Baseball history class comes straight from the top

At the front of the classroom, Dr. Chris Kimball stood just off to the side of an overhead PowerPoint projection, one that showed an illustration of a baseball field that had an odd shape. It was somewhere in Brooklyn in 1862, right about the time of the Battle of Antietam was going on in the Civil War.

“I’m going to start with the story of William Cammeyer,” the professor said. “He set in motion a lot of changes to baseball. Do you know who he is?”

Ah, a good question. 

Not to come out of left field, but here might be a better one: How is it that Kimball, the president and CEO of Cal Lutheran University, can devote time to teaching this class titled “U.S. History Through Baseball,” which has lured about two dozen students into Alumni Hall Room 128 for two-hour lecture sessions each Tuesday and Thursday starting at 7:45 a.m.? 

“For the love of the game” might best sum up why Kimball is having a ball doing this.

“There’s also the line that if you want to understand America, you’ve got to understand a little bit about baseball,” said the 60-year-old, who grew up in New England as a Boston Red Sox fan. “And if you want to understand baseball, you’ve got to understand its history.”

Understand that Kimball has a important primary role on the Thousand Oaks private liberal arts campus that fosters brainpower to about 4,100 students. He’s often traveling for fundraising (or “donor cultivation,” as he puts it). There are regular budget meetings, educational conferences and the like. He’s also on several nonprofit boards, locally and nationally.

There’s no extra pay for this spring semester, 30-session baseball history side trip.

But his particular affection for both subjects is fairly seamless and obvious.

Once some of the students on campus caught wind that he once taught a baseball history course back in the day at Augsburg College, a small private school in Minneapolis, some asked if he might do it at CLU someday.

In other words: It you rebuild it, they will come.

It turned out this spring had an opening in the history department for an honors course, and Kimball, who has made some previous inroads at the school teaching classes, was drafted.

Baseball as academia

Over the past decade or so, baseball-related academia has made its way onto college campuses, whether seen as a PR move or a legitimate offering. It often finds an entry way through the history department but occasionally can tunnel in through literature, sociology and, even lately, as a mathematical pursuit (think sabermetrics).

Also, Whitter College has been the home base for almost the past two years of the Institute for Baseball Studies, a humanities-based research center in connection with the Pasadena-based Baseball Reliquary. The nonprofit organization promotes the appreciation of American art and culture through the prism of baseball history.

How’s this for diversity: The Institute has a campus professor of religious studies as the co-director with professors from the English and Political Science departments as associate directors.

But having a real-life university president carve out the time to teach takes this to another league. Gaining peer acceptance as a legitimate academic pursuit can also seem like a minor hurdle.

“I know there are skeptics, but in general, those of us in the history department trust each other as historians and teachers, and I think they’re good with it,” said Kimball, who earned his doctorate and masters in history from the University of Chicago, focusing on American history but more specifically, the history of sports and urban history. He’s currently writing a book about baseball stadium history and how it relates to the cities in which they were built.

“My day job otherwise is pretty demanding. I’m not sure I could fit this class into every year regularly. But I also believe all presidents should teach, just to be connected to what the core part of the business is — teaching and learning. The practicality of (being the president) is a little harder, but it’s fun and I love teaching.”

'Learn basebal and get credit'

Half the “U.S. History Through Baseball” class is made up of honors students representing all majors, ranging from biochemistry, computer science, art, psychology, theology and multimedia. All are undergrads who have a history requirement to graduate. 

Dominic Lunde, a 20-year-old third-year student from Thousand Oaks majoring in physics, was able to get a seat and signed up because it “just sounded amazing from the get-go.

“First of all, any class where I can interact with Dr. Kimball is amazing. Second, I know that because it is an honors class, the discussion is going to be amazing. Third, where else can I learn about baseball and get credit for it? It is also a double-dipper in terms of class credit.”

The demographics of the class are split between males and females — Kimball surmises it’s because females make up more of the honors history major field. Student-athletes other than baseball — volleyball, soccer, softball and track, among others — comprise about one-third of the class. That is not all that unusual for a Division III school makeup. 

There was a wait list when the class began in January and 13 students were able to add it after the honors history majors got first crack.

One of the first times he taught a baseball history class, Kimball said he started “with about 20 baseball players, and soon it dropped to two. Maybe they thought it was some kind of joke class, that we’d sit around and talk about how good Mickey Mantle was. I don’t even know if we’re going to mention Mickey Mantle in this class.”

On his class syllabus this time, Kimball requires three books — “It could have been eight or more, but I have to be realistic,” he said — and cited course objectives as something far beyond just memorization of dates and names. He wants students involved more in critical thinking, applying theories, questioning decisions and doing collaborative work.  

In the course of a few months, he will note things such as Victorian values of the 19th century as much as he will specific baseball-related moments.

“Dates and facts are important, but it’s more of putting a story together, how things relate, doing detective work,” he said. “If you’re talking about race relations, using baseball and Jackie Robinson might engage a student more quickly than if you’re just talking about the end of Jim Crow, the Topeka Board of Education decision or what happened in Little Rock, Arkansas.

“Those are all very important things, but connecting it to a sport like baseball gives it an immediate hook, then you can go down the intellectual path from there. And of all the sports, baseball goes deepest into history.”

By the time the final exams take place in mid-May, Kimball said he will judge the success of this class by more than just standard testing.

“I want to see them make connections,” he said. “I will present them things maybe they haven’t seen before in their readings or lectures, maybe a lengthy quote, and see if they can figure out where it’s from, when it was, and what they’re talking about.

“If they’re able to do that — maybe connect Moses Walker and the American Association of the 1880s to Jackie Robinson in the 1940s — then I think the course has done what it should do.”

Back to the beginning

Maybe one of those quotes could come from William Cammeyer. 

As he lectured on the commercialization of the game and the decline of amateurism, Kimball explained how Cammeyer was a businessman who, in 1862, bought a six-acre vacant lot in Brooklyn that has been used as an ice-skating pond.

Cammeyer drained it, filled it with dirt, graded it and put a fence around it.  

A baseball field was built, tiers of seats were constructed — some in the shade, others that became sun-bleached which led to the phrase “bleachers” — teams were charged to rent the field, and money was made off gate receipts and concessions.

See history repeating itself anywhere in there?

Cammeyer’s concept, as Kimball neatly pointed out, paralleled how department stores were starting to spring up in New York City, serving an urban population as the U.S. economy changed and people had money to spend in specialized stores. That drove Cammeyer to enclose that lot and tap into a new business model for sports. 

“Although I’m not sure how many of you who use Amazon Prime know what a department store is any more,” Kimball added.

Thus, just 150-some years ago, Cammeyer’s Union Grounds became a place. Eventually, there would be Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field. Which would lead to the creation of Dodger Stadium on baseball’s timeline.

And the rest is history.

--- Published in the Los Angeles Daily News on Feb. 21, 2016