest gift is your enthusiasm.”
A baseball friend I never met in person
Porky went on trips regularly with his best friend, Adam. They visited ballparks and national parks and Porky wrote poetry about all of the experiences. Porky and Adam played catch in front of Doubleday Field in Cooperstown on Porky’s 60th birthday, at the same time celebrating Adam’s 50th birthday only 18 days earlier. Somehow, Porky overlooked that Springfield has a minor league team. In his letter, he said that he and Adam would make a trip here — in 2024.
For several years, he and I submitted proposals to be presented at the Symposium. While his were often accepted, mine were routinely rejected.
But, baseball is a game that teaches perseverance and grit, resolve and determination.
My 2024 proposal was accepted. The sociological and psychological benefits of actively and routinely participating in an interceptive timing endeavor. In other words, the power of playing catch.
Unfortunately, Porky passed away unexpectedly in March of 2022. We never got the chance to play catch.
A couple of months after Porky passed away, my family had its own scare – my wife, Jamie, was diagnosed with cancer. She’s had surgery and chemo and radiation. While she was undergoing treatment, one of the brilliant oncologists gave us this advice, “It’s just cancer. Live your life.”
In his poem about playing catch with his dad, Porky wrote:
The game goes on and on,
from cool Dusk to tepid Dawn;
In places where life and death hardly matter;
Our private game of catch,
just like that old man Satch,
pays no mind to the crowd or the batter.
Throughout Jamie’s cancer treatment, we tried to live our life. “The game goes on and on.” She continued to teach and I continued to play catch and write. We went to symphony performances to cheer one daughter and art shows in support of the other. We spent our 26th anniversary in the chemo center, celebrated the engagement of one daughter and the high school graduation of the other.
‘You may contribute a verse'
When my proposal was accepted to be presented at the Cooperstown Symposium, I knew I wanted to do something memorable.
In the movie “Dead Poets Society,” Robin Williams' character quoted Walt Whitman, “The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.” He then looks to the students and asks, “What will your verse be?”
Jamie and I are going on a road trip.
From Springfield, Missouri to Cooperstown, New York and back.
1,200 miles and 18 hours of driving.
One way.
On Jan. 3, I made my first catch-playing trip of the year, driving from Springfield to Kansas City to visit JustGloves, a veritable baseball-glove heaven. The mom-and-pop shop began in 1985 and now ship gloves for all ages, abilities, and price points from coast to coast. I toured the facility full of memorabilia, walked-up and down aisles containing thousands of gloves, interviewed for a podcast with Ben, and played catch on the indoor pickleball court. JustGloves is partnering with me on this trip to encourage as many people as possible to just play catch.
On this trip, I’ll play catch every day along the way and share stories of my catch partners. I’ll present my catch-playing paper with “enthusiasm” and take Jamie to the pizza place I discovered on my first trip to Cooperstown. Hopefully, I’ll find my way on to Doubleday Field and play catch there, too.
I’m taking a gold leather baseball with me, just like I did to Friendly Baseball and the Men’s Mental Health League in Springfield. Jamie and I will experience the fullness of life on the road — seeing new sites, making new memories and friends, sharing life together.
My verse is simple: Playing catch helps us be better humans.
I think Porky would agree.
