Huber Co-Authors Dizzy Dean Story for Missouri Historical Review

Contact: Mary Helen StoltzPhone: 573-341-4966E-mail: [email protected]

UMR'S HUBER CO-AUTHORS STORY ON DIZZY DEAN IN "MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW"

ROLLA, Mo. -- Former St. Louis Cardinals baseball pitcher-turned-sports announcer Dizzy Dean was well known in Missouri for his broadcasting style, which was full of mangled grammar and malapropisms. Dean's career -- including the "School Marms' Uprising" of 1946 -- is detailed in an article published in this month's issue of the "Missouri Historical Review" by a University of Missouri-Rolla historian.

"Butcherin' Up the English Language a Little Bit: Dizzy Dean, Baseball Broadcasting, and the 'School Marms' Uprising' of 1946," was written by Patrick Huber, assistant professor of history at UMR, and co-author David Anderson, a doctoral candidate in history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Huber specializes in Missouri history, the history of the American South and the United States during the 1920s and 1930s.

Huber is also a baseball fan. "I'm a huge baseball fan and some of my academic interests include southern history, working-class history, and the American language," Huber says. "All of those areas of interest seemed to be reflected, in one way or another, in Dean's broadcasting career and in the 'School Marms' Uprising.'

"Growing up in Missouri, I was well aware of Dizzy Dean, but I had never heard about the 'School Marms' Uprising,'" Huber says.

The "School Marms' Uprising" is a national controversy sparked by the English Teachers Association of Missouri, which allegedly filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission charging that Dean's mangled English was a bad influence on the state's schoolchildren, Huber explains.

Huber began his collaboration with Anderson when the two were doctoral candidates at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"Dave is a labor historian and actually played some baseball before entering graduate school," Huber says. "He was actually the one who got me interested in Dean." Anderson had seen the Dean biopic, "The Pride of St. Louis," as a teenager. The film concludes with a highly fictionalized account of the so-called "School Marms' Uprising."

"He told me about the incident, and we decided that it might make an interesting article," Huber says.

Huber's research on Dean was also published in the fall 2001 issue of "Gateway Heritage" magazine.

The "Missouri Historical Review" is a publication for members of the State Historical Society of Missouri. For information on receiving a copy of the magazine write the State Historical Society of Missouri, 1020 Lowry Street, Columbia, MO 65201 or call the society at (573) 882-9362.

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