Baseball Seminar Returns for 35th Year

By TERESA WINCHESTERCOOPERSTOWN

Baseball is about more than home run records, batting averages and runs batted in. Just ask Bill Simons, SUNY Oneonta Professor Emeritus, former chair of its history department and co-director of the 35th Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture.

“Baseball is a mirror of the American culture,” said Simons in a May 19 telephone interview. “A lot of American history can be reflected through baseball—race relations, military history, women’s history. Baseball developed at a time when America was moving to the city, yet it evokes a rural nostalgia,” he said.

The conference is co-sponsored by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and SUNY Oneonta. Co-director for the Hall of Fame is Cassidy Lent, director of Reference Services at its Giamatti Research Center.