Best. Class. Ever.

Except a lot of people here act like they know everything already, and would miss the point of his class:

“The real idea of the course,” he put it in an interview, “is to develop heightened sensitivity and a noticing capacity. So baseball’s not ‘the’ road to God. For most of us, it isn’t ‘a’ road to God. But it’s a way to notice, to cause us to live more slowly and to watch more keenly and thereby to discover the specialness of our life and our being, and, for some of us, something more than our being.”

Though I suppose if it's a good class, the pedagogy is able to break through the "know it already" aspect...

Hrm. Seems I screwed up the formatting when I submitted. That third paragraph was also meant to be in quotes. Anywho, it's worth a read, and it really is the best class ever.

Go Violets!

Meh, Jules Tygiel's class was better.

Wait, he's got 18 students in the class and he's got teaching assistants?

For those interested in this topic, two good books are J. Allen Hye's The Great God Baseball and Robert J. Higgs's God in the Stadium. Kathleen Sullivan's Women Characters In Baseball Literature has material on various goddess figures, and Deeanne Westbrook's Ground Rules: Baseball and Myth has an amazing chapter on The Universal Baseball Association.

all I get ot teach at NYU is a class on entrepreneurship......and yes, Flynn, Tygiel's class was excellent.

I did an independent study at NYU all about watching and critically analyzing Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Apparently you could do pretty much anything in Gallatin if a teacher approved it. (I wasn't Gallatin, though - that independent study was the only thing I did in that school.)

Wait, he's got 18 students in the class and he's got teaching assistants?

I was actually one of the TAs a few years ago when I was a grad student at NYU. I still have the syllabus, so if anyone wants to know more about the course materials, feel free to email me. My favorites were Universal Baseball Association (Coover) and A Great and Glorious Game (Giamatti). One cool aspect of the class is that sometimes the authors come and take part in the discussion of their works. If my memory is accurate, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pete Hamill, and Leonard Kriegel all came to class that semester.

With respect to having multiple TAs in a small class, keep in mind that John Sexton is the active president of NYU, so he has some fairly major commitments other than teaching. For example, he had to miss a few of our class sessions to be in Abu Dhabi because NYU was in the process of opening a campus there at the time. The students were divided among the 3 TAs, and we met in our small groups each week for 45 minutes to an hour to discuss the readings prior to class. There were also weekly writing assignments that the students submitted to the TAs, and we'd use those as a basis for discussion and for grading purposes. John Sexton also teaches a course on the Supreme Court and freedom of religion, and I helped my grad school roommate get a TA spot in that class the following term.

Meh, Jules Tygiel's class was better.

You had him, too?
I took the class Tygiel (history) co-taught with Eric Solomon (literature) at SF State, and it was terrific.
Among the assigned reading: The Celebrant, Baseball's Great Experiment, and A False Spring.
Plus, class trip to a Giants game at Phone Company Park. Sweeeeeeet. I'll never forget Prof. Tygiel's pleasure at the "nice, crisp" National Anthem. Exactly as it should be.

Tried a couple of times to get into this class when I was at NYU, but was never able to take it.

And Tuque, every single CAS student was insanely jealous of the Gallatin kids. One of my friends was majoring in comic book art. I took one class in Gallatin; it was a TV writing class taught by an adjunct whose relevant experience came on the illustrious "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper". Funny thing is that my Gallatin and Tisch friends, for all the ribbing they endured about their "impractical" majors, have generally done better than my CAS friends. And a helluva lot better than me.

I wish this class was available when I was at NYU. Dr. Sexton was Dean of the Law School then. Loved the school, and Dean Sexton is one of the greatest human beings I have ever met. I took Sports Law as a 3L, taught by an adjunct who was an NBA arbitrator at the time. But there were no baseball-related classes. Too bad.

And Tuque, every single CAS student was insanely jealous of the Gallatin kids. One of my friends was majoring in comic book art. I took one class in Gallatin; it was a TV writing class taught by an adjunct whose relevant experience came on the illustrious "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper". Funny thing is that my Gallatin and Tisch friends, for all the ribbing they endured about their "impractical" majors, have generally done better than my CAS friends. And a helluva lot better than me.

I suppose this makes me BBTF's resident Gallatino? I actually didn't loooove Gallatin the way others did, but the whole make your own concentration thing was pretty great. All in all, NYU was pretty awesome, though I need to point out that our graduation "speaker" was Wynton Marsalis. The next year's class had Hillary Clinton.

I need to point out that our graduation "speaker" was Wynton Marsalis. The next year's class had Hillary Clinton.

You lucky bastard!