on the prairie diamond

Happen to live near a place they like to call Chambana?* LeAnne will be reading from her latest novel, Miko Kings, at our very own Pages for All Ages in Savoy this coming Saturday, March 1 from 1 until 2pm. If you’re in the area, please join us!

*if that sounds more “odd, tropical fruit” than “geographic location,” you’re possibly somewhere warmer. or more urban. or with a ready access to some good pashofa that isn’t just at LeAnne’s house.

While looking at the baseballs in the slideshow here, their seams busted and thread cores exposed, we can’t but wonder which one looks most like Blip Bleen’s after he slammed it into tomorrow. Via Coudal.

Yesterday when I was visiting a theater class at the University of Illinois, one of the questions that a student asked was why I use the terms American Indian, or “Indian” as opposed to Native American in my work. The students were reading Indian Radio Days and listening to an audio version performed by WagonBurner Theater Troop for WSUI Radio in Iowa City, IA. Names, and what we call ourselves comes up several times in the play.

The quick and dirty answer is that “Indian” is the term I grew up using. It was the term my family used, still uses, although we know we didn’t come from India. When tribal people living on reservations say, “we’re ‘talking Indian,’” they mean Lakota, Dakota or Cherokee or whatever tribal language their tribe speaks. I have had the pleasure of working on two reservations, Rosebud Sioux Reservation, and the Qualla Boundary in Cherokee, North Carolina. Both communities still use the word “Indian” in everyday conversation. But they also use their tribal names.

Sometime in the 1970s, the term Native American was adopted by the academy in literature and history courses, and later as Native American Studies. Maybe it was an academic intervention to counter the “cowboy-Indian” motif.

Whatever the reason, there are a couple of things to remember about the importance of the word “Indians.” There are no treaties made between the United States and “Native Americans.” One of the first treaties made was between the Revolutionary government of United States [read Colonists] and the Delawares in 1778. Over the next 90 years the U.S. government negotiated another 370 treaties with “Indian” nations. [There’s that word again.] Today, federal Indian law is a cornerstone of American law. I continue to use “Indian” both out of habit, and because I believe it’s important to use terms outlined in our treaties that have become federal law. This is not to say however that I’m opposed to Native, or Native American, I just don’t often use that term.

In my lifetime I have experience being “Indian,” “Choctaw,” “Native American,” and “Native.” Nomenclature being what it is, I expect one of these days, I’ll be known as an “Indigenous Person,” or IP for short.

The radio dial, that is. LeAnne will be a guest tomorrow, Wednesday February 27, 1-2pm Eastern, on the national call-in program Native America Calling to talk about their book of the month, Miko Kings. To find stations in your area, click here, or to listen to the show live online, click here. Be sure to tune in!

During a reading of Miko Kings at the Martin Luther King Library in San Jose, California, on February 11, a handsome man, about 25 or 26, walked into the room wearing a baseball shirt and pants, and ball cap. He carried his well worn, but belov’d baseball glove, and a ball that had been signed by his heroes. I couldn’t help but wonder what he was looking for when he came into the library that evening. Maybe a story about the purity of the game? I was reading from my novel about Indian baseball players in 1907, the men trying to hold onto something wholly theirs against the oddsmakers: the gamblers and saloon keepers of their day. But after reading last Sunday’s New York Times story on Roger Clemens: his alleged steroid use, (human growth hormones), what they do to a body’s mind, poor Clemens sullied reputation, and Baseball’s management’s sub-text: money. Anyway, I think I figured why this man came in from the cold dressed in his player’s uniform. He wanted to escape baseball’s headlines news and hear a story about the players old-fashioned love of the game. After all, “it is what it is,” to quote Bud Selig.

Via Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf comes an announcement for the 15th annual Nine Spring Training Conference, March 13-16. If only we could be in Tuscon for Royse Parr’s presentation on “Ben Harjo’s All-Indian Baseball Club”:

Ben Harjo, a full-blood Creek Indian, formed a professional Indian baseball club that was financed by his oil-rich, full-blood Seminole Indian wife, Susey. After touring Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas by team bus in 1932, the team won the prestigious “Little World Series” in Denver, Colorado. In 1933, the team toured 15 states from their Holdenville, Oklahoma, home to Maine with 46-year-old Jim Thorpe initially as a gate attraction/coach and then as the playing manager.

Alas, we can only hope someone is kind enough to blog conference reports and dream of Cactus League play. Find the full program here.

Also via Ron Kaplan, a call to contribute to an anthology on “Baseball and Politics,” edited by Ron Briley:

This collection will focus upon the intersection between baseball and the political arena-nationally as well as locally. A diverse range of political opinion will be encouraged in the volume. Possible topics for investigation include:

* Racial integration and discrimination in the sport
* The politics of stadium construction and financing
* Baseball and the women’s question
* Gays in baseball
* Baseball and religion
* Baseball and imperialism
* Baseball and war (Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Iraq War)
* Political opinions and activities of baseball players and management [...]

For more topics and information about submitting, click here.

Image: Baseball Follows the Flag from the A.G. Spalding Baseball Collection, New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

LeAnne Howe will be reading from and discussing her new novel, Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story, at four events in the Bay Area this week. All events are free and open to the public.

February 11, 2-4pm
University of California, Berkeley
Department of Ethnic Studies
30 Stephens Hall
Berkeley, CA

February 11, 7pm
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library
Cultural Heritage Center
5th Floor, Room 525
San Jose, CA

February 12, 7:30pm
Modern Times Bookstore
888 Valencia St. (near 20th)
San Francisco, CA

February 13, 2-3:30pm
San Francisco State University
The Richard Oakes Multicultural Center
Terrace Level of the Cesar Chavez Student Center
San Francisco, CA
Sponsored by the American Indian Studies Department

Previously on “On the Prairie Diamond”

He threw Spitballs
Dopers
Out-Drops
Fist-Sockers
Inshoots
Up-Downs
and Curves.

He threw Twisters and
Cyclones
Tornadoes
Tropical Storms
Whirlwinds
Typhoons
Gale Winds
Nor’easters
A Gentle Breeze.

He threw Varmints and
Robbers
A Tempest in a Teapot
Freaks
Jack London’s Call of the Wild
Snapping Turtles
A Red Hen
Elephants and Donkeys
The Wabash Cannonball.

He threw Racetracks and
Beer Kegs
Broken Treaties
Casinos
Missionaries
The Civil War.

He threw Hell at them
And Paradise.

When there was nothing left
he threw himself, and strolled off the mound
disappearing into a three-letter town
named Ada.

–Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story

From a text message exchange between the New York Observer’s Azi Paybarah and Obama fundraiser Arthur Leopold:

arthurleopold (2:45:00 PM): The Obama/Clinton rivalry here in New York is very similar to that of the Yankees and Mets rivalry. The Yankees are your home-town favorites, but the Mets always have a solid team—a team that has made it and won the World Series. In the end, though, if a New York team makes the World Series, you’ll be cheering for that team, just as we’ll be supporting whichever Democrat gets the nomination; this year, I think the Mets will prevail.

azipaybarah (2:46:55 PM): don’t mets and yankee fans hate each other

arthurleopold (2:47:11 PM): we like each other more than we like the red sox