BASEBALL AND GEOGRAPHY: THE HIDDEN CONNECTION

Abstract

A growing number of geographers are becoming aware of the relationship between baseball and geography. As early as 1963 Shaw published an exhaustive account of this relationship, but professional geographers dropped the ball and failed to follow through [ I ] . During the years since Shaw’s landmark article, two geographers have entered the major leagues (Bil l Lee and Denny Doyle, Boston Red Sox) and at least one undergraduate (Steve Ruling of the Milwaukee Brewers’ AAA Spokane affiliate) i s preparing to graduate from geography and into the American League in the very near future. Anyone proficient in quantitative analysis can demonstrate the statistical significance of a growth rate from zero baseball-geographers to two (and, someday, three) in less than a decade. There is, then, clear statistical evidence that the growing number of geographers in major league baseball points toward the time when they will some day control the sport. Interconnected with this trend toward geography’s capture of America‘s favorite pastime i s an almost-hidden corollary: baseball may someday dominate geography! The takeover will be gradual, subtle, and deceptively smooth. As a matter of littleknown fact, the movement has already begun, and has been verified by extensive research carried out by the authors in the lobby and adjacent facilities of the Hyatl Regency Knoxville during the SEAAG meeting in November 1977. The first hint of baseball’s influence on our discipline came when the chairman of one major league institution (one that offers the Ph.D.) was overheard to tell another, “I’ll trade you two cultural geographers with a few more good years left in them for one young cartographer and a draft choice to be named later.” The comment might well have gone unnoticed had not your authors been alertmen who have learned from vast and past experiences to seize research topics whenever they materialize, men who have mastered the art of eaves-dropping. Aural research has its merits, for the name of the sought-after cartographer was ascertained. When the young mapmaker was located and questioned, he was indignant. In no uncertain terms he informed your authors that he was going to work out his option and attend the New Orleans meeting as a free agent. A trade was out, and his attorney would handle matters at the free-agent session in the Crescent City. This incident revealed, for the first time, that there would be a free-agent session among the 21 concurrent sessions at the national meeting. After conducting an intensive personal interview with the major league chairman, it was learned that the free-agent concept was not new to the AAG’s annual meeting, only that it had never been formalized before. Further, additional queries (which precisely followed established interview techniques) disclosed that some institutions in the major leagues