Bingles, knuckleballs and ‘Beer Barrel Polka’ – hundreds of forgotten works showcase the eclectic world of baseball scholarship

Today’s fans may associate baseball research with cutting edge analytics. But long before data-driven tools like Statcast and FanGraphs, university students were conducting research about baseball. About three years ago, I came across a 1988 article published by the Society for American Baseball Research. Written by a historian of Cuban baseball named Peter C. Bjarkman, it highlighted several academic dissertations, noting that they “provide a fruitful scholarly resource … yet at the same time represent one of the least explored sources.” The baseball fan in me immediately wanted to know how many other dissertations existed, and which topics they covered. But after digging around, I realized that no such list existed. So the academic librarian in me decided to compile it for future researchers. I ended up locating more than 850 dissertations and theses written by students between 1908 and 2024 from nearly 300 universities, and compiled the data, which appears in a recent issue of the Baseball Research Journal. I was impressed by how many students across so many disciplines found a way to connect their area of study to baseball. It has been eye-opening to read about the game from the perspectives of business, communication, history, music, physics,…

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