The Mount Saint Mary College community enjoyed a game of wiffle ball.
Mount Saint Mary College’s Library week, from February 10 to 15, hit a home run with its free and public baseball-themed programs, discussions, and film screenings.
Most events were hosted at the Mount’s Kaplan Family Library and Learning Center on campus.
At the panel talk “Baseball Miracles: Impacting Lives through Service” on Monday, February 10, a packed audience learned how Baseball Miracles, a charitable organization based in Marlboro, N.Y., strives to empower youth and build community through mission and baseball. Mount staff and students have been impacted by their involvement in this initiative. The panelists were J.T. Tumminia, Baseball Miracles founder and father of Mount alumna Tyler Tumminia ’00, baseball executive; Trevor Purcell, Mount assistant athletic director and Baseball Miracles trip facilitator; Charles Benfer, current Mount student and Baseball Miracles social media coordinator; and Roy Underwood, Baseball Miracles on-field instructor and equipment manager.
The talk kicked off a sock drive, which collected more than 800 pairs of socks for the Baseball Miracles #SOCKSFORCARE campaign over Library Week. The children, faculty, and staff of Bishop Dunn Memorial School donated a whopping 650 pairs of socks at the talk. The donations are already being distributed to those in need.
Members of the Mount community – from students to faculty and staff – enjoyed a wiffle ball tournament on Tuesday, February 11 before taking in a screening Field of Dreams, one of the most iconic baseball movies of all time. After the film, Rick Zolzer, vice president of operations for the Hudson Valley Renegades, revealed facts and features of the film to enrich the viewing experience. This event was co-sponsored by the Hudson Valley Renegades.
James F. Gates, library director of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, presented “Cardboard Culture: On the Origins of the Great American Baseball Card” on Wednesday, February 13. He explained that during the Civil War era, cigarette packs were made of flimsy cardboard. Companies would slip a card into the packaging to protect the product, and eventually, the companies began printing images on their cards “to show some flare.” Owning colored prints or paintings was typically for the wealthy during this time period, Gates noted. Thus, “people started collecting these cards because color images were so expensive.”
Sometimes, the price of a card has more to do with its history than its rarity. For example, a 110-year-old card depicting baseball player Honus Wagner, from the American Tobacco Company’s T206 series, recently sold at an auction for $3.1 million. With a total of between 50 and 200 produced, the card is not as rare as some others. However, the story of how Wagner demanded that his image stop being used on the card, and how the card gained a reputation as one of the most expensive in history, has spurred ever-increasing prices.
Valentine’s Day brought a double header of original research. First, in “You Can Learn a Lot Just by Watching: The Analogy of Faith and Baseball,” Robert Miller, chair of the Division of Philosophy and Religious studies and associate professor of Religious Studies at the Mount, discussed the connections between faith and America’s favorite pastime. He pointed to four characteristics that the two share – fear, failure, talent, and sacrifice – by highlighting the work of famous ballplayers both on and off the field and how they illustrate these four tenets of faith. For example, he noted how Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente was well versed in sacrifice both on and off the field. Just like a sacrifice play as illustrated in Field of Dreams allows a player to sacrifice his own glory to advance a runner, Clemente himself gave the ultimate sacrifice when he perished in a plane crash while trying to deliver supplies to an earthquake-ravished Nicaragua. “We can’t just excel at our jobs,” Miller noted: “We must all strive to excel as people.”
“I believe the life of faith is similar to the enjoyment of sports,” he concluded. “The stories of baseball are sometimes the stories of faith.”
Next up was James Moran, associate professor of Biology at the Mount, who discussed “Blood Substitutes and Safety: A Collaboration with OXYVITA, Inc.” While it’s not as rough as football, injuries are bound to happen when the Boys of Summer take the field. For a really nasty injury, a player might need a blood transfusion. But what if there were a simple blood substitute that was just as good as the real thing, and it could be stored and administrated right in the ballpark?
Moran noted that traditional blood transfusions are associated with significant risks and potential side effects. Researchers and biotech companies have developed artificial oxygen carriers (AOCs) as a substitute for red blood cell transfusions, but these are not yet approved for human use. Mount students have been researching the blood substitute Oxyvita, an AOC from a local company of the same name, for nearly a decade. While use in humans is still a ways off, the blood substitute may one day save thousands of lives.