^{Tyler Kepner of “The New York Times” delivered the keynote address at the 34th Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture on May 31 at the Hall of Fame. (Photo by Milo Stewart Jr./National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum)}

Annual Symposium Draws Baseball Scholars from Around the Country

By BILL FRANCIS
COOPERSTOWN

Called a distinctive event in the world of academia and fandom, the 34th Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture attracted approximately 150 attendees from across the country, from different academic backgrounds and ages, all of whom had an abundance of stories to tell and a shared love of the sport.

“In addition to baseball scholarship, which this is about, the conference also is a place of fraternization between generations,” said Bill Simons, history professor at the State University of New York at Oneonta and co-director of the symposium, which was held May 31-June 2 in Cooperstown. “It’s great to see veterans of the symposium, and it’s great to see those who are beginning their careers.”

The three-day symposium, held annually at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, brings together academics, students, historians, writers and fans with an interest in the sport. Founded in 1989, the symposium reexamines, reinterprets and reimagines the game.

Co-sponsored by the State University of New York College at Oneonta and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, the symposium examines the impact of baseball on American culture from inter- and multi-disciplinary perspectives.

Simons called the symposium unique in terms of its combination of scholarship and community while emphasizing its diversity of participants from different backgrounds and regions.

“This is, without question, the preeminent scholarly baseball conference,” he added.

The 2023 symposium had 44 presentations, held in both the Hall of Fame’s Bullpen Theater and the Learning Center, with titles ranging from “Boys, Baseball and Bank Robbers ” and “The Congressional Baseball Game: The Meeting of Two American Institutions,” to “What Baseball Can Learn from Dizzy Dean” and “Revisiting the Original ‘Angels in the Outfield’: How President Eisenhower’s Favorite Film Deserves its Place in Movie and Baseball History.”

This year’s symposium kicked off with keynote speaker Tyler Kepner, the national baseball writer for “The New York Times” since 2010, and his talk titled “Part of Your World,” his general theme about how people who love baseball but are not major league players can still find a way to take part in that world.

A partial list of past Cooperstown Symposium keynote speakers includes Ken Burns, W.P. Kinsella, Eliot Asinof, Donald Fehr, Stephen Jay Gould, Roger Kahn, George Plimpton, Marvin Miller, Claire Smith, Frank Deford, Janet Marie Smith, Jane Leavy, Brian Kenny and Bob Kendrick.

“I first came here in 1987,” Kepner began. “I was 12. I thought it was the greatest place in the world. We came back again a few years later. And then in (1994) I came up for Steve Carlton’s induction because he was my all-time favorite player. And then Mike Schmidt and Richie Ashburn the very next year.

“Baseball rewards you if you put in the effort. It was one of the things I’ve always loved about it. And one of the things I’ve always loved about Cooperstown.”

Kepner joined The Times in 2000 and covered the Mets for two seasons, then covered the Yankees from 2002 to 2009. Prior to that, the Vanderbilt University graduate covered the Angels for the Riverside (California) Press-Enterprise and the Mariners for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. His most recent book, “The Grandest Stage: A History of the World Series,” was released in October 2022. He is also the author of the 2019 bestseller “K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches.”

“That idea of the reward for patience, that time to think and appreciate everything that baseball offers you, that atmosphere was something I always wanted to be a part of from a very young age,” Kepner said. “The game is bigger than all of us. And we all serve it in our own ways. The players serve it their ways. But increasingly over the years, I’ve really found, especially lately, that you don’t have to have played. There are many ways to offer something to the game. And that’s how I connect with a lot of these guys, these GMs or coaches, because they might not have played either at the professional level. But there’s something that they can offer.”

On May 31, a special evening session of the symposium, titled “The Black Baseball Initiative: The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Current Major Project,” took place at the Grandstand Theater. Included on the panel were Hall of Fame President Josh Rawitch, Hall of Fame Senior Curator Tom Shieber and Kent State history professor Leslie Heaphy.

One of the largest initiatives in the institution’s history, the Black Baseball Initiative will inspire people through the stories of those who overcame seemingly insurmountable challenges to play the game they loved. The groundbreaking new exhibition will replace Ideals and Injustices, the museum’s current exhibit about the history of Black baseball. Originally titled “Pride and Passion,” it opened in 1997 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson integrating the white major leagues. The project includes a new permanent exhibit which will open in April 2024 and programs that are expanding the museum’s reach to communities across the country.

“I think you’ve all been through the museum. You’ve seen the exhibits, you see what we do. And we’re constantly updating the museum, but to really take this to a whole new level, we’re going to bring in the other elements to it that are beyond the walls of Cooperstown,” Rawitch told the audience. “We want to make sure that we’re telling the story from the right perspective.

“When we did this 26 years ago, it really was told from a current curatorial perspective—the curatorial team and pretty much all-white curatorial group. We knew that we had to do this differently. We knew that if we only did this here in Cooperstown, we would miss the mark. We want to make sure that we’re going out into communities all around the country, diverse communities, and that we brought in diverse voices, so we can tell the whole story behind Black baseball and not just the Negro Leagues and not just Jackie Robinson—but going back to the very earliest part of when baseball was being played, which was also being played by Black people, and all the way up until today’s game.

“But really what we’re going to try to do is tell the experience of what it is like to be Black in the game of baseball from the beginning of that sport to today.”

The 2024 Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture is scheduled for May 29-31.

Bill Francis is the senior research and writing specialist at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and a former sports editor of “The Freeman’s Journal.” This article originally appeared on www.baseballhall.org.