"The Iowa Baseball Confederacy"

Paper Summary:

The paper describes various superstitions associated with baseball via a discussion of W.P. Kinsella's book, "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy". The paper first summarizes Kinsella's book and then goes on to discuss the many superstitions that abound in the game of baseball and explains how the main theme of the "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy" is about these superstitions.

Outline:
Introduction
Baseball and Superstition

From the Paper:

"The book The Iowa Baseball Confederacy continues the time honored tradition of superstition and myth by telling a fantastical tale of an Iowa exhibition baseball game played from July 4 to August 12, 1908 between the team called the Iowa Baseball Confederacy and the Chicago Cubs----a game that lasts for an incredible 2,614 innings. The author, W.P. Kinsella, tells the tale through Gideon Clarke, the protagonist who learns about the legendary game from his unusual father, Matthew. Matthew explains to Gideon that no record of the marathon-like game exists because of a great flood of biblical proportions that wiped out all evidence of the game. The flood took with it the Iowa Baseball Confederacy, all of which were lost in a crack in time. All knowledge of the game becomes actualized in Gideon's brain after his father commits suicide at County Stadium in Milwaukee by purposely putting his head in the path of a mean foul line drive. This leads Gideon to discover the crack in time, sending him back to July 4, 1908, where each team is preparing to play the big inning. The Chicago Cub players in the book use retired numbers from actual team members, and President Theodore Roosevelt appears as one of the cameo players, as he strikes out waving a big stick. Another well-known player, Leonardo da Vinci, also appears in the game proclaiming that he, not Abner Doubleday, invented the game of baseball. He states, "Unfortunately....I lived in a nation of bocce players. It took 300 years for baseball to become popular. By that time, my name was no longer associated with it" . Another player, Black Angel of Death, a cemetery statue, plays right field and is able to catch fly balls with her sculpted wings and no glove. Some of the stars on the Iowa Confederacy team include, Shoo Fly, Husk, Frank Pierce, Henry Pulvermacher, and Arsenic O'Reilly, while on the Cubs team players include Chance, Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and the pitcher Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown Other key characters include an ancient Indian warrior named Drifting Away, whose wife was murdered by White men."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Kinsella, W.R.. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986. Grossfeld, Stan. "Quirk of Fortune: Superstitions the Norm Among Baseball Players." TheBoston Globe. March 29, 2007. September 7, 2007 http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/ articles/2007/03/29/quirk_of_fortune/?page=1>.
• "History of 'The Curse of the Bambino': From Babe to Bucky to Buckner to Boone, It Was Bad." NBCSPORTS.com. October 28, 2004. September 8, 2007 <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6323070/>.
• Powers, John. "Former Players Felt a Kinship." The Boston Globe. October 31, 2004. September 7, 2007 <http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/ redsox/articles/2004/10/31/ former_players_felt_a_kinship/?>.
• "The Curse of the Bambino." CNN Sports Illustrated. 2001. September 8, 2007 <http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/ mlb/news/2000/03/22/the_curse_timeline/

More papers on "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy":

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• Analytical Essay # 138343 : "The Wendat Huron Confederacy"
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