Related Courses

At Whittier, students can explore their interest in baseball while advancing in their academics.

College Writing Seminar: History of Baseball
Instructor: Professor Mike McBride

Students read complex texts chosen to sharpen students' critical reading and thinking skills. Texts frame a central course theme. Writing assignments based on these texts are designed to teach and practice persuasion, description, narration, exposition, and research-based writing, as well as writing under pressure of time. 

Muscular Faith
Instructor: Professor Joseph Price

This course examines the histories of several established religions' interactions with sports: how some moved from a rejection of sports to their toleration and finally to their embrace, and how others have affirmed sports as a means of discipline and a physical expression of faith. The course also investigates how and why athletes align their athletic skills, opportunities, and success with their faith. Finally, the course explores how faith-based sports organizations often function as spiritual communities, such as quasi-churches or auxiliary congregations (like the Christian Deer Hunters Association). 

El Beisbol: A Caribbean Religion
Instructors:  ProfessorJoseph Price, Professor Rafael Chabran

Students enrolled in this course will travel to Cuba to observe baseball culture on the island. 

Sport, Play, and Ritual


This course attempts to study the role of sport, play, and leisure in the religious life of the individual and the community at large. One of the important questions to be investigated are: What role does sports play in spiritual life? What does this mean to contemporary religion?