![\"Pitcher\"](\"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/pitcher.jpg\")
<\/a>There\u2019s too much snow, too much cold, and too many gray skies, so we need to refresh ourselves a bit.\u00a0 After all, the Reds are in spring training out in Arizona, and Opening Day is just a month away!\u00a0 So let\u2019s talk baseball and a little Cincinnati baseball story published 130 years ago.<\/p>\nIn 1885, a quirky little tale was published in a Cincinnati humor tabloid called Sam the Scaramouch<\/em> (SpecCol RB F499.C5 S16).\u00a0 The anonymously-written story is entitled \u201cO\u2019Toole\u2019s Ghost\u201d and its plot centers around a young immigrant by the name of Mickey McGonigle who dreams of becoming the best baseball player ever seen.\u00a0 Late one night, he is visited by the ghost of a deceased pitcher by the name of Barney O\u2019Toole, who offers to fulfill this dream on one small condition: never argue with the umpire.\u00a0 McGonigle accepts the offer, and for a brief time he is indeed the greatest player in the land.\u00a0 But during one game, he forgets that agreed upon condition with the ghost, violates it, and sees his prowess quickly and publically stripped away.\u00a0 He spends the rest of his days consumed with regret and humiliation.<\/p>\n On simple analysis, \u201cO\u2019Toole\u2019s Ghost\u201d is a trifle of a tale, complete with all the elements of modern baseball in terms of ethnicity, carping against the umpire, and the avarice of owners.\u00a0 The only thing changed over a hundred years is the scale of finances.\u00a0 But it points to an element of American literature that is often repeated in male-oriented fiction: the visitation of ghosts who can either create or restore the masculinity and homosocial standing of the protagonist through sporting achievement.\u00a0 The theme reflects a peculiar national concern with the definition and expression of masculinity, i.e., the male validation or non-male rejection that arose in an immigrant culture consumed with a confluence of ethnic identity, individuality, group behavior, self-expression of authority, and achievement over a perceived loss of manhood \u2013 with the American hope of a chance at redemption in the social order.\u00a0\u00a0 We like to believe that even with the intervention of the supernatural, our own ethic will triumph in the end. Or, at least often enough that we keep the faith.<\/p>\n This theme of ghosts in American baseball fiction, from W.P. Kinsella\u2019s notable Shoeless Joe Jackson Come to Iowa <\/em>to stories involving American ethnic, racial and religious groups such as Peter Levine\u2019s The Rabbi of Swat <\/em>and LeAnne Howe\u2019s Miko Kings<\/em> makes the baseball genre a larger part of fictional corpus.\u00a0 These literary ghosts appear to rescue the protagonist from an imagined or self-imposed loss of masculinity within a framework devised and developed by a cultural currency of sport.\u00a0 But beyond all the analytical back-and-forth, \u201cO\u2019Toole\u2019s Ghost\u201d is just a very funny story, and precedes by three years Ernest Lawrence Thayer\u2019s classic doggerel, \u201cCasey at the Bat,\u201d with the same elements of failed Irish heroics.<\/p>\n To see Sam the Scaramouch <\/em>and read the story, or to learn more about the holdings of the Archives & Rare Books Library, email us at archives@ucmail.uc.edu<\/a>, phone us at 513.556.1959, visit us on the web at http:\/\/www.libraries.uc.edu\/arb.html<\/a>, or connect with us on Facebook at https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ArchivesRareBooksLibraryUniversityOfCincinnati<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By: \u00a0Kevin Grace There\u2019s too much snow, too much cold, and too many gray skies, so we need to refresh ourselves a bit.\u00a0 After all, the Reds are in spring training out in Arizona, and Opening Day is just a … Continue reading <\/a>In examining the plot elements of such stories and novels, one discovers a sense of loss – or a lost opportunity – that threatens to leave the characters without the means to carry themselves successfully through stages of male camaraderie, sexual mating to create a home of an admiring wife and adoring children, and thus achieving the American \u201cdream.\u201d\u00a0 That is, unless they welcome an intervention by the spirits of those who have gone before, like Barney O\u2019Toole.\u00a0 In a capitalist society, however, bargains must be struck: it is a quid pro quo<\/em> Faustian arrangement, financial success with the failure of fulfillment being a living and miserable \u201chell\u201d on earth.<\/p>\n