- [Presenter] Live from your public media studios, WVIA Presents "Keystone Edition Arts," a public affairs program that goes beyond the headlines to address issues in Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania.

This is "Keystone Edition Arts."

And now Erica Funke.

- Welcome to "Keystone Edition Arts," where we'll volley back and forth between sports and the arts, not to see which wins, but to see ourselves more deeply, more clearly.

Paul Lazar kicks things off for us.

- [Paul] Sports and the people who play them have been portrayed in the arts for thousands of years.

From mosaics to statues and paintings to photos, we are presented with everything from idealized representations to realistic ones.

Art can remind us of past greatness, overcoming incredible odds and inspiration, what we can aspire to if we try.

The arts may also give clues as to what else society valued at the time, and whether the sport was specific to gender or nationality.

Early athletes were often soldiers, so activities that evolved into sports like wrestling and boxing, helped ensure men remained prepared for battle.

Statues and reliefs show these athlete soldiers at their physical peak.

The artists used materials that changed ever so slightly over time, such as Myron did with his famous "Discus Thrower," giving the illusion of permanent strength to the athlete and society they represent.

For "Keystone Edition Arts," I'm Paul Lazar.

- Of course, there would be a marching band to celebrate civic pride, community spirit, and to bring everyone together in an irresistible way in this small city setting.

It's a scene from the movie "That Championship Season" based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Jason Miller, who grew up in Scranton and where he shot the film.

WVIA captured some of the behind the scenes action in 1982 as the story of the annual reunion of the 1957 Fillmore High School state basketball champions unfolds and the coach and his boys try to relive the glory days as long held illusions begin to disintegrate.

Here's a powerful image of the coach, Robert Mitchem, sipping the secular wine champagne at the ritual altar of sport, the substitute religion of sorts.

Throughout the story, Jason Miller uses the basketball championship as a way to reflect on American values and beliefs.

We'll do some reflecting ourselves on art, life and sport with our guests today on "Keystone Edition Arts."

Brian Hodge is a keyboardist, conductor, composer, arranger, marching band drill writer and educator.

Dr. Hodge is the director of bands at East Strasbourg University and Chief arranger for the San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra.

Marjorie Maddox, professor of English and Creative Writing at Commonwealth University Lockhaven Campus.

Dr. Maddox has published 13 collections of poetry, including "When the Wood Clacks Out Your Name" and "Rules of the Game Baseball Poems."

She's twice served as visiting author for the Little League World Series and has read two times at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Daniel Haxall is Professor of Art History at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, and a former fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Institute for the Arts and Humanities.

He publishes widely on diverse topics in contemporary art and on the intersections of art and sport.

He's editor of the study "Picturing the Beautiful Game," a history of soccer in visual culture and art.

Welcome to each one of you and Dr. Haxall, we'll go right to you and the cover of your book "Picturing The Beautiful Game."

Now we've just seen Jason Miller suggesting a link between sports and religion in American society.

Tell us about the image featuring the soccer player, the mask and the statue of Christ from Rio de Janeiro on your book.

- Absolutely.

You know, for the cover of this book, I selected a great collage by Godfried Donkor, who is a Ghanaian artist and he's very interested in the intersection of art and religious ideas and the idea of icons.

You know, who are the people that we think about as our heroes these days, who are the secular icons that we have.

And he turns his attention oftentimes to soccer players.

This particular image is a soccer player named Paul Pogba.

He plays for Juventus in Italy as his professional team, but he's represented France internationally.

And in that cover, the collage that Donkor made, he is representing France even though he's an immigrant.

His parents came from Guinea in West Africa and he's a part of a multicultural national team representing France.

And it's become this great model of integration and on some levels, you know, kind of immigration, bringing the nation together to root for this World Cup champion.

So it's a work that shows religious values too.

He's got a halo.

The halo actually comes from the Financial Times, the newspaper, and it speaks also to the ways in which these athletes get commodified and bought and sold and traded.

So there's a lot of references that he makes there, but the Christ Redempteur statue comes from the fact that he made this for the World Cup, the Men's World Cup that was held in Rio de Janeiro.

So it makes reference to the place of this mega sporting event, the World Cup, and it's this icon who would eventually win the World Cup for the French national team.

- Wow.

And we just experienced the World Cup and the growth in the United States of interest in soccer is quite something.

And so are we seeing more images produced here in terms of soccer?

- I think so.

We have a lot more exhibitions that seem to rally around these mega sporting events.

The history of the Olympic games is really interesting because art competitions were part of it from the outset.

And oftentimes exhibitions are staged by museums to coincide with things such as the Men's World Cup and you see exhibitions in Los Angeles and Florida, all over the United States, bringing together sporting themed artworks for an event like the World Cup.

And obviously institutions that you've mentioned like the National Baseball Hall of Fame use art extensively to tell narratives about heroes and success and just histories of the game.

And so I do think we see more and more soccer kind of enter the fold in that way.

- And staying with soccer and the cover of your book "The Beautiful Game."

To what degree, how do you talk about soccer as beautiful, sports as beautiful in terms of grace?

Where does the aesthetic come in when you are thinking about, of sport?

- The title comes from a famous idea that soccer is the beautiful game and various people have been attributed with pointing that term from Pelé, the late great Brazilian master to others.

But there's a an element of artistry that goes into the game.

Yes, it's about winning, but you can have a certain segment of dance that goes into the moves that you might perform on the field.

And there's a lot of attention given to the aesthetics of sports.

And it's a really interesting idea because the goal, as I mentioned, is to win and to triumph, but to do so with style, to do so in ways that people remember.

And it can be controversial, I'll admit.

There are some players currently who are criticized for dancing when they score.

There's a long legacy of celebrations and do they go too far?

But there is this connection I think, between body of an athlete and that performative body, ones that we see in dance, ones that we see in a variety of visual arts fields.

And there's also intersections between artists and athletes that I think are really interesting where athletes are artists, they become artists and vice versa.

- Wow.

Thank you.

We'll be back and we'll touch more, bring up more of these interesting overall context questions.

Marjorie Maddox, you are someone who is a lover of baseball and your love shines through in your poems and you can capture a sense of innocence as young players meet on the field.

But you also know about the social struggles reflected in the game's history and we'd love it if you tell us about your family ties to Major League Baseball.

- Well, my primary interest in baseball is a historical one and a family connection.

I'm the great grand niece of Branch Rickey who helped break the color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson to Major League Baseball.

And there I am, I'm the little girl in red.

And of course, and this is Branch Rickey the third who's president of the Pacific League out west.

And this is one of my baseball books, "Rules Of The Game Baseball Poems," which I really wrote, but just by going through different technical terms about baseball and looked at them metaphorically.

I mean, baseball is, there's a reason we say the poetry of the game, right?

Because it is so poetic and the way you describe it, the way you experience it, you know, there's not much better than sitting outside on a summer night watching a game.

So I think that all kind of ties into what was just said about the artistry of sports, the artistry of soccer, of baseball, of basketball.

There is that kind of dance like quality to it.

- And you took particular note, the World Series games that featured Monet Davis from the Philadelphia area.

She made quite a splash with the national media.

And you have showed us through your poem how poetic she is on the mound.

Tell us if you would, what the spur was and then please read it for us, if you would, your poem.

- Yes.

So as you probably all know, Monet Davis was just the talk of the town during the 2014 World Series representing Philly, representing the Mid-Atlantic team.

And what really spurred me or inspired me for this particular poem was I overheard two little boys, two T-ball players.

And who were they talking about?

Who did they wanna be when they grew up?

They wanted to be Monet Davis, so they were talking about her.

So this is the poem that came out of overhearing that conversation.

"Throwing Like A Girl."

70 miles Monet style, fast ball, curve ball, flashing into the future ball every which way, but losing.

Batters up, so we chant Monet, Monet.

Awake, sleeping, warming up for the life worth stealing in this home run of a series we call team.

We call you go girl.

Graded Phenomen with an arm that hurls hope way past today's world of photo ops and changeups.

All the way to a closeup of two T-Ball boys playing the part, debating, voices escalating.

"I'm Monet.

"No, I'm Monet."

And a summer of daughters leaning into the pitch that blasts the phrase, "throwing like a girl" into the all star compliment that it can be, that it is when Lean Machine Monet takes the mound, smiles as wide as a long drive, then delivers the dream.

We braided girls up, baseball, basketball, soccer, business, science, writing.

Still need in whatever, and every season.

- Oh, thank you Marjorie.

And what a lovely piece to celebrate her and women as athletes and business people and writers as you've done.

But you also have such a musicality about the poetry you write.

And it's particularly clear in the baseball poems, fast ball, softball, you know, you catch us up.

And it's clear that it's not just a gimmick, the words flow in such a way that give us what that sense of energy and excitement.

Right?

- Right.

And I love sounds in poetry.

I mean it is very musical.

I often compose out loud, but you know, where you're talking about sports, you want that action, you want that movement, you want that magic.

So my attempt is to try to capture that.

- Wow, thank you.

And it's a wonderful time to bring in the musician who is with us, Dr. Brian Hodge.

You are a musician, but you're so much more.

And you bring sports and the arts together in the work that you do with marching bands.

And I'd love to have you talk to us about what you do as a composer, a ranger, drill master, and the person who shapes the marching band and the sense of sport and art together.

How do you talk about those coming together and is there a tension?

- Oh, absolutely.

When it comes to bringing marching bands to the field, there's a long history going back 115 years now, first marching bands being presented at the University of Illinois.

When they played the University of Chicago in 1907, and of course back then they were still doing the military style drill.

And then the many of the Big 10 schools began to break away from that.

Purdue University famously making the first block P. But we take that and we've built up a generation or five of various ways that we integrate athleticism into our performances and how we as an ensemble impact the sports on the field.

- So there is an energy back and forth when you are out there, even if they're not playing and they're watching you.

- Absolutely.

We often feed on the energy of the crowd.

You can see here we are performing at a show five years ago in Allentown.

There's a lot of things that we have to take into consideration.

These students are carrying heavy weights on their shoulders, they are moving around the field at deceptively fast speeds.

The speed in which each step happens here is approximately 160 beats per minute.

So when they are moving, they are moving quite fast.

So we're trying to balance in our design how we are giving them places to rest, to breathe because the only chance they get to breathe is very sporadically as they're exhaling.

So.

- So how do you think of them?

Do you think of them as musicians slash artists who are athletic?

- I think that that is a fair assertion.

They are athletic performers.

Are they sports?

No, I don't believe so, but then again, the argument can be made, is golf a sport or is it a game?

So at that point we're arguing semantics.

But certainly if you take a look at the highest level musicians on the field, widely accepted as Drum Court International, whether you have youths from 14 to 21 who spend their entire summers learning shows, they have incredible in speeds of endurance and strength that they had to train their entire summer to perform for crowds across the United States as they travel.

There was a study done with a percussionist from the Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps, based out of Concord, California, where they measured his heart rate.

And for the entire 12 minutes of this performance, his heart was racing at about 170 beats per minute.

That is the demand for that is expected for these athletes to perform.

They're out there running around in the middle of the summer wearing wool uniforms, carrying 30 to 40 pounds on their shoulders.

It does take a certain degree of athleticism to be successful at it.

- And you're there not just to entertain the crowd.

Your choice of music does involve a sense of stirring the hearts and souls of the athletes.

Yes?

- Absolutely.

A great example is found basketball bands.

Basketball bands, we have a wide catalog of music that we have prepared that we have to be ready to interject what we feel the game needs at any given time.

If we're winning, we'll play celebratory music such as YMCA or celebration.

If we are not winning and we want to inspire the team, we may play something a bit more dark, a bit more energetic to get them fired up.

One of our perennial favorites is "Shipping Off To Boston," which is by the Dropkick Murphy's.

It's just a very intense and angry song, but it gets the crowd more into it.

It inspires the audience to cheer and it gets the players more involved.

- Yes, yes.

That makes very good sense.

Wow.

And you have a research interest that is making sure that there are ways for them to carry the saxophone and their trumpets and trombones so they don't hurt themselves.

- Absolutely.

Music and health are fortunately getting more of a focus in the past five to 10 years where we're starting to see companies and researchers looking into ways to ergonomically improve our practices in order to preserve the health of our players.

For instance, they are looking into different ways that we can design shoes for our tenor players, that people that carry the six drum, that sit on the shoulders, that brings the center of mass very far forward.

So much that most center players after a career or 10 years playing in high school and college have knee problems.

So by shifting how shoes are designed, we can refocus that center of gravity and make it so that they are able to retain their health into later years.

- Wow.

Thank you Dr. Hodge.

And one of the things that we started out with was the image of marching bands in the city of Scranton, in the imagination of playwright Jason Miller and filmmaker Jason Miller in that way.

And the sense of stirring civic pride and the community spirit and bringing a community together.

And we have with us a wonderful studio audience of people who are here to support us in our show.

And one of those is wonderful artist, named William Chickillo.

He's a noted landscape artist from northeastern Pennsylvania.

But you, Bill, have a wonderful passion, deep passion for baseball, and you have a body of work that's related to baseball.

And if you didn't mind coming up to the microphone and just briefly describing this baseball flag that you've created, which is quite rich, and you'd think-- Please just come up and welcome Bill and just tell us, describe the size and what it is and then tell us how it came about.

- Well, I wasn't quite sure how the-- It didn't go out about making the baseball flag.

My son and I needed baseballs to hit.

So we would go out pretty much after practice and pick up baseballs in the field and foul balls mostly.

And the hard ones to get were the white ones, but I was discovering some dark ones that were left in the field and they looked like artifacts.

I had no idea what I was gonna do with them.

So I brought them home and started putting them on the studio floor.

And before I knew it, I had them in a pattern.

I said, "My gosh, these could make a flag."

So I went about building the flag.

I needed 199 baseballs.

And as I got closer and closer to building the flag, I would take a baseball that didn't quite fit the value and put it in with another ball that I had found.

So it took over a course of several months to build it and it also weighed about over 250 pounds.

So there was some pretty big issues to deal with.

My connection has to be with my son.

I mean, I had no idea that I was gonna build a flag, Erica.

It just came about as part of the game.

And it's all about your affinity for playing a game.

And that association with the game built the flag.

I was the vehicle.

- You were the vehicle.

Wonderful.

And you said that the different shades and hues of the balls, in fact sort of suggest to you the diversity of the country.

- Right.

Because if you look at the flag, the flag, the hard, the white balls were the toughest ones to find.

And then the dirty ones, the red values and the dark ones that were left in the field for many, many months sometimes would have moss growing on.

They were just beautiful in themselves.

- Well thank you so much for sharing.

And you have to go on Bill's website, go to our resources page and see some of the other remarkable collages that Bill has created from baseballs and the covers that have been been separated and the baseball cards.

And he's particularly interested in the great baseball players who have come from our region and made a name in the world of baseball, Hall of Famers and the rest.

Dr. Haxall, we've been windsurfing over this rich turf and we've just been catching glances of some of the aspects.

But really now that we've had this conversation, how do you talk about the dialogue or the conversation between the two worlds and what we can learn about ourselves as, for example, with the American flag, what do we learn about ourselves and where we still need to go, as we heard from Marjorie and her family, where her family was involved in helping and courage that it took for Jackie Robinson to sign.

But Branch Rickey opened a door for Jackie Robinson.

Tell us about those kinds of things, if you would.

- Absolutely.

I think one of the really compelling things about sport as a subject in the visual arts, you know, I come from this from the perspective of an art historian, is how sports is this really rich symbol for ideas and moments that are significant.

The image that you see on the screen of a baseball player swinging and missing comes from Jacob Lawrence who was making artwork right after the integration of baseball.

And Jacob Lawrence was an African American artist who made works about Jackie Robinson, who made works about Satchel Page.

So those momentous moments in American history that were played out on the playing field, I know that sounds redundant, but you know, these momentous social changes are documented by artists or celebrated by artists and they add another layer to the richness of that kind of historical experience.

And then other images do a great job of reinforcing certain affinities that we have to sport, you know, and the flag made of baseball is makes me think of how the visual arts contributes to the idea of baseball as our national pastime.

Things such as the Saturday Evening Post featured baseball nearly 70 times over 70 years.

So almost once a year there was an image by someone like Norman Rockwell or Phil Falter, John Falter, I apologize, who is thinking about baseball as a family connection as we just heard, or thinking about baseball as a way to bring the country together in an interracial context or bring the country together after World War II.

And there's so many moments where sport becomes this symbol for family, for unity, for also, as you see on the screen here, moments of upheaval and sports becomes a powerful site for things like protest and activism.

And the work you're looking at here is by Hank Willis Thomas, who is critical of the ways in which race has been kind of handled or not handled in American history and sports becomes a really great way to comment on those.

And I know there's a trend to say, you know, keep things to sports, you know, try to separate the two, but I don't think you can separate art from sports and art is often such a loaded symbol, socio-politically, that you kind of have to keep those worlds in conversation.

- Well, we will continue this conversation on Facebook and YouTube after the TV broadcast ends.

So if you can join us there, we'd love to have you.

In the meantime, we just want to thank our guests.

Thank you Marjorie.

Thank you Brian.

Thank you Daniel and you for being in the studio audience, thank you for being here and all of you who are watching, thank you for watching.

For more information on this topic, including links to our guests and resources, please visit WVIA.org Keystone and click on Keystone Edition Arts.

And remember, you can watch this episode or any previous episode on demand, anytime online on the WVIA app.

For Keystone Edition, I'm Erica Funky.

Thank you for watching.

And we'll throw it to you, Marjorie, if you could give us "Sweet Spot."

- The sweet spot knows no sting.

Sings its center of percussion, six inches from the sticks end resonating energy, it sounds the cosmic note before you can listen, the ball is gone.

(light upbeat music)