By Ian Ward
Today, through the Baseball and American Identity Immersion trip, I was able to use exclusive Baseball Hall of Fame Library Archival Documents. 
This use of documents coincides with a class project about a Indiana born baseball player, who has had an impact on the game of Baseball. The player I have chosen is Don Larsen. Larsen was a pitcher for the New York Yankees in the 1950’s. His impact on baseball was that of being the only person to ever pitch a perfect game in the World Series. As far as what I was able to research, I was able to see between 50 and 100 news articles regarding Larsen and his career, both on and off the field. Also, I was able to read through many books not only on his greatest accomplishment, but also on his career overall, and see how he came to pitch his best game. By researching Larsen, I was able to find that despite his on-field performance that October night, his overall career was not Hall of Fame worthy. Also, by analyzing the resources I found that he had several off the field issues that often over shadowed his play. Therefore, by being able to utilize the archives I found many facts that would have otherwise been unavailable for me to use in my overall project. Plus, due to the extreme organization of the Archival Documents, it was both easy and fun to research this interesting player. This is how the Immersion Trip to Cooperstown New York, and accompanying Archival Research, coincides with the project of researching an Indiana Baseball Player, and the overall course of learning about Baseball and its relationship to American Identity.
