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This is a paid Adult School class. When registering, you will be taken to the Adult School website.
From “dime novels” to post-modern parables, from “Casey at the Bat” to the haiku, the game/sport/business of baseball has provided writers with themes, plots, myths, characters, and language; it is widely believed that baseball, more than any other sport, is “the writer’s game.” Jacques Barzun told us that “whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball…,” and Walt Whitman said the game “has the snap, go, fling, of the American atmosphere…”
We will study how creative writers of fiction and poetry have used baseball, our “National Pastime” (or at least it used to be) as a metaphor for America, its motley, kaleidoscopic populace, and its changing role in the world. Just as Moby Dick is more than a guide to whaling, a story or poem set on or around the baseball diamond can help us to understand the meaning of life, its delights and, more often, its sorrows. After all, it is a sport in which one who fails to get a hit in seven out of ten at-bats is nevertheless acclaimed as a champ, and most who seek success are fated to “wait ‘till next year.”
So please, step up to the plate and join this course. You need not be a baseball fanatic or even much of a fan to enjoy it and there won’t be no cussin’ or spittin’ allowed. Play Ball! Instructor: Keith Danish
