Baseball can impart history lessons S.F. STATE

Student Matthew Innes wears his Giants orange gloves while taking notes in Mark Sigmon's class on the history and literature of baseball at San Francisco State University. Student Matthew Innes wears his Giants orange gloves while taking notes in Mark Sigmon's class on the history and literature of baseball at San Francisco State University. Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Baseball can impart history lessons 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

Racial hatred. Union-busting. Class warfare. The bitter themes of American history are staples of college classrooms - and still put students to sleep.

"I've lectured on the history of labor, and my students get sort of glassy-eyed," admitted Mark Sigmon, who teaches at San Francisco State University, holds a doctorate from Cal, and thinks he has an answer.

Baseball.

When word got out that Sigmon was teaching "The History and Literature of Baseball" this semester, his class quickly filled up with dozens of students.

Sigmon, 53, is an expert in American history and race relations who wrote his doctorate on "squaw men," 19th century white guys who married American Indian women. He could easily lecture students about prejudices of the era and drone on about, say, the nascent labor movement.

Or he could tell them a baseball story, as he did the other day. The late 19th century was a time when ballplayers earned little money and team owners held all the power, Sigmon told the class packed with students who were neither gazing at cell phones nor doodling in notebooks.

"John T. Brush, an investor from Indianapolis, proposed a classification scale where players would be graded," he said. The top-ranked players would earn $2,250 a year. The lowest, much less.

"It was sort of like a meat market," the professor said. "It got everyone really angry."

It also inspired John Montgomery Ward, one of baseball's best players before he became a lawyer, to organize team members into "the very first players union, the Brotherhood of Professional Baseball Players," Sigmon said.

"You could be fired for joining a union," he said, giving the flavor of the time by quoting a headline that called unionized players "Lazy, Pampered Men of Leisure."

Racial tensions

Meanwhile, pro ballplayers who weren't in the National League were in the American Association, the precursor of the American League, Sigmon said. And in the 1880s, black players began to join.

Because of the Brush Classification Scale (you were taking notes, right?), that meant black players could push lesser white players into the lower ranks.

"If you're barely hanging on, and all of a sudden you're introducing all these new players, you could be out of a job," Sigmon told the class.

Some white players demanded the ouster of black players. Ward, the white union organizer who had pitched baseball's second perfect game for the Providence Grays in 1880, argued to keep black players playing.

But an even bigger name - super-slugger Cap Anson of the Chicago Colts, later the Cubs - refused.

"So the American Association had to cut black players, largely because of Cap Anson," Sigmon said.

"He's racist!" hissed a guy near the front of the class.

"Yeah, he was pretty racist," Sigmon said, easing into a discussion of Plessy vs. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld segregation in 1890.

"Baseball plays into the history of the United States," he said.

Then a voice in the back said, "I almost feel that baseball wasn't ready for black players. It would have caused too much upheaval."

Sigmon paused. The syllabus for the class - which meets 15 times (not on Opening Day), requires seven books and covers baseball from its origins to the eras of steroids and sabermetrics, used in "Moneyball" - promises that the class "will be dealing with sensitive topics" and that discussions will be "spirited."

Matt Kunst, the 26-year-old history major who offered the "upheaval" observation, is a devotee of spirited discussion who also argued on behalf of baseball owners who "risked their wealth, so shouldn't they reap the profits?" and for overlooking steroid use, as "it seems immoral that they don't let Barry Bonds into the Hall of Fame."

Finding parallels

Like many in the class, Kunst sees baseball as a microcosm of the nation- about stepping up to the plate and giving it your best shot.

But he sees other, less sanguine parallels. "You're not supposed to cheat. But people do it. There's all kinds of insider trading. Ponzi schemes. You do all these little things that could be considered immoral," he said in a way that made it hard to tell if he was talking about baseball or Wall Street.

So a response to his comment about 19th century baseball perhaps not being ready for black players required some care.

Finally, Sigmon said, "Cap Anson could have said, 'Hey, this is a competitive game. We need the best players.' Not ready? No. It could have been done. It should have been done."

Loved by his students and nominated for a national teaching award, Sigmon is the kind of teacher who keeps trying to perfect his craft. Later, thinking back, he wasn't entirely happy with his response.

"I should have emphasized how much individual people can do to shape situations," he reflected. "History allows us to figure out why people did what they did in the past - and if we can really understand the forces at work, then we can do it better."