Day 11 The Baseball Hall of Fame and My Hero

AAGPBL - NY Hero - You need to read the last paragraph!

Cooperstown, NY is synonymous with America’s pastime – Baseball.  A thought that I’ve had for a very long time is “why would we continue to call baseball “America’s pastime” when clearly football is the most popular sport in the nation?”  (Ok, admittedly this statement comes from a die hard Bronco fan!!)  However, after walking the halls with the decades of memorabilia and the stories of the PEOPLE who played the game and the impact they’ve had, I understand America’s pastime.

 

Baseball's tribute to CHARACTER

Baseball Greats on AND OFF the field!!

In many ways, sports has taken the priority seat in our country’s educational system.  However, I’ve always seen sports as a potential to improve student-athletes lives and create learning opportunities for them.  This Hall of Fame in Cooperstown provided a myriad of examples of how athletes can be used to enrich the lives of our students.  Each hall provided a plethora of images that excited my mind for my kiddoes and various ways to look at the curriculum I teach!

6^th Grade:  This curriculum is packed and, due to the end of the year always coming too fast, we skim (or jump over) a

HOF Tribute to Latin Contributions

unit on Latin American Independence.  The area on Latin players gave me ideas on projects   (cereal boxes – done those before in other units) and banners and  

Products with Latin players

 geography lessons.  Many of these players came from poor regions and worked hard to get to America – not just to play baseball, but to make a better life for themselves.  What better lesson can our kids learn!!  Geography is always difficult to teach and excite kids but geography combined with baseball biographies and statistics will actually be fun for the kids.

7^th grade:  Spanish American War through WWII (ok, how can I incorporate TR into this??  LOL)  Popular culture can be viewed in these areas through baseball, and even more interestingly, the effect on the immigrants’ family relations in NYC through going to baseball games.  Clothing styles are always of      

circa 1935

 interest for the kids, which is a segue to textile production, industrialization, and even the Great Migration.  I plan to incorporate into my WWII Unit, a new component to the America At Home segment:  Women’s professional baseball league.  This integrates issues of culture, wartime production &n militarization, and economics of corporations as well as possible ties to labor relations!  Guys…..see the affect that we women have on y’all!!

 

8^th grade:  Our Civil Rights Unit is always evolving and becoming something greater than it once was; much like the

Baseball Card

movement itself.  Is there an area of our collective American conscience that doesn’t incorporate striving for justice and rights.  Jackie Robinson is iconic to the movement, but one can’t speak of Jackie without remembering the Negro leagues and their accomplishments.  The Women’s League sought and often were victims of their own success.  Uniforms were enforced on them in order to garner greater ticket sales.  However, what affect might this have had on their Civil Rights? (A great tie to further debate our Constitution studies!)  The Latin players provide further examples to define the role of various groups and how they affect our greater American culture.  I think a great question regarding these groups would be:  Did these players gain greater civil rights due to their success or did their minority status make them prisoners to the diamond??

The best part of the day, however, was two-fold.  I got to see the exhibit through my parents’ eyes.  In their travels, they made it to the Hall and dad so enjoyed seeing all the Yankees “stuff”.  He always talked about listening to the games on the radio as a kid and rooting for the Babe or Gehrig, and later, DiMaggio and Mantle.  He did follow the Rockies, but “Once a Yankee fan, Always a Yankee fan!”

  

Gehrig & DiMaggio

HOF Statue of Hilda Chester - Brooklyn Dodgers fan

Now to explain the picture at the top of the blog.  My mom was an incredible woman, and TOUGH!!  She is my hero!!   She raised me to love sports, because she loved them and saw it as a great way to learn a competitive and sportsmanlike attitude toward life.  As a teenager during WWII, competitive sports for HS girls was discontinued because state legislators felt that it was unhealthy for young ladies to be involved in that type of physical activity (WOW!! Another tie for curriculum!).  Mom always commented how this made her angry and she would always find a way to compete.  After HS she started playing and had a tryout on a competitive softball team.  Just before leaving, she was playing a game and….sliding into home base caught her cleat and broke both tibia and fibula.  Her days of formal competition were over, but she went out swingin’…………she argued with the ump all the way to the ambulance!  She was SAFE!!

Yankees Game 2010 - for Dad!!