Symposium draws baseball scholars from around the country

“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.”

“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 (Calif.) 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.”

“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