Jonathan Holloway, the Edmund Morgan Professor of African American Studies and dean of the College at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, was a star football player in high school in Maryland and played linebacker during his college days at Stanford. But he had never thrown a baseball in his life.
So when Professor Holloway was invited to throw the ceremonial first pitch at a Miami Marlins game, he went on a crash course to throw a baseball 60 feet so he wouldn’t embarrass himself in front of thousands of Marlins fans. Professor Holloway had a training session with John Stuper, head baseball coach at Yale.
Professor Holloway was selected for this honor by Jeffrey H. Loria, the owner of the Marlins, who is a Yale alumnus. Marlins team president David Samson has a daughter that currently is enrolled at Yale.
Professor Holloway is the author of Confronting the Veil: Abram Harris Jr., E. Franklin Frazier, and Ralph Bunche, 1919-1941 (University of North Carolina Press, 2001) and Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in Black America Since 1940 (University of North Carolina Press, 2013).
Dr. Holloway is a graduate of Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. from Yale University.
Want to know how Professor Holloway’s effort turned out? You can download the video here.
