Nancy Macmillan

Mondays, February 6 - March 26 (not February 13 or March 12) 10:00 a.m. - 12noon 6 sessions
Prescott House, 55 Beacon Street

Writing about sports has a long and honorable history. See Richard Carew, a Cornish antiquary, on the sport of hurling in 1602: “The ball in this play may be compared to an infernal spirit, for whosever catcheth it, fareth straightways like a madman, struggling and fighting with those that go about to hold him. You shall see them retiring home as from a pitched battle, with bloody pates, bones broken and out of joint, and such bruises as serve to shorten their days.”

By the end of our time together, you may not be able to hit one out of the park or make a hole in one, but I hope you’ll better appreciate the skill and craft of some of the sports writers who have stoked our individual and collective imaginations through their reports on the games we enjoy and sometimes play. I’ll be handing out essays and stories that I think are especially good examples of writing about several sports – baseball, of course (Jacques Barzun: “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball”) – but also golf, boxing, tennis, horse racing, turkey hunting, and others.

Although we’ll talk about the selections I’ve chosen, I hope you’ll bring others to class as well. If you give me a piece you’d like us to discuss, I’ll make copies for the group.

We may be fortunate enough have a couple of local sports troubadours – Bill Littlefield and Dick Flavin – as guest speakers, and if the stars are aligned, maybe we can take a field trip to Fenway Park in the spring.

PLAY BALL!

Nancy Macmillan

Nancy Macmillan lost what was left of her heart in the 1960s to baseball, having lost the rest to books even earlier. She and her late husband, Dan Macmillan, coached the Cubs team in the Beacon Hill youth baseball league for nine years, and after Dan died Nancy was an assistant coach for Jason Pingree’s Trenton Thunder (pre-youth baseball). Twice she attended the Red Sox Fantasy Camp in Fort Myers, Florida, where she was lucky enough to be coached by and play with such Red Sox legends as Carl Yastrzemski, Bob Stanley, Bill Lee, and Oil Can Boyd.