Former Kansas City Royal Jim Eisenreich was keynote speaker at the writer’s conference I attended on March 29. His career was nearly ended in his early 20’s due to a life-long struggle with Tourette Syndrome. His story of landing a second chance with the Royals continues to inspire.

The 24th Annual Baseball in Literature and Culture Conference at Ottawa University had a greater emphasis on philosophy than in previous years. Aside from Eisenreich’s personal testimony, I was most entertained and interested by a presentation about Jack Kerouac’s creation in the 1930s of an elaborate fantasy baseball game. The author of On The Road took this hand-crafted game with him on his travels to entertain himself. He created teams and players and even wrote newspaper reports and newsletters about the games, teams and seasons. Perhaps most shocking is that he allowed almost no one to know about his hobby! As far as researchers can tell, he played the game alone, purely for his own enjoyment, and didn’t involve others.

I was inspired to learn more about the 1919 New York Giants, a team that danced with the devils gambling and game-fixing, but avoided the fate of the 1919 Chicago White Sox.

Interestingly, we heard another speaker discuss Jim Thorpe’s disappointing baseball career. Thorpe was on that 1919 Giants team, but probably wasn’t a significant enough player to be involved in any gambling fixes.

It’s always amazing to see the diversity of topics people are working on. I always come away from this conference inspired to keep digging into the topics that interest me.