
You Could look it up is an old short story about a baseball team from Columbus, or C’lumbus as the narrator calls it.  I say that because throughout the story the author uses the actual poor grammar of the players and trainer during this time period.  The signing of a midget to a baseball team is something that also is a first to many people, it is something that when it happens no one in the story even knows how to react.  Stunts like this are not ever really pulled in baseball, however the idea of getting your team to wake up and start playing is.  The manager is doing exactly that trying to get his team to wake up and play the way they were earlier in the season.  This story is also told through the eyes of the team trainer.  All of these concepts are important in helping us further understand this story, and they are even comparable to real life situations.  

As you read this story you begin to realize that it is written unlike any other story I have seen written before.  The author wrote it in the way that the men back in this time period actually spoke.  The manner they did so was in a very poor way, just by looking at the spelling of most words in the story we begin to understand that this was the way these men actually spoke.  It is hard for the audience to connect to this poor grammar personally because obviously anyone actually reading it is literate and can form proper sentences.  One specific example in the story is when it says “They’re goin’ to be sendin’ the funny wagon for you, if you don’t watch out,” I says grabbin a holt of his arm (Thurber 114).  This shows the poor grammar used in the story, just in this sentence there are many grammatical errors that are very easily present.  However, I am not here to tell you all of this is bad for the story.  In a way I believe that it adds to the meaning of the story, it really makes the audience feel they are in this time period actually talking to these players.  It also adds an element of humor which makes the story that much better. 

The education of athletes is something that is still a problem in today’s day in age.  Just by reading this you can tell that mostly everyone around the game of baseball during this time period was not very educated.  There are athletes now that are making it to the Pros with third great reading levels and this is something that is not good for America.  A couple years ago a lady by the name of Mary Willingham discovered that 183 of the athletes that played for the University of North Carolina had a reading level of about a grade school child.  This number being 8-10 percent is something that is alarming to many.  How can a person make it all the way to college not being able to read a book that requires a middle school reading level?  There are some institutions that clearly value their athletics over education and it’s clear in this case.  In this quote by Rebecca Schuman suggesting “Why not create entire new academic departments, dedicated to tutoring and teaching student- athletes, funded by the athletic programs… To give each department a middling chance at legitimacy, they could be administered with outside reviewers…Many of these students are in desperate need of help, there are people desperate to give it, and for once the money could be wrangled.” (Willingham).  This gives us an idea of how we could change the problem with athletes coming up being so uneducated.  Yes, it is true that you don’ necessarily need to be able to read at a high level to dunk a basketball or catch a baseball, however for the future of America this is very important.  If these athletes end up becoming stars, will begin to see a lot of young kids looking up to them wanting to be everything that they are.  If kids are looking up to uneducated adults who are not well spoken and do not value education at all, the youth of America will begin to notice and this could possibly cause kids to take less of an interest in school.  

One of the main reasons why this is such a famous and good story is because of the never before seen element of the midget being signed by a major league baseball team.  The midget ends up becoming basically the main character right when he is signed becomes he plays such an important role after that.  This idea even though fictional and in a story, very well may have prompted St. Louis Browns manager Bill Veeck to sign a midget of his own to his baseball club.  In this case the team signed Eddie Gaedel a 3 ft 7 inch 26 year old man to their team.  Veeck was unsure whether or not this would be allowed so what he did was send in the contract late Friday night so that no one would really look at it.  Just like in the story as the midget came out to bat no one really thought it was possible.  The umpire at first did not let the midget bat however Veeck ended up showing the contract and he was allowed to bat.  Unlike in the story in this case the midget does as he is told and just stands in and takes the walk.  Because of this the American League President went on to void the midgets contract and ended up banning midgets from baseball forever.  Even though it is not said by Veeck that he got the idea from this story I assume that played a role in it.  You wouldn’t think a short story about baseball could end up leading to a rule change in baseball, but in this case it seems like it.  In the story after the midget grounded out he went on to disappear forever.  In the real life scenario, it led to fame and success for the midget Gaedel.  He went on to be on many television shows and ended up earning thousands of dollars and this all could be because of a story that prompted an idea for a major league owner.

In sports keeping the athletes motivated is one of the most important and hardest jobs of a manager.  In this case the manager signs a midget to show his team that they are all replaceable, it shows that he thinks so lowly of them at this exact moment that he is willing to have a midget bat over every single one of the other players on the team.  If I were on this team I would take something like this to heart and this would motivate me to play better.  The players on this team had to have been motivated by the fact that their manager thought they were playing so badly that a midget was a better option.  There are many ways of keeping players motivated and this quote from the movie Friday Night Lights does the job, “To me, being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there.  It’s about you and your relationship with yourself... It’s about being able to look your friends in the eye, and know that you didn’t let them down because you told them the truth.”(Coach Gaines).  This comes just before the team’s state championship game.  This portrays a different way of motivation, through words rather than actions.  Another example of motivation by a coach is coach Herb Brooks asking his team “Have You?  Given me your very best?  Because I know there’s a lot more in you, a whole other level, that for some reason you just don’t want to go to!” (Coach Brooks).  This is a speech given by Herb Brooks who was the coach of the United States Olympic hockey team that ended up beating the soviets to win the gold medal.  In this case Coach Brooks is trying to motivate his team by telling that that they haven’t given him everything they have.  He is in other words challenging his team to give him everything they have because that is what is needed for his team to win.  In the story You Could look it up him signing the midget motivates the team because they now know they are replaceable.  Even though the midget is only on the team for one game, this clearly motivates the team because they eventually go on to win the pennant.  This even ends up rattling the team they were playing in this game and even messes up the centerfielder that caught the midget.  The team was never able to recover from this game, and proves this was a great move made by the manager, and that one of the most important parts of being a manager is having ways to keep your team motivated and focused on winning.  

An interesting part of this story is where the title of it comes from and why it is “You could look it up.”  It is not specifically stated as to why this is the name of the story however the narrator often says “and of course, you could just look it up.”  He seems to say this a lot throughout the story for one reason or another.  It is interesting to me that this was chosen as the title of the story and I believe that this ties into the fact that they at first did not let the midget play but after “looking” through all the rule books they found nothing saying that a midget couldn’t play.  This title is interesting because at first glance you would wonder as to why this is the name of the story.  However, after digging deeper into the story we are able to put some reasoning behind the title of the story.  It is not only a saying that is often used by a narrator, but during the most important part of the story the umpires are forced to look up the rules.  In the back of everyone’s mind as they read this they just think to themselves to say to the ump “You could look it up.”, and even though it is not what is exactly said it is still interesting to think the title would’ve been the perfect thing to say to the ump in this case.  It’s as if everything is tied together, during the most important part of the story the title of the story could’ve been said to argue with the umps that midget shouldn’t be allowed to bat.

Anger and losing streaks are two things that can cause people to make rash decisions, and that is exactly the case for this story.  The manager of the team decides to sign the midget due to his teams losing streak and him being fed up with how the players are playing.  In an article it says “intense emotions can lead to rash decisions, and anger and embarrassment may make you particularly vulnerable to high risk, low-payoff choice.  Researchers suspect intense uncomfortable emotions impair self-regulation skills.” (Psychologytoday.com).  This shows that research has been done about this and proves the point that anger can lead to decisions that otherwise would not have been made.  In this story this decision for him to hire the midget is one that does not actually pay off in game or help the team out at all.  However, this decision lead to the team beginning to play well again.  This decision made by the manager was of course a rash decision driven completely by anger, and just not knowing what else to do to help save his team.  Like it says that anger and embarrassment can lead to taking a longshot, and this surely was one.  Usually a longshot will not be something that works out, but in this case it ends up motivating the team.  We see in the story that the midget doesn’t actually do anything to help the team, instead he actually hurts the team by not listening to his manager and grounding out, which leads to his team’s loss.  It is not directly said that the reason for the team doing well after this was because of the signing of the midget, however it is implied.

To be able to take risks a person must have a lot of courage and confidence in themselves.  In this case the risk taken was signing the midget to the team.  The manager was not totally sure how the team would take it.  Would they take it in a disrespectful way?  Would this motivate them?  In real life risks are taken, in the book Within My Heart by Tamera Alexander this quote is taken, “But he’d learned long ago that a life lived without risks pretty much wasn’t worth living.  Life rewarded courage, even when the first step taken was taken neck-deep in fear.”(Alexander).  This quote is very comparable to this story, the manager realizes that to get his team off of this losing streak he has to take a risk and do something out of the ordinary to try and jumpstart his team.  He was unsure if the risk of signing a midget would work out because he didn’t actually know how his team would respond to this stunt.  In another quote in the book The Daykeeper’s Grimoire by Christy Raedeke it says, “If there is no risk, there is no reward.” (Raedeke).  This ties into the first quote in saying that if you are not willing to put yourself out there and take a risk, chances are, you will not get the reward.  Being a manager in baseball, everything you do is a risk, whether it is putting in a new pitcher or stealing second base, you are unsure if it is going to work out, but you know risks must be taken in order to win.  This risk was not to steal a base or not, in this case it of course was to sign a midget to the team.  It is not exactly said as to why the manager decided to sign the midget but it seems as if it was a risk he believed was worth taking.  Reason being it said that as the team kept losing the manager would just more and more angry, this means that he decided to do this because he must have felt that somehow this stunt would help his team to start winning again.  

As we read through this text we are able to uncover originally thought.  By tying the story to real life scenarios it really adds so much more meaning to the story.  If you read this story you would think it’s only about baseball, however it’s not.  There are life lessons throughout the story that we are able to uncover by digging deeper and thinking as to why the manager did what he did, and the outcome of his risk.  In this case we are able to see that the risk the manager took was a successful one.  Even though it does not seem like signing a midget would end up working out, it motivated his team.  Motivation is something that we now realize is one of the most important things for athletes to possess.  At times athletes lose this motivation and it is the job of the manager to get them back to being motivated and wanting to win baseball games.  We also see that a story can have an impact on real life events, in this case the signing of Eddie Gaedel, a midget, by owner Bill Veeck.  Even though Veeck does not directly say that this story is the reason for him signing a midget it seems as if this may have played a role.  This is because during this time this was a very popular story and one that Veeck had definitely heard of.  His idea to sign the midget lead to a rule change of midgets being banned from playing baseball.  So indirectly we can say that this story played a role in baseball history.  To tie everything together, by digging deeper and tying the parts of this story to real life events we are able to add so much meaning to this story.  On the outside it seems as if it just a story about a baseball team, however as we look into it more we say that it also possesses some life lessons and has even had an effect on the actual game of professional baseball.  
