April 28, 2026
Photo courtesy of Bill Horner
Eight World Series rings sat on a classroom desk as 93-year-old former Major League Baseball scout Bill Clark told stories from more than four decades in the game. For students in the University of Missouri Honors College, it wasn’t just a lesson about baseball; it was a lesson about American history.
That moment is exactly what Bill Horner hopes students experience in Baseball and the American Experience, a course that explores how the story of baseball mirrors the story of the United States itself.
Horner, a Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professor in the College of Arts and Science and affiliate faculty in the Honors College, revived the baseball course in honor of the late Mike Perry, a former Mizzou instructor who once taught a similar class.
Now in his 26th year at Mizzou, Horner is teaching the course for the first time this spring and hopes to offer it annually in sync with the start of baseball season. If early interest is any indication, he may have a hit on his hands — he’s never had a class fill faster.
The course is structured like a baseball game, divided into nine “innings,” each exploring a different moment in baseball history. Students examine topics ranging from the origins of the sport to modern analytics revolution.
For Horner, baseball offers a powerful way of exploring complicated moments in American history.
“History is there and things happened,” he said. “And I think baseball is a great vehicle to use to bring up those topics.”
Students say the course not only deepens their understanding of history but also changes the way they view the game itself.
“It kind of seems like this Americana thing that reflects our country more than I ever thought,” Charlie Dahlgren, a senior in the Missouri School of Journalism, said.
As a final project, students interview someone about their personal connection to baseball and develop those stories into narratives. Selected pieces will be transformed into monologues in partnership with a Mizzou theater class, bringing those experiences to life on stage for Horner’s students.
For Horner, that final project and course reflect something larger than the game itself.
“Baseball is this common thing that brings a lot of people together regardless of everything else that divides them,” he said. “It’s this common ground that for close to 200 years has been able to bring people together.”
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