"America at Play "

I want to preach this morning on baseball. This may feel a little whimsical to some of you, or—for others—downright irreverent. I don’t think so. My reasons are as follows. First, a month ago when asked to come up with my sermon ideas for October it looked as though, just maybe, the Dodgers and the Angels might both be in the World Series, the annual championship showcase that begins later this week. So, my thinking went, there might be a lot of interest. Second, as Johan Huizinga (author of our first Reading) put it, “play has a tendency to be beautiful.” Preaching, as I suggested two weeks ago, involves holding up that which is worthy of our love—and this includes the good, the true, and the beautiful—and then asking whether it truly is something worth seeking and worth struggling to make more real in our lives. Is baseball so worthy? Can we separate the aesthetically beautiful in the game from that which is coarse and plebian and then integrate the beautiful more fully into our lives? Let us see. My final reason for choosing to preach on baseball is that it’s an American folk idiom and as such a perfect lens through which to get a handle on the heart of our culture. What do I mean “folk idiom?” Folk idioms are spontaneous, undirected expressions of a culture. They arise naturally—like language and music—from the people, not from the academy or from the state. And they reveal, in extraordinary ways, the heart and soul of the people that brought them to expression. Baseball, our country’s so-called national pastime, is such an idiom.

Like most idiom, baseball has its creation myth: a charming—and revealing—story…that’s entirely made up. The myth is that one day in 1839 a young Abner Doubleday supposedly laid out the first diamond in Elihu Phinney's cow pasture in Cooperstown, New York. Not true; still, like most creation stories, it has its allure: baseball was invented in a quaint rural town without foreigners or industry, by a young man who later graduated from West Point and served heroically in battle. Doubleday was, indeed, a bona fide American hero. It was he who fired the first shots in defense of Fort Sumter during the Civil War, distinguished himself at Gettysburg, and, in San Francisco after the war, obtained a patent on the cable car railway that still runs there. He was a nation builder…and thus a natural when it came to bequeathing the country its national game.

The truth is more prosaic. And revealing about America’s actual character. Americans played a version of the English game rounders in the 1700s, a game variously called "Town Ball", "Base Ball", and a host of other names. By the early 1820s the Unitarian Nathaniel Hawthorne, studying at Bowdoin College, wrote of playing the game with friends on the college quadrangle. Game rules, however, varied from place to place. Hawthorne and his classmates were playing a “folk” game: to the extent that there were rules, they were simple and unwritten. Aside from differences in terminology early games differed in the way the ball was thrown, equipment used, keeping score, making outs, number of players, and the layout of the field. It wasn’t until the 1840s that things became codified, and this at the direction of a young New York bookseller, Alexander Cartwright. Well-to-do young bankers and businessmen of that era were in the habit of meeting after work and playing ball. This was all started at the corner of East 35th Street and Lexington Avenue, a half block (incidentally) from the Community Unitarian Church. Alexander Cartwright came up with the 9-9-3 rule: nine players on a team, nine innings to a game, and three outs to an inning. He is also credited with instituting the “third out = all out” rule, such that whenever a player made the third out his entire team was retired.

Urban development soon made meeting in Manhattan impossible. In 1846 they began playing in Hoboken, New Jersey instead. At first the games were pretty much restricted to the well-heeled, but before long others joined in, too, and there were drovers, harness-makers, and other groups organizing teams of their own.

It’s worth noting that, again at first, there was little commerce between the upper- and other-class teams. This changed within a few years, and it’s interesting to know why. (Since baseball, as a folk idiom, casts a pretty accurate reflection of our national patterns, habits, and inclinations.) There was, from the very beginning, some serious betting on the outcome of these games. And since well-to-do New Yorkers, back in the 1840’s as today, have always put a premium on making money, it wasn’t long before they discovered that the acquisition of one exceptionally athletic Irish pipe fitter made their team of bankers a whole lot better, and a whole lot surer bet. The fierce meritocracy many of us admire in the modern game was first inspired—as it continues to be—by competition for coin.

In the 1860s came the Civil War. The movement of soldiers and exchange of prisoners helped spread baseball beyond New York City to the pastures and villages of the Mid-west and South. By the time the war was over it was a national game.  Enclosed ballparks and admission charges began. By 1869 professional ball clubs, beginning with the Cincinnati Red Stockings, were born. At first all the players hailed from Cincinnati; within a few months none of them did. The team recruited broadly and effectively, toured nationally, and remained unbeaten for over a year.

Amateurs, however, continued to dominate throughout the 19th century. Every town the size of Santa Monica had a club, sometimes several; leagues were established, and rivalries flourished. By the 1870s professionalism was becoming more and more a part of American culture; the establishment of trade and professional associations burgeoned. The National League, established in 1876, committed teams to even, orderly schedules and sought to limit league membership to large cities. In the 1880s, other new leagues rose to compete with the National League, including the Players League, established by the sport’s first player union, the Brotherhood of Professional Base-Ball Players. This was, after all, the era of the Robber Barons, and players (like workers across the land) were regularly abused, exploited and underpaid. Our country, at the time, was engaged in a fierce struggle over who had control of the means of production: those who owned them or those who did the work. As in other industries, the Player’s League came to naught, including its efforts to eliminate the salary cap and reserve clause that bound players to their teams indefinitely. Owners quickly bought out the most skilled among the union members, leaving everyone to fend for themselves—which they all were forced to do for another hundred years.

The early 20th century saw the beginnings of widespread specialization, and with it the arrival of single position players—first basemen, pitchers, catchers of what-have-you—and the simultaneous arrival of special equipment: mitts, gloves, masks, and the rest. Trends towards urbanization led many a farm boy into the city with dreams of making it on his fastball or batting skills—though more often than not it was in the factory or meat-packing house where their future was found. The same era saw the rise of major media. Major metropolitan dailies soon discovered that sport writers, with their slangy, upbeat style, drew subscribers to the paper and fans to the park. Ring Lardner, Grantland Rice, and their counterparts spread enthusiasm for baseball. Meanwhile, with its slow pace and many pauses alternating with moments of high tension, baseball was supremely suited to radio, appealing to listeners at home who could recreate the action in their minds. A generation of great announcers in every city helped identify their team with the fans.

These early years were known as the dead-ball era; the ball used then was “dead” by both design and from over-use. The game in those days, one dominated by the great pitchers of the era like Christy Mathewson pictured on the cover of the Order of Service, was a strategy-driven game, relying much more on stolen bases and hit and run type plays than on home runs. That changed with Ruth’s conversion from the mound to the outfield when he was sold to the Yankees in 1919. His home run hitting prowess and charismatic personality made George Herman Ruth a larger-than-life figure throughout the Roaring Twenties. Off the field he was famous for both his charity and his recklessness. On the field his big swing led to high home run totals that not only excited fans, but helped baseball evolve from a low-scoring, speed-dominated game to a high-scoring power game. The ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s were the beginning of celebrity-worship in our country and nobody had a lock on celebrity like the Babe…and later Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx, Hank Greenberg and others, right down to today.

Hank Greenberg deserves special note. Son of a prominent New York furniture manufacturer, Greenberg was also Jewish. His parents considered baseball players crude—and they were not alone in this. Ignoring their pleas, young Hank quit NYU and signed with the Detroit Tigers; within a few years he became the first Jewish superstar. When he married Carol Gimbel (of the New York department store family), his parents decided that maybe baseball wasn’t so crude after all.

Greenberg’s success—and his decision not to play on Yom Kippur despite being in a pennant race—paved the way for other Jewish families to allow their sons to play baseball, too. Including Sandy Koufax, Dodgers pitching phenom, who was, many of us would agree, the greatest Jewish athlete since Sampson.

Ethnic diversity had long been a hallmark of the game. Irish and German kids of the early years—followed in the 20th century by Poles, Italians, Eastern European Jews, Czechs and others—used baseball to demonstrate their status as 100 percent American and to overcome anti-immigrant prejudice. Some of them became pros. Still, there was one gaping hole: African Americans. Despite not being integrated in American society, blacks had adopted baseball as their favorite sport in the years following the Civil War. They played it professionally and with a high level of skill until the 1880s. Tragically, with the end of Reconstruction in the last two decades of the 19th century they were banned from the sport. Which remained the case until Jackie Robinson broke the color line in 1947. Along with Robinson, Branch Rickey, General Manager of the Dodgers bears the responsibility—and the credit—for ending baseball segregation.

His decision had a long gestation. Decades earlier, as coach of the Ohio Wesleyan baseball team, he’d witnessed one of his players, an African-American, refused accommodation at the hotel where the team was staying. Rickey never forgot the young man’s tears and embarrassment, nervously rubbing his hands, as though wishing to remove their pigment. The experience profoundly changed him. "I may not be able to do something about racism in every field,” Rickey later said, “but I can sure do something about it in baseball." A good businessman, he also knew that the Negro Leagues had some great stars, and that logically, the first Major League team to hire them would get first pick of the players at a reasonable price, and that integration would also expand their team’s fan base among blacks. It was Branch Rickey who also signed Roberto Clemente, the first Hispanic superstar. As the addition of black and brown players strengthened their teams, the players mostly welcomed them. Baseball as culture idiom was, of course, the stage upon which all this occurred and it set the pace for the rest of America. I daresay Mr. Rickey did more for civil rights in this country than any white man save John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and Lyndon Johnson.

The 1970s saw the end of the reserve clause (keeping players the virtual property of their team’s owner) and of the salary cap, paving the way to big money. This upsets many left-leaning Unitarians, who lament the day when the best players earned, say, six times the wages of their countrymen. Sure, teachers, social workers, nurse’s aides, and others should be paid better; I wholeheartedly agree. But consider this: few teachers, social workers, or health care workers—none that I know—can hit a major league curveball. Or throw one. Players are paid for their rare and extraordinary athletic skills—skills few people have, and skills that fade quickly and vanish, usually by the time they’re thirty-five.

Over the last few years another concern has been the proliferation of performance-enhancing drugs. But what are Viagra, Botox, Ambien, and anti-depressants if not performance-enhancing? And who wants to banish them? I don’t know the answer to Americans’ passion for drugs, but I do know this: as a folk idiom baseball will reflect trends, not resolve them. What we are to become as a people will be mirrored in the game…and when we become drug-free as a people, so will the game of baseball; probably not much sooner.

Robert Frost delineates four virtues foundational to baseball and that inspire his admiration: prowess, justice, courage, and knowledge. To which I would add grace, cooperation, and one’s ability to put mistakes behind and focus on what’s happening now.

I love baseball. I love the virtues it can—and often does—express. Yes, it’s too focused on money and the coddling of its marquis players. And it’s closed—so far—to women. But so, too, in many ways, does our country continually improve, embracing its creed of equality and of rewarding one’s skills and creativity. Let it be so, and ever more so.

“I never feel more at home in America than at a ball game,” wrote the poet Robert Frost. I celebrate being at home here in this beautiful, mixed-up, crazy land of ours. And I celebrate baseball, its so-called pastime, for its aesthetic beauty and its ability to inspire excellence. I love the game. Allow me, then, this paean on its behalf: a beautiful, conflicted reflection of a beautiful, conflicted country: America, our beautiful—conflicted, yes, but still mostly very beautiful—home.

Blessed Be.

Readings

Johan Huizinga was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history. A professor of history from 1915 to 1942 at Leiden University, Huizinga was detained by the Nazis for speaking out against their barbarism, which quickly lead to his death at their brutal hands. Among his classic books was Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element In Culture, published by the Unitarian Beacon Press in 1938.

Nature, so the reasoning mind tells us, could just as easily have given her children all those useful functions of discharging superabundant energy, of relaxing after exertion, of training for the demands of life, of compensating for unfulfilled longings, etc., in the form of purely mechanical exercises and reactions. But no, she gave us play, with its tension, its mirth, and its fun….

Now this last element, the fun of playing, resists all analysis, all logical interpretation. As a concept it cannot be reduced to any other mental category…. [I]t is precisely this fun element that characterizes the essence of play. Here we have to do with an absolutely primary category of life, familiar to everybody….

Any thinking person can see at a glance that play is a thing on its own, even if his [or her] language possesses no general concept to express it. Play cannot be denied. You can deny, if you like, nearly all abstractions: justice, truth, goodness, mind, God. You can deny seriousness, but not play.

After encapsulating its essence, fun, Huizanga outlines play’s three formal characteristics:

1. It is done at leisure, during “free time”…. [I]t is free, is in fact freedom.

2. The disinterested quality of play. Not being “ordinary” life it stands outside the immediate satisfaction of wants and appetites, indeed interrupts the appetitive process…. Play adorns life, amplifies it and is to that extent a necessity for both the individual—as a life function—and for society by reason of the meaning it contains, its significance, its expressive value, its spiritual and social associations, in short, as a social function.

3. its secludedness, its limitedness. Play begins, and then at a certain moment it is “over.” It plays itself to an end….

Limited by time, play is also limited by space. All play moves and has its being within a playground marked off beforehand….

Inside the playground an absolute and peculiar order reigns. Here we come across another, very positive feature of play: it creates order, is order. Into an imperfect world and into the confusion of life it brings a temporary, a limited perfection. Play demands order absolute and supreme. The least deviation from it “spoils the game”, robs it of its character and makes it worthless. The profound affinity between play and order is perhaps the reason why play…seems to lie to such a large extent in the field of aesthetics. Play has a tendency to be beautiful.

In 1956 Sports Illustrated invited the poet Robert Frost to attend the All-Star game and record his thoughts. The result was a whimsical tribute, from which the closing paragraph is selected.

It has been a day of prowess in spite of its being a little on the picnic side, and possibly not as desperately fought as it might be in a World Series. Prowess, prowess, in about equal strength for both sides. Each side made 11 hits, two home runs and not a single error. The day was perfect, the scene perfect, the play perfect. Prowess of course comes first, the ability to perform with success in games, in the arts and, come right down to it, in battle. The nearest of kin to the artists in college where we all became bachelors of arts are their fellow performers in baseball, football, and tennis. That’s why I am so particular college athletics should be kept from corruption. They are close to the soul of culture. At any rate the Greeks thought so. Justice is a close second to prowess. When displayed toward each other by antagonists in war and peace, it is known as the nobility of noble natures. And I mustn’t forget courage, for there is neither prowess nor justice without it. My fourth, if it is important enough in comparison to be worth bringing in, is knowledge, the mere information we can’t get too much of and can’t ever get enough of, we complain, before going into action.

As I say, I never feel more at home in America than at a ball game be it in part or in sandlot. Beyond this I know not. And dare not.