Game Of Catch Research Articles

The Optimal Throwing Angle for a “Soft” Toss

The various aspects of projectile motion have been analyzed many times in this journal. As a sample, over the years, authors have investigated particular details of the path of a projectile and different situations for launching projectiles. Others have written about a nifty way to determine the maximum height of a projectile, finding the range of a projectile under very general circumstances, and the challenging question of how to hit a moving target. Finally, some authors have published articles detailing fun and interesting approaches to using projectile motion in the classroom or laboratory. This paper will examine a practical projectile motion question involving the game of catch. Specifically, we will find the angle at which a thrower should toss a ball such that its speed when caught is a minimum.

Measuring Ostracism-Induced Changes in Consumption of Palatable Food: Feasibility of a Novel Behavioral Task

PurposeOstracism is a highly aversive interpersonal experience. Previous research suggests that it can increase consumption of highly palatable food in some individuals, but decrease it in others. Thus, we developed the Cyberball-Milkshake Task (CMT), to facilitate research investigating individual differences in ostracism’s effects on consumption of highly palatable food. We present data on feasibility for the CMT in a sample of young adult women.Materials and MethodsParticipants were 22 women, 18–30 years old, reporting very low or very high levels of emotional eating at screening. Participants performed the CMT, which consisted of 12 trials. Each trial included: playing a round of Cyberball (a computerized game of catch with fictitious “other participants” programmed to either include or exclude the participant); viewing a chocolate image; and then consuming a participant-determined amount of milkshake. Participants subsequently played an additional inclusion and exclusion round of Cyberball, each immediately followed by questionnaires assessing current mood and recent Cyberball experience.ResultsCyberball exclusion (vs. inclusion) was associated with large, significant increases in reported ostracism and threats to self-esteem; exclusion’s effects on affect were in the expected direction (e.g., increased negative affect), but generally small and non-significant. Milkshake intake was measurable for 95% of participants, on 96% of trials. Intake decreased quadratically across trials, with a steep negative slope for low trial numbers that decreased to the point of being flat for the highest trial numbers.DiscussionThe CMT is a generally feasible approach to investigating ostracism’s effects on consumption of highly palatable food. The feasibility (and validity) of the CMT may benefit from modification (e.g., fewer trials and longer rounds of Cyberball). Future research should examine whether performance on a modified version of the CMT predicts real-world behavior in a larger sample.

The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife by Brad Balukjian

Reviewed by: The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife by Brad Balukjian Mark Jent Brad Balukjian.The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2020. 280 pp. Cloth, $27.95. While many people reminisce about their childhood love of baseball, those nostalgic reflections don’t typically lead to a seven-week, 11,341-mile journey across thirty states. Watching the Athletics from the upper deck of the Oakland Coliseum in the summer of 2014, Brad Balukjian decided he would relive some of those childhood memories by purchasing a pack of 1986 Topps—the first year he collected baseball cards as a boy growing up in Rhode Island. But when the pack arrived he decided, “It’s not enough to just open the Pack. Now I need to find the players inside it. And write a book about it” (5). Viewing himself throughout life as an underdog, Balukjian has always found himself drawn to the marginalized who played the game. “My childhood heroes were the journeymen and benchwarmers, the underdogs, fringe players who need to work like mad just to stay in place. I’ve never forgotten what it feels like to stand alone in the corner of the room” (1). To parallel his fandom, this single pack of cards was littered with those he was drawn to more than it was All-Stars who lived their careers in the spotlight. After nine months of researching their whereabouts, he sets out on his self-financed trip in June 2015 determined to find the men he once idolized and get to know their stories since stepping away from the game. The majority of the Wax Packers, as Balukjian refers to them, welcomed him warmly. A few remained elusive and evaded his invitation to participate in the project. Along the way, the whereabouts of his encounters are as random as most of the players themselves. From meeting Rance Mulliniks at a high school baseball field, working out with Randy Ready at a gym, sitting in a Triple-A dugout with Rich Hebner, recounting stories with Steve Yeager in a Jersey Mike’s, or celebrating the Fourth of July with Jamie Cocanower, Balukjian was grateful for each player’s time as the conversations make his pack of cards come to life. But dinner in New York City with Lee Mazzilli is where Balukjian writes, “For the first time on the trip, one of the Wax Packers seems as interested in me as I am in him” (176). Balukjian’s intuition that the players with more decorated careers could be more challenging proved to be true. A couple of days in Jacksonville trying to track down Vince Coleman led to dead ends around every corner. He finds Dwight Gooden in New York, only to be stood up on three separate occasions. He stalked Carlton Fisk at a country club in Tampa, but to no avail. Balukjian eventually met Fisk during Hall of Fame Induction Weekend in Cooperstown [End Page 234] after paying ninety-nine dollars to have the opportunity to say hello and get his card signed. He also delivered the former catcher a personal letter along with an autographed 8 × 10 of himself. For Balukjian, the best card in the pack was that of his favorite player from his childhood—Don Carman. Though the former Philadelphia Phillies pitcher was an average player with a career record of 53–54 and an era above 4.00, Balukjian’s loyalty to him never wavered. Though scheduled to meet with Carman in Florida, Balukjian drove out of his way to Camargo, Oklahoma, and its population of 178 just to visit Carman’s hometown. When he made it to Florida, Balukjian spent two days with his favorite player and capped the trip off with a game of catch in the driveway of his house. With the players Balukjian was able to interview, the most common theme was the father/son relationship. Several of these former big leaguers, now in their fifties and sixties, shared about the pain and abandonment experienced as a result of the void left by a father who...

The impact of social exclusion on anticipatory attentional processing

The importance of understanding how we anticipate and prepare for social rejection is underscored by the mental and physical toll of continual social vigilance. In this study, we investigate the impact of social rejection on anticipatory attentional processes using the well-known Cyberball task, a paradigm in which participants engage in a game of catch with virtual avatars who after an initial period of fair-play (inclusion condition) then exclude the participant from the game (exclusion condition). The degree of anticipatory attention allocated by subjects towards the avatars was assessed by measuring P3b responses towards the avatars' preparatory actions (i.e. the phase preceding their exclusionary actions) using high density EEG. The results of the study show that relative to the inclusion, participants exhibit elevated levels of anticipatory attentional allocation towards the avatars during the exclusion block. This shift was however significantly moderated by participants' self-reported cognitive regulation tendencies. Participants with higher levels of self-reported cognitive reappraisal tendencies showed larger anticipatory P3b increases from the inclusion to exclusion block relative to participants with reduced levels of reappraisal tendencies. These results highlight the impact of social exclusion on anticipatory neural processing and the moderating role of cognitive reappraisal on these effects.

A game of quantum catch.

Quantum Optics Realization of a quantum communication network or quantum internet will depend on the ability to successfully transfer quantum states between nodes of the network. Photons are expected to be the carriers of that information, but scattering losses and a mismatch between sender and

Ostracism and physiological arousal following traumatic brain injury

ABSTRACTPrimary objective: This study aimed to examine the psychological and physiological effects of ostracism in adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI).Research design: A within-subject, counterbalanced design was used. The two conditions, inclusion and ostracism, were examined across two groups (between subjects).Methods and procedures: A group of 21 adults with TBI and 17 matched controls participated in the Cyberball paradigm. This task is a computerised task that exposes participants to a game of catch and throw. In the inclusion condition they are included fairly in the game, while in the ostracism condition they are excluded from the game following the first few throws. Skin conductance levels (SCLs) were measured throughout the game as a proxy for social stress.Main outcomes: Results showed that people with TBI were cognitively aware of when they are being ostracised, but that their self-reported emotional experience to social exclusion was different to that of the control group. Differences in SCLs between groups and between conditions did not reach significance nor did they correlate with behavioural responses.Conclusions: These findings are discussed in terms of the consequences of dissociation between psychological and physiological responses and the implications for motivating behaviours associated with re-inclusion.

How Soon Is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time by Carolyn Dinshaw (review)

Reviewed by: How Soon Is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time by Carolyn Dinshaw Anna Wallace Dinshaw, Carolyn, How Soon Is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2012; paperback; pp. 272; 7 illustrations; R.R.P. US$23.95; ISBN 9780822353676. Carolyn Dinshaw’s How Soon Is Now?, titled after the Smiths’ song, is part philosophy, part history, and part literary analysis, but its greatest value is to queer studies and medievalism. Her professed goal is ‘to claim the possibility of a fuller, denser, more crowded now . . . This means fostering temporalities other than the narrowly sequential. This means taking seriously lives lived in other kinds of time’ (p. 3). Two broad temporal dichotomies emerge as Dinshaw’s themes: professional, ‘clock-bound’ time as opposed to the less-regulated time of amateurs; and the time of ‘the normative life course . . . what José Esteban Muñoz calls “straight time”’ (p. 31), set against queer time. ‘Time can queer you’, she argues (p. 137), and ‘by “queer” I don’t mean only “gay” or “homosexual” . . . And I don’t mean just “odd” or “different”, though there’s inevitably some of that here, too. In my theorizing of temporality I explore forms of desirous, embodied being that are out of sync with the ordinarily linear measurements of everyday life’ (p. 4). A hypothetical embodiment of ‘straight time’ haunts How Soon Is Now?, assumed to exist but never encountered within the text, in which queer temporalities proliferate instead; although Dinshaw writes that her main use for the binary oppositions is ‘to set up a general framework for more nuanced looks at engagements with medieval texts’ (p. 28). This volume offers both a reading of texts and a reading of readers, including early medievalists, ‘amateur’ responders to the medieval, and the author herself. Chapter 1 covers ‘asynchrony stories’, tales ‘of people shifted into another temporality’, which express ‘the constant pressure of other [End Page 202] temporalities on our ordinary image of time’ (p. 136). In ‘The Monk and the Bird’, a retired monk follows a singing bird some distance, only to return to the abbey to find time has moved on. Once his temporal mystery is solved, the monk dies: he ‘cannot simply live on with a temporal gap inside’ (p. 54). In Dinshaw’s reading, the monk is queered by his desire for another kind of time. Dinshaw later returns to asynchrony stories in Chapter 4 with the tale of Rip van Winkle. Chapter 2 explores The Book of John Mandeville, in which ‘to travel east … is an asynchronous activity: it is to travel back in time’ (p. 75). From here, Dinshaw moves to nineteenth-century responses to Mandeville, including Andrew Lang’s ‘Letter to Sir John Manddeville’, and a parody by M. R. James. Lang’s ‘Letter’ describes India in terms of England’s conquest, thus reading The Book of John Mandeville as ‘proto-imperialist’ and the British Empire as a realisation of Mandeville’s project, fulfilling ‘the past in a glorious neomedieval present’ (p. 94). In this colonial context, Dinshaw reflects on her family heritage, and her childhood in California in which her mother’s American culture commingled with her father’s Parsi heritage, including different kinds of time: her father’s birthday, in the Zoroastrian calendar, was a moveable feast (p. 103). So, ‘A different time frame was always subtly but definitely present. It meted out my forward strides a little out of step, a little behind “real” Americans: I was always playing a no-win game of catch up … It has made me keenly attuned to the ways that cultural differences get turned into temporal distance, the ways sex, gender, race, religion and nation, work and play, West and East get graphed on a timeline. It has made me permanently feel like an amateur’ (p. 103). Chapter 3 begins with the asynchronous experiences of Margery Kempe. Dinshaw argues that an ‘historical understanding’ of Margery Kempe ‘is made possible by a prior experience of contemporaneity between us and Margery’ (p. 116). The nineteenth-century scholar Hope Emily Allen experienced a connection with Margery which ‘bred yet more and more...

Bean Dog and Nugget: The Ball , and: Bean Dog and Nugget: The Cookie by Charise Mericle Harper (review)

Reviewed by: Bean Dog and Nugget: The Ball, and: Bean Dog and Nugget: The Cookie by Charise Mericle Harper Kate Quealy-Gainer Harper, Charise Mericle Bean Dog and Nugget: The Ball; written and illus. by Charise Mericle Harper. Knopf, 2013 [48p] Library ed. ISBN 978-0-307-97708-3 $12.99 Paper ed. ISBN 978-0-307-97707-6 $4.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 1–3 Bean Dog and Nugget: The Cookie; written and illus. by Charise Mericle Harper. Knopf, 2013 [48p] Library ed. ISBN 978-0-307-97711-3 $12.99 Paper ed. ISBN 978-0-307-97710-6 $4.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 1–3 Harper (Fashion Kitty, BCCB 12/05, etc.) opens her latest young readers’ graphic novel series with two accessibly simple and pleasantly silly tales. Bean Dog (who, [End Page 465] despite the name, more closely resembles a Nutter Butter than a bean, a dog, or a hot dog) and Nugget, a small, round creature with stick arms and a hair bow, are good pals who like to tease each other. In The Ball, a game of catch goes awry when Bean Dog’s shiny new ball rolls into the big, scary bushes, and the two friends transform into Superdog and Ninja Nugget to retrieve their toy. In The Cookie, they argue over who gets the biggest half of the last cookie after a game of playing with an invisible donut leaves them hungry. Sequential paneling and uncluttered white backgrounds (touched occasionally grays and muted pinks) make the action easy to follow. The story is told entirely through Bean Dog and Nugget’s dialogue, with plenty of repetitive vocabulary to build up the confidence of young readers, while the occasional use of bigger words will prove a worthy challenge for others. The themes—overcoming fears, sharing—are relatable but not overplayed, and there’s a charming wackiness to the whole endeavor. Kate Quealy-Gainer Assistant Editor Copyright © 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

You Are My Only (review)

Reviewed by: You Are My Only Deborah Stevenson Kephart, Beth. You Are My Only. Geringer/Egmont, 2011. [256p]. Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-60684-272-0 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-60684-285-0 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7–10. At fourteen, Sophie is starting to get fed up with her isolated life as the overprotected, homeschooled daughter of a single mother, and she illicitly develops a friendship with her new neighbor, Joey, and his guardian aunts. Her narration alternates with that of Emmy, a young woman who suffers a breakdown and hospitalization after her baby daughter disappears from the family backyard. Warmed by the affection of Joey’s family, an emboldened Sophie investigates her mother’s private papers and realizes that her life has been built on lies, a discovery that brings her story into conjunction with Emmy’s. This has a very different style from classic child-abduction melodramas such as Mazer’s Taking Terri Mueller (BCCB 6/83) and Ehrlich’s Where It Stops, Nobody Knows (BCCB 1/89); Kephart’s writing is a thing of beauty in its own right, and Sophie’s story earns its frequent and apt allusions to Rapunzel with its own fairy-tale quality. Emmy’s story is also compelling, but it’s effective mainly as a suspenseful counterpoint to Sophie’s journey toward recognition and reunion. There’s a Sleeping Beauty element as well in Sophie’s gradual awakening to the possibilities of life beyond her mother’s restrictions, and Joey’s aunts make excellent not-quite-fairy godmothers; Joey himself, whose wooing starts with a game of catch, is an appealingly accessible handsome prince. Readers will eat up this realistic variant of the youthful fantasy about finally finding one’s real parents and being properly appreciated. [End Page 87] Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Adopting the System-Justifying Attitudes of Others: Effects of Trivial Interpersonal Connections in the Context of Social Inclusion and Exclusion

Although system justification research has focused most on the needs to explain and control the social world, system justification may also be regulated by the need to maintain social connections with others. Three experiments demonstrate that trivial interpersonal ties to system-justifying others can facilitate the endorsement of system-justifying attitudes, sometimes even in the face of social exclusion. In Experiment 1, participants exhibited stronger implicit pro-system, anti-labor attitudes after playing a game of catch with economically advantaged, high-status (vs. equal-status) partners. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that social exclusion (vs. inclusion) by system-justifying partners increased endorsement of implicit anti-system attitudes—unless participants believed that they shared a birthday or food preference with their partners. In sum, results suggest that system-justifying attitudes are based in part on motivations to regulate interpersonal relationships, including relationships that are temporary, superficial, and even exclusionary.

Does low self-esteem enhance social pain? The relationship between trait self-esteem and anterior cingulate cortex activation induced by ostracism

According to sociometer theory, self-esteem serves as a barometer of the extent to which individuals are socially included or excluded by others. We hypothesized that trait self-esteem would be related to social pain responsiveness, and we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to experimentally investigate this potential relationship. Participants (n = 26) performed a cyberball task, a computerized game of catch during which the participants were excluded from the game. Participants then rated the degree of social pain experienced during both inclusion in and exclusion from the game. Individuals with lower trait self-esteem reported increased social pain relative to individuals with higher trait self-esteem, and such individuals also demonstrated a greater degree of dorsal anterior cingulate cortex activation. A psychophysiological interaction analysis revealed a positive connectivity between the dorsal anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortices for the lower trait self-esteem group, and a corresponding negative connectivity for the higher trait self-esteem group. Heightened dorsal anterior cortex activity and a corresponding connection with the prefrontal cortex might be one possible explanation for the greater levels of social pain observed experienced by individuals with low trait self-esteem.

Boo Hoo Bird (review)

Reviewed by: Boo Hoo Bird Deborah Stevenson Tankard, Jeremy. Boo Hoo Bird; written and illus. by Jeremy Tankard. Scholastic, 2009 [30p]. ISBN 978-0-545-06570-2 $14.99 Reviewed from galleys R 3–6 yrs When we last saw Bird, he was Grumpy (Grumpy Bird, BCCB 3/07); now he’s gotten bonked on the head by the ball in a game of catch, and he’s a wounded and [End Page 421] teary Boo Hoo Bird (“‘That hurt. A lot.’ He started to cry”). A sequence of Bird’s friends try to cheer him up with remedies such as a kiss, a hug, and a cookie, but Bird wails on; finally his friends are so distressed that they start blubbering, whereupon Bird realizes that he’s over his trauma. Tankard’s simple, comic text relies on a hearty repetition of “Boo hoo hoo!” with which audiences will jubilantly join in, and he ups the ante with the cumulative element as anxious friends accrue. Bird is a perfect avian analogue to the human youngster wounded as much in dignity as in pride and needing notice more than repair (and utterly bored with the situation once he’s over it). The broad sweeping outlines and simple faces of the critters make them amusingly resemble well-decorated cookies, though expressive ones; the backgrounds are an effective synthesis of glowing color, digitized organic textures, and high-spirited line and color shapes that represent a riot of flowers. With its blend of realism and exaggeration, condolence and humor, this may well turn a sympathetic “Boo hoo hoo!” into a family standby in times of bonkitude. Copyright © 2009 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Platelet adhesion: a game of catch and release

The interaction of circulating platelets with the vessel wall involves a process of cell catch and release, regulating cell rolling, skipping, or firm adhesion and leading to thrombus formation in flowing blood. In this regard, the interaction of platelet glycoprotein Ibalpha (GPIbalpha) with its adhesive ligand, vWF, is activated by shear force and critical for platelet adhesion to the vessel wall. In this issue of the JCI, Yago and colleagues show how gain-of-function mutations in the GPIbalpha-binding vWF A1 domain disrupt intramolecular interactions within WT vWF A1 that regulate binding to GPIbalpha and flow-enhanced platelet rolling and adhesion (see the related article beginning on page 3195). Together, these studies reveal molecular mechanisms regulating GPIbalpha-vWF bond formation and platelet adhesion under shear stress.

Language learning

Language learning

Teaching Talk as a Game of Catch

This article looks at two different primary EFL classrooms: one in which the teacher is a general-subject teacher who teaches different subjects to the same children and another in which the teacher is an EFL specialist who teaches the same subject to different groups of children. First we qualitatively characterize the differences in discourse, checking quantitatively to see if they hold true for the whole lesson. Second, we report on a three-year comparative study in which the same teacher taught the same material to both familiar and unfamiliar classes. Third, we suggest that the construction of the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86) requires a rather different strategy in primary-school teaching than with secondary learners. Good primary discourse, we argue, may be less like a professional baseball pitcher's throw and more like a lazy game of Catch.

Teaching Talk as a Game of Catch

This article looks at two different primary EFL classrooms: one in which the teacher is a general-subject teacher who teaches different subjects to the same children and another in which the teacher is an EFL specialist who teaches the same subject to different groups of children. First we qualitatively characterize the differences in discourse, checking quantitatively to see if they hold true for the whole lesson. Second, we report on a three-year comparative study in which the same teacher taught the same material to both familiar and unfamiliar classes. Third, we suggest that the construction of the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86) requires a rather different strategy in primary-school teaching than with secondary learners. Good primary discourse, we argue, may be less like a professional baseball pitcher's throw and more like a lazy game of Catch.

Between Grammar and Lexicon (review)

Reviewed by: Between grammar and lexicon ed. by Ellen Contini-Morava, Yishai Tobin Alan S. Kaye Between grammar and lexicon. Ed. By Ellen Contini-Morava and Yishai Tobin. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2000. Pp. xxxii, 365. This work consists of thirteen essays dealing with number, gender, and verbal systems in a crosslinguistic perspective. Many of these articles were presented at the Fifth International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, July 1997). As the editors correctly note in the introduction, ‘in one form or another, virtually every linguistic theory makes a distinction between lexicon and grammar’ (ix), and these papers show that the traditional dichotomy between lexicon and grammar might better be abandoned. I must perforce restrict my comments to but a few of the papers selected in accordance with my background and interests. Ellen Contini-Morava’s ‘Noun class as number in Swahili’ (3–30) proposes that ‘number as expressed by the Swahili noun class prefixes is a scale of individuation rather than a binary opposition between “singular” and “plural”’ (18). She convincingly explains that ‘noun class markers form a kind of super-lexicon, mediating between the lexicon proper . . . and grammar’ (23), further demonstrating much more semantic unity than has been presupposed by other investigators, e.g. there is a class of revered or feared things uniting words such as kaburi ‘grave, tomb’ and ziara ‘tomb, pilgrimage’ (15). Yishai Tobin’s ‘The dual number in Hebrew: Grammar or lexicon or both’ (87–119) argues against the notion that the dual is dying. The author presents numerous examples for his contention that the dual -ayim is productive and belongs to both the grammatical [End Page 210] and lexical components. Using the principle of ‘semantic integrality’ (100–4) as the marker-distinguisher of -ayim, one can appreciate the very subtle nuances differentiating, say, šaɁtayim and štei šaɁot ‘two hours’, since the examples convincingly point out, as Tobin states, ‘cognitively and perceptually speaking’, the connotational difference that the former represents a shorter period of time than the latter (105). Ricardo Otheguy and Nancy Stern’s ‘The acategorial lexicon and the pairing strategies: A critical account of inherent gender in Spanish’ (123–57) disputes two commonly held assumptions about Spanish grammar—the noun-adjective dichotomy and that the Spanish lexicon is categorial and marked for gender. As evidence for their point of view, they note that ‘female lawyer’ is either la abogado or la abogada (151), whereas el profeta ‘male prophet’ contrasts with la profeta ‘female prophet’. I am skeptical, since it seems to me that the exceptions have been singled out and overemphasized to ‘prove the rule’ (the editors would not agree with me [xxiii]). Based on her (1991) unpublished PhD dissertation (Gender in Modern English: The system and its uses, Université Laval), Lori Morris’s ‘The grammar of English gender’ (185–203) rightly questions the approach based on biological features, viz., male, animate, etc. (186). One of the strengths of her argument is her large corpus of actual data. Although the author’s bibliography is comprehensive (202), there is one glaring omission: Muhammad Hassan Ibrahim’s Grammatical gender: Its origin and development (The Hague: Mouton, 1973) (cf. my review in Afro-asiatic Linguistics 3(8). 143–9, 1976). Mary Ellen Ryder’s ‘Complex -er nominals’ (291–331), one of the most fascinating of the presentations, convincingly argues for the early stages of the grammaticalization of -er based on numerous cogent examples, some of which are, however, context-dependent, e.g. one-notcher’ a dinner that makes you let out your belt’ (307) or ‘dropper’, as in ‘Don’t let him play—he’s a dropper!’ (with reference to a game of catch which ends when a player drops the ball) (308). The implications of the research support the gradual nature of linguistic change. Dorit Ravid and Yitzhak Schlesinger’s ‘Modern Hebrew adverbials: Between syntactic class and lexical category’ (333–51) assembles good examples for their case that the distinction between adjectives and adverbs as well as that between morphology and syntax is blurred. Once again, subtle differences are noted which the...

Imagining Baseball: America's Pastime and Popular Culture (review)

Reviewed by: Imagining Baseball: America's Pastime and Popular Culture Peter Carino (bio) David McGimpsey . Imagining Baseball: America's Pastime and Popular Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. 194 pp. Cloth, $29.95. David McGimpsey's Imagining Baseball proposes "to initiate a discussion of how representations of baseball make problematic the sport's place in a more extensive cultural argument" (p. 17). Despite his title's focus on popular culture, McGimpsey's "discussion" ranges over a wide variety of low-, middle-, and high-brow culture, from short stories by Hemingway, to popular films, to episodes of television programs that treat baseball. In this sense, the book attempts an inclusivity heretofore unknown in analyses of baseball fiction. Other artistic expressions of baseball—for example, painting, sculpture, poetry, and music—are not examined (though poetry is referenced from time to time), but to ask for more would be to ask too much since the book already constitutes an ambitious enterprise. As the publishing of the book by Indiana University Press would indicate, this is an academic study, written for those who read baseball as a metaphor for cultural values, good and bad. It will not appeal to those interested merely in statistics or chronicles of great teams or players. It will appeal to those interested in both the way baseball is appropriated as fictional subject matter to perpetuate and deflate myths of American experience and the way in which baseball as a business contributes to these myths while enacting the very commerce that they attempt to mask. McGimpsey organizes the book around various themes that serve the construction of baseball myth: to name a few, the lost Eden of the Black Sox scandal, the pastoral convention, the notion of the game as a reflection of democratic American values, and the game as a connection between generations, often expressed in the image of fathers playing catch with sons. Within [End Page 155] these motifs, he reads a variety of texts demonstrating how each is troubled by its antithesis: baseball has suffered corruption before and after the Black Sox; pastoralism is nostalgia for the values of a rural America that never existed, while the game has urban origins and is an urban business; the democracy of baseball long excluded minorities, and its American-ness has found fertile soil in other nations; and finally fathers and sons often have intensely complicated relations that a mere game of catch can neither articulate nor assuage. In this sense, the book is a deconstruction of literary celebrations of baseball; McGimpsey is not interested in showing how these myths serve intellectuals as temporary stays against confusion. Rather, he analyzes the reasons behind the need to create myths and how they serve the baseball business in perpetuating itself for intellectuals and fans who are willing to participate in the illusion. "Baseball fiction," McGimpsey reminds us, "also sells baseball" (p. 14). While McGimpsey punctures some of the intellectual pretensions informing baseball fiction—"it nominally marries a lowbrow, macho vigor to an intellectual and effeminate art form" (p. 111)—he himself cannot escape the intellectual activity that he deconstructs. This is, after all, a university press book, and the astute readings of literary baseball texts indicate the kind of elite critical training that makes it possible to intellectualize baseball in the first place, whatever one's origins or class allegiances may be. By including throwaway sitcom treatments of baseball next to writers of the canonical stature of Hemingway and Malamud, McGimpsey attempts to distance himself from the elitism he finds in intellectualizing baseball. While he admits that it is easy to recognize the difference between Moby Dick and the detritus of popular culture, he asserts that "developing certain systems of discrimination is impossible" (p. 26). This kind of antifoundationalism, currently pervading the academy in cultural studies programs, will annoy some readers in its reluctance to establish aesthetic criteria. On the other hand, McGimpsey takes pains to justify his view that all texts are important in assessing baseball's place in culture while commanding a style that underscores his democratic approach: "The erosion of baseball's television audiences after the players' strike of 1994 was not just the pique of cheesed-off fans...

Playing Rough

Playing Rough Allison Joseph (bio) Oh what a vicious game they encouraged us to play: two teams of scraggly school kids lined up at opposite ends of the gym to face each other, each kid on line taking turns firing a red rubber ball to see whom they could hit, how hard—could you make someone cry, hit them on the side of the face, on the nose, in the eye? Our bodies were barely covered by thin uniforms—faded yellow T-shirts, skimpy blue shorts, sneakers, knees and thighs exposed, upper arms and elbows sure spots for blows from a speeding ball. What was the point of this game other than learning how to move before the ball struck you, than learning how to launch a ball with all your hate mustered behind the movement? Maybe our teachers thought us too young and dumb for anything more complex, too stupid for basketball, volleyball, maybe they were [End Page 448] too lazy to teach us anything besides this cruel game of catch, this mean-spirited competition— sometimes boys against girls, sometimes bigger kids against smaller. But usually there wasn’t any sense to it; all they had to do was make sure we left the line if we were hit, one point for the other team. Everyone jeered if a kid couldn’t dodge the ball, if he wasn’t quick enough to scurry out of the way, if she wasn’t paying attention and the ball thudded her right between the shoulders, knocking her breathless. So that kid would sit in the bleachers after being struck from the game: head down, shoulders low, promising to be crueler next time, to fire the ball harder, send more people down before being knocked out. The team with one person left was somehow the winner, that particular boy or girl exhilarated, the rest of us too glum by then to care who’d won, sulky as we lined up to go back to the locker rooms where at least we could be evil on our terms, use our fists instead of that silly ball, deciding for ourselves whom to hit and why, [End Page 449] instead of waiting for some crude gym teacher to shout at us to begin, puffing his whistle shrill. Selected works by Allison Joseph: • Summers on Screvin • On Sidewalks, on Streetcorners, As Girls • Playing Rough • Artist-in-Residence • It’s Tough to be a Girl Scout in the City • The Tenant • Señora Williams • Plenty • An Interview with Allison Joseph Related Articles: Summers on Screvin Related Articles: On Sidewalks, on Streetcorners, As Girls Related Articles: Artist-in-Residence Related Articles: It’s Tough to be a Girl Scout in the City Related Articles: The Tenant Related Articles: Señora Williams Related Articles: Plenty Related Articles: An Interview with Allison Joseph Allison Joseph Allison Joseph, who was born in London, is an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at Southern Illinois University (Carbondale). Her poems have appeared in numerous periodicals, including The Kenyon Review, Parnassus, and Callaloo. She is author of What Keeps Us Here (Ampersand Press, 1992), a volume of poems. She graduated from Kenyon College and received the M.F.A. from Indiana University (Bloomington). Copyright © 1996 Charles H. Rowell

A Game of Catch

A Game of Catch