Library Home Page: A LibGuide to Baseball Literature and Resources: Journal Articles

Criticism and Scholarship on Baseball Fiction

Bibliography of Scholarly Work & Commentary on Baseball Fiction & Film
Bibliography creator Dr. Tim Morris of the University of Texas at Arlington describes his listing as a "highly selective bibliography of scholarly work and commentary on baseball fiction and film. Only specialized studies are listed, and the checklist has an academic bias; book reviews and general work on sport literature are excluded."

Selected Articles & Journals

Pat Donahue of the American League's Boston baseball team stands behind home plate at South Side Park, Chicago, 1909.

Image: Chicago History Museum/Getty Images

Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature
Designed to celebrate the intersection of literature with the world of play, games, and sport. Publishes works about sport literature, including original fiction and poetry, juried scholarly and critical essays, and book reviews
Baseball and the Business of American Innocence
This article examines the role that the sport of baseball has played in American literature. It describes how baseball has been able to maintain an aura of innocence in light of several controversies related to issues such as performance-enhancing drug use, salary disputes, and illegal gambling and provides comments on several professional baseball players including Mark McGwire, Babe Ruth, and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson. It also discusses the books "Ball Four" by Jim Bouton, "The Last Boy" by Jane Leavy, and "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis.
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Works Cited: CASSUTO, LEONARD. "Baseball And The Business Of American Innocence." Chronicle Of Higher Education 57.31 (2011): B13. MasterFILE Complete. Web. 14 Apr. 2016.
Baseball Research Journal
Baseball Research Journal (BRJ) is the Society of American Baseball Research's (SABR) flagship publication. Established in 1972, BRJ was created so that members could publish and share their research with like-minded students of baseball. Today, BRJ provides a unique mix of cutting-edge baseball research and historical and biographical articles.
On the Poetry of Baseball
There is a growing bibliography of literature about baseball, but very few of the works in it treat baseball poetry as having an important role to play in our understanding the nature of literary creation and experience. At best, the attitude displayed in the critical treatment of poems and fiction about the sport often resembles the belief that the mythic and philosophical elements of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and Moby-Dick mitigate those works' original sin of being sea-faring yarns. I try to remedy this situation by discussing Rolfe Humphries' "Polo Grounds" and Andrés Eloy Blanco's "Romance del campeonato" `Championship Ballad.
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Rubman, Lewis H. On the Poetry of Baseball. Berkeley: U of California, 2011. Print. Dissertation

Finding journal articles

Finding articles in a Research Database

HCC Library subscribes to many excellent Research Databases that will help you find articles on topics in a variety of subjects and disciplines. Try the databases below for access to hundreds of relevant magazine and newspaper articles:

Academic Search Complete Comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more that 7,300 peer-reviewed journals.This database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals. the majority of full-text tiles are in native (searchable) PDF format.

MasterFILE Complete This multi-disciplinary database provides full text for more than 2,000 general reference publications with full-text information dating back to 1922. It covers virtually every subject area of general interest. MasterFILE Complete also contains full text for more than 1,000 Reference books and over 164,400 primary source document, as well as an image collection of 502,000 photos, maps, and flags.

EBSCO Newspaper Source This database provides selected full text for 114 regional U.S. newspapers and international newspapers dating back to 1995.