Integrated Learning-Living Communities

 A class lecture on the difference between absolute and comparative advantage — using Babe Ruth as a case study — led to a guest lecture by a vintage baseball player: Kettering prosecutor and Dayton law school graduate John Everett.

Students had a chance to heft the wooden bats wielded by players back in the day when a runner was out if the ball was caught after a bounce as well as on the fly. At Everett’s instigation, some attended a base ball (two words) game, played by 1860s rules and got an opportunity to catch rock-hard baseballs with their bare hands when they attended a Dayton Clodbuster game, played at Carillon Historical Park, downhill from the Calvary Cemetery which features a yet-to-be excavated Native American mound dating from the Adena (early Woodland period). 

Base ball pitchers, in the 1860s and 1880s, did not pitch from a mound and were obligated to ‘deliver the ball’ to the batter, rather than put batters out with devious devices (fastballs, sliders, curveballs, etc.)

Babe Ruth’s success as a hitter for New York (after pitching for Boston) speaks not only to his comparative advantage in hitting, but also to changes in the rules that put pitchers at a disadvantage. The ensuing spate of home runs, according to writer Craig Brown, made “turnstiles spin” and “cash registers ring.” James Ritty, the saloon owner who invented the ‘incorruptible cashier’ is buried in Dayton’s Woodland Cemetery.

While the BEES won’t be studying macroeconomics until the spring term, Brown provides a glimpse of the future. “Like most of America in general, baseball and The Babe roared through the 1920s. And like most of America, baseball acutely felt the crash of the stock market in October, 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression.”