Alumni, faculty, and staff have teamed up for an exciting weekend for the Wabash College community with “Wally at the Bat — A Liberal Arts Symposium on Baseball,” which will take place on campus on March 26 and 27.
The weekend includes several “liberal arts” discussions on baseball, a banquet featuring nationally recognized Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus, an all-campus baseball movie (Field of Dreams, and a wiffle ball tournament.
Several presentations, free to the community and public, will lead off the symposium from 3 p.m. through 5:30 p.m. on Friday. Each session will be approximately 20 minutes in length. The all-start line-up of presenters is:
• Chris Carr ’82, sports psychologist, formerly the psychologist for the Kansas City Royals: “Baseball and the Liberal Arts: Mastering the Mental Game."
• Tobey Herzog, Professor of English: “Russ Meyer, Soft Porn, Baseball, and Innocence Lost."
• Dennis Krause, Professor of Physics: "Newton on the Mound: The Physics of a Baseball in Flight."
• Todd McDorman, Professor of Rhetoric: “Image (Dis)Repair in Pete Rose’s My Prison Without Bars."
• Steve Morillo, Professor of History: “Baseball and the Teaching of American History.”
• Lon Porter, Professor of Chemistry: “Better Baseball Through Chemistry: The Quest for a Better Bat.”
• Greg Redding ’88, Professor of German:“The Impact of German Immigration on Baseball.”
• Warren Rosenberg (Professor of English) and Steve Klein (Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid): "Memory and Memorabilia: What the Mets Have Meant to Us."
• Bob Wedgeworth ’59: "Only the Ball Was White" (Life in the old Negro Leagues).
Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus will be the keynote speaker on “Baseball in the Age of Information" at a banquet at 6:30 p.m. (RSVPs are now closed.)
After the banquet baseball movie will be shown in Hays 104. The movie is free to the community, and President Pat White will lead a discussion of the movie Field of Dreams. Popcorn and other baseball snacks will be provided.
A wiffle ball tournament will be held at 9 a.m. Saturday morning. Teams of three or four players will battle alumni, fraternities, and independent students in this single elimination tourney.
“The symposium is an alumni initiative sponsored by the Indianapolis Association of Wabash Men, the National Association of Wabash Men, and Wabash College to strengthen all Wabash relationships, but especially those between alumni, on the one hand, and the faculty and staff on the other,” said Jon Pactor ’71.
Planning committee members include Jim Amidon ’87, Jon Baer (religion), David Clapp (international studies), Tim Craft ’00, Tobey Herzog (English), Ethan Hollander (political science), Brad Johnson ’71, Jim Kerr ’92, Todd McDorman (rhetoric), Steve Morillo (history), Jon Pactor ’71, Gary Phillips (Dean of the College), Mike Raters ’85 (Dean of Students), Greg Redding ’88 (modern languages, German), Tom Runge ’71 (Alumni Relations), Scott Smalstig ’88, and Mike Warren ’93 (Alumni Relations).