"Joe DiMaggio was a better baseball player because he married Marilyn Monroe" or Fueling the Rivalry

I found a way to successfully bring a baseball debate into the classroom that had to do with my school curriculum.  The 8th grade writes a paper on the mills of Lowell.  There are several options for how the students can approach the Lowell paper but the most common essay topics are the following

1. was working at Lowell a good thing or a bad thing for the Mill Girls?

2. how did the factory owners at Lowell deny power to the Mill Girls?  How did the Mill Girls respond?

    For about one month, the kids are bombarded with primary and secondary sources on the Industrial Revolution and the city of Lowell.  The process tends to burn us (the kids and the teachers) out, and grading tends to me slow going.

       One of my major concerns with this project is that it is the first time these kids are writing a paper for Social Studies and many of them have a hard time defending or proving a thesis.  Teaching writing has always been a daunting task for me, and I never am satisfied with my lessons. My goal was to teach my students how to use Primary Sources to defend a statement and have them write a brief paper before the Lowell essay. 

Sports might be the most argued and debated topic in some places, even more so then politics.  It would be the perfect lesson to teach my students how to defend an argument and to prove something.  So, I turned to baseball.

       Getting ready for the Walk a few years ago, I read about every available book that I could find on either the Yankees or the Red Sox including biographies of certain players.  The debate over who was greater Ted Williams or Joe DiMaggio was often discussed in those books.  Teaching exactly 11 miles from Fenway Park, I knew that I had my topic.

I broke several copyright laws over the next few days and made copies of pages from Teammates and Summer of '49, both  by David Halbstram, Emperors and Idiots, and The Curse of the Bambino.  I made copies of DiMaggio's obituary from the New York Times, as well as an article from when he retired that was available online. I also brought in copies of editorials and obituaries on Ted Williams.  

    I realized that having a third statement to support might be a good option to have.  I thought about Pa, and how highly he spoke about Joe DiMaggio.  My third essay topic became, "Joe DiMaggio was a positive role model for Italian-Americans."  I found some editorials online that would help the students prove this case.  To give them more sources, I highlighted several pages of Richard Ben Cramer's biography  of Joe D. 

    The classes were divided into groups that were assigned one of the thesis statements and spent the first two days gathering evidence and writing opening paragraphs.  Some of them got really into it, it was amazing.   There were some rough spots, like the quote that is the title, but I was really happy with the results.

   The debate was something that they were now apart of, something that the media and the fans would speak about for over 60 years.  For most of these kids it was the first time that they actually saw the accomplishments of two of the greatest ball players that have ever lived.  I was glad I could show them just how amazing both of those athletes were.

   Kids who normally don't speak in class participated and shared their arguments and evidence with the class.  I had one students bring in actual photographs of Joe DiMaggio his brother Dominic and Ted Williams that she found in her grandfather's basement.  The topic seemed to bring even the shyest kids out of their shell for a bit. 

 

But, In the end, it might have been the student wearing an Ortiz shirt writing how Joe DiMaggio was better then Ted Williams my most awarding moment.