ENGL 118 - Baseball Literature and American Culture

• Identify and explain key aspects of baseball’s history, such as the game’s origins, the beginning of professional baseball, the dead-ball era, the “Black Sox” scandal, the breaking of the color line, the breaking of the reserve clause, and the causes and effects of performance-enhancing drugs on the game.
• Correlate baseball’s development with American social and cultural life.
• Examine how key components and unique values of the game contribute to its long-standing appeal in American life.
• Evaluate how the literary elements in well-written baseball stories, such as characterization, setting, and plot, contribute to the stories’ themes.
• Examine how important ideas found in some of baseball’s finest fiction and non-fiction shed light on the American character.
• Score the literary merits of one of baseball’s finest writers against those of a reputable writer of non-baseball fiction.