Communication in the Field, Baseball, that is...

So naturally I'm thinking about baseball today here in Philadelphia, so I thought I'd look for some communication scholarship on the subject. I crossed search several social science databases including Communication Abstracts and found a fair amount to choose from. This 2002 article from the Journal of Sport and Social Issues (Volume 26, Number 4) jumped out at me. I've selected to feature it in honor of two Phillie Latino heroes, Carlos Ruiz and Pedro Feliz, both instrumental in securing the World Championship for Philly. It's called Who's the Man? Sammy Sosa, Latinos, and Televisual Redefinitions of the "American" Pastime, by Jane Juffer.

Abstract
Latino and Latin American baseball players have expanded the boundaries of the "American pastime," asserting their ethnic and national identities even while being accepted as representatives of the sport most closely aligned with a white United States identity.
This redefinition is achieved in part via cable and satellite technologies that carry images of Latinos to homes throughout the United States at a time when the Latino population is growing and becoming more dispersed raising the possibility that baseball will lessen racism and xenophobia. However media coverage is at times nostalgic for a more bounded sense of home and nation and often emphasizes players' individual mobility, erasing the economic and political conditions that have brought Latin American players to the United States. The author shows how these tensions play out in Chicago superstation WGN's coverage of Cubs star Sammy Sosa, who has emerged as a national hero in both the U.S. and the Dominican Republic.

The article is available from Sage's Full Text Collection, from the Penn Libraries homepage.

Paley Center for Media

The Museum of Television and Radio, formerly the Museum of Broadcasting has morphed once again. Since March of this year it is now the Paley Center for Media, named after late CBS founder William S. Paley. Dropping the "Museum" part of its name is telling. The Center, which has two sites--New York and Los Angeles--will still serve as a repository of television and radio programming but sees itself as foremost a place for industry leaders and the public to engage in dialogue about media and its role in society. The number of panels and interview sessions will double and new media executives and creators are being brought in, in addition to those from traditional media.

The Center is currently in the process of digitizing its international collection of more than 140,000 programs covering almost 100 years of television and radio history, including news, public affairs programs and documentaries, performing arts programs, children's programming, sports, comedy and variety shows, and commercial advertising. Programming from some seventy countries is represented in the collection. The collection is not comprehensive, of course. The site points out that it is a curated collection, i.e. "programs have been selected on the basis of artistic achievement, social impact, or historic significance." Both the New York and Los Angeles sites house the same archive which at this point does not have a corresponding online catalog which would be most helpful especially for folks in the middle of the country for whom a trip to either coast is required.