Annual Symposium brings scholars, fans to Cooperstown

Fans of the National Pastime looking for a broader perspective on the game have – for almost 40 years – found a gathering place each year at the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture. It remains a distinctive event in the world of academia and fandom.

The recently completed 36th edition, like the ones that preceded it, allowed for an interesting exchange of ideas on a number of varied and diverse subjects related to the game.

More than 150 attendees from across the country arrived in Cooperstown with stories to tell. But they all had one thing in common, whether they self-identify as professors, fans, students, historians or writers: A shared love of the sport, which brings with it a unique congeniality.

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

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

The three-day Symposium, held at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, concluded on May 30. Founded in 1989, the Symposium reexamines, reinterprets and reimagines the game.

“The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture continues to be a wonderful time,” said Cassidy Lent, the Hall of Fame’s library director and co-director of the Symposium. “Between our excellent keynote speaker, Joe Posnanski, who spoke on the special place that the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum has in his life, a panel on women in baseball with Kat Williams, Amie Cuevas and Meggie Meidlinger, a fun town ball game in Cooper Park, and 55 presentations, it has been an incredible three days. Our attendees have enjoyed their time immensely and many look forward to coming back next year.

“We provide a unique platform for attendees to visit Cooperstown and to discuss baseball and its relation to our culture and society. We don’t talk about baseball on the field; we talk about everything else – art, music, poetry, literature, economics, architecture, whatever. The Symposium remains a spirited program and based on the response we’ve been getting, we look forward to continuing it for many more years to come.”

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.

“I will tell you, as somebody who came in from working with a team and not in a museum or a library or university, I’m not sure I really fully understood what the Symposium was when I got here,” said Hall of Fame President Josh Rawitch before an audience at the Hall of Fame’s Grandstand Theater. “I’ve tried to make it to as many sessions as I could over the years. But what I’ve come to learn is that this is truly one of the lifebloods of our institution.

“It’s an incredible event that goes on every year. The work that you all put into it, those of you that present, it informs the work that we do. It informs the work that SABR does. It informs the work that the baseball community undertakes. And it is incredibly fascinating.”

The 2025 Symposium featured more than 50 presentations, with titles ranging from Boston Youth Baseball During the Great Depression; Sam Jethroe: Branch Rickey’s Big Mistake; George Will and the Craft of Baseball; Baseball Graphic Novels: Stories in Words & Pictures; Teddy and Taft: Baseball and a Tale of Two Presidents; It Ain’t Over ‘til It’s Over and Other Theological Teachings of Baseball; and I Love the ‘80s Baseball Films.

This year’s Symposium kicked off with Posnanski, who Simons introduced as ranking among the preeminent figures in sports journalism.

“His prolific, impactful work appears across diverse media,” Simons said, “and does not confine itself to sports.”

Posnanski is a podcast host and blogger and has written for Sports Illustrated, the Kansas City Star, NBC Sports, the Cincinnati Post, the Charlotte Observer and The Athletic. In addition, he is the author of eight books and counting, including “The Baseball 100” and “Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments.”

“I asked Cassidy (Lent) what exactly I should talk about here. And she said, ‘You can talk about anything you want,’” Posnanski began. “I really thought about it…I’ve been lucky, and I could write and talk about a lot of different things, but I wanted to talk about something very special. And it was really walking over from the hotel that it hit me that I should really talk about this place and how this place has influenced me, how this place has really, in so many ways, shaped my life as a writer.”

Posnanski then shared that he would receive Beckett Monthly – a baseball card magazine – in the mail when he was 18 years old. 

“I was looking through Beckett Monthly, and at the front they had a little box where they’d asked for submissions…I thought, ‘Well, that seems kind of fun.’ And so, I went to my typewriter and thought, ‘I’m going to write something for Beckett Monthly.’ Now I was trying to think what the heck to write for Beckett Monthly. And I wrote basically the only thing I knew to write, which was a prediction of who in baseball would make it to the Baseball Hall of Fame…I put them in all these different lists: they’re definitely going to get in; they might get in; they could get in; and long shots. I sent this article there and forgot about it.

“And I remember so vividly, it was a Wednesday, and the mail came, and in the mail was a little tiny envelope from Beckett Monthly. And I opened that envelope, and inside the envelope was a check for $33.84, because they paid three cents a word for an 1,126-word story that I had written. And I just so vividly remember thinking, ‘I’m a professional writer now’…I think back to what I had to be thinking about when I wrote that story, like why was it the Hall of Fame that, literally, was the first thing that came to mind? It was the very first thing I’d ever done. There’s something so magical about this place.”

After Posnanski, who wrote of the script for the Museum’s Generations of the Game film, joked that those who read him know that he basically spends 16 to 18 hours every day thinking about the Baseball Hall of Fame, he admitted his affection for the institution is something he can’t fully describe.

“There’s the feeling of being here, which we’re all here, and you walk around this town, you walk around this Museum, you walk through the (Plaque Gallery), you check out the new bobblehead exhibit, which I just did, and there’s something holy, right? There’s something that is so different,” he said. “I’ve been to all the Halls of Fame, and they’re individually great, but they’re great in a certain way. They’re great because they celebrate that sport. And I think maybe because baseball is so different, and baseball itself, what we love about the game, is so different than every other sport, that to capture that takes a different kind of place and takes a different kind of theme, and that’s sort of what this Hall of Fame is. And it’s followed me throughout my life.”

Bill Francis is the senior research and writing specialist at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum