Spring Training in the Cactus League with Arnold Hano

To a baseball fan, the sweetest words in the English language may well be those reprised annually in mid-February, “Pitchers and catchers report to spring training” -- news that signals the beginning of another season.

It is also a truth commonly acknowledged that many academics adore baseball and are adept at finding ways to use the game in their courses on literature, business administration, and American history — which is why you’ll find some seventy baseball scholars arriving in Tucson on Thursday, March 12th for the 16th annual Nine Spring Training Conference. Founded by the late Bill Kirwin, a professor of sociology at the University of Calgary at Edmonton, the Nine conference features presentations by the game’s historians and writers that examine race, gender, and labor relations in the national pastime. Afternoons are devoted to “field research,” also known as taking in a ball game at Tucson Electric Park or Hi Corbett Field.

This year’s conference features a particular treat: Leading off will be Arnold Hano, of Laguna Beach. Arnold has been following baseball for all of his nine decades, both as a fan and as one of the game’s most admired writers. He considers himself among the luckiest of fans, having witnessed Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series, Sandy Koufax’s first no-hitter, and Willie Mays’s legendary catch in the first game of the 1954 World Series, which is featured in his classic, still in print, “ A Day in the Bleachers.” So it’s not surprising that the news of Hano’s appearance at Nine has sparked a surge in registrations at this year’s conference. As one baseball blogger put it, “Arnold Hano! Wow, how great is that? Please let him know that a little kid in Santa Clara in the 1960s devoured his biography of Willie Mays, not just cover to cover, more like molecule by molecule.”

The Nine Spring Training Conference is held at the Clarion Tucson Airport Hotel from Thursday evening, March 12 through Sunday noon, March 15th. For more information on the conference: http://www.NYU/edu/pubs/nine.journal/ or contact Dan and Jean Ardell at dardell@roadrunner.com.