The 20th Annual NINE Spring Training Conference
March 13th - 16th, 2013
Fiesta Resort Conference Center
2100 South Priest Drive
Tempe, Arizona 85282
To register:
To respond to the Call for Papers:
To subscribe to Nine: A Journal of Baseball History & Culture: www.nebraskapress.unl.edu
The 2012 NINE Spring Training Conference stands out as one of the most engaging ever. Wednesday evening’s session on “Baseball and Pedagogy: What Works and What Does Not? turned into an inspiring informal discussion about the myriad ways baseball is used to bring alive American culture in the classroom. Steve Gietschier did his usual graceful work as moderator, while newcomers to the conference mingled with perennial attendees. At Thursday evening’s Cy Seymour Session, umpire Perry Barber sang and played her guitar, followed by Ila Jane Borders, who spoke of her four seasons of pitching in men’s professional baseball during the 1990s. On Saturday evening, NINE co-hosted the Society for American Baseball Research Seymour Medal Award, which SABR awards annually to the best new history or biography. Pre-eminent baseball historian Dorothy Seymour Mills was present for this year’s award to Glenn Stout for Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway’s Remarkable First Year. Keynote speaker Rob Fitts offered fascinating insights into the politics of pre-World War II baseball from his recently published book, Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination During the 1934 Tour of Japan. The evening was further enhanced by the presence of the last living member of that memorable tour, Babe Ruth’s daughter, Julia Ruth Stevens, who conversed and reminisced with many attendees.
In 2013, we will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the NINE conference -- details forthcoming.
The Back Story on NINE
Early on in my research for Breaking into Baseball, I met Bill Kirwin, then a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. Bill, who grew up a Red Sox fan in Boston, had the genius to organize in 1993 an academic baseball conference during spring training in Arizona’s Cactus League, which he foresaw might attract baseball researchers and authors as well as academicians who use baseball in their courses on business, history, literature, sociology, and other disciplines. Attract he did, particularly people from the snowier regions of the continent, who have come to relish the opportunity to present their research papers and to publish in the companion journal Bill founded, Nine: A Journal of Baseball History & Culture. Scholars also appreciate the opportunity to attend exhibition games (or, as Bill termed them, “field research”) in the company of baseball-smitten colleagues and to sit up half the night arguing such topics as the best way to experience the game: radio, TV, or live at the ballpark.
Bill’s interest in baseball -- its history, context, and literature -- was catholic. His encouragement of my research into the feminine side of the game, led me to believe that the stories I was discovering might some day result in a book. At NINE, I was able to present, test, and refine many of the ideas and themes that appear in Breaking into Baseball.
Baseball has no clock, suggesting to us that the game may be eternal. Not so, sadly, for our baseball heroes. Bill Kirwin was diagnosed with brain cancer in January 2007. During treatment, he enjoyed one last NINE conference, one last summer of baseball, and one last World Series, which, fittingly, the Red Sox swept. Bill passed away on December 11, 2007.
During his last year, Bill wanted to ensure that NINE would continue. He had already transferred the editorship of the journal into the capable hands of Trey Strecker of Ball State University. He then asked my husband Dan and me to work with Trey in organizing the conference. Since 2008, with large amounts of help from Steve Gietschier, author and historian, Bill’s close friend Larry Gerlach, professor of history at the University of Utah, Lee Lowenfish of Columbia University, Roberta Newman of New York University, NINE archivist and historian Anna Newton, and baseball researcher and historian Geri Strecker, as well as numerous NINE regulars who have stepped up with ideas and support, we seek to continue Bill Kirwin’s tradition of a collegial and intellectually stimulating conference dedicated to baseball history.
