Hail to Baseball!

I love watching football . . . to the point that I once gave the Green Bay Packers money for “one share” of the team . . . but the movie Concussion and an examination of the facts has given me pause about the game. Can I enjoy a sport that is killing the men who play the game? Can this issue be solved without destroying the essence of the sport?

I don’t know, but sadly I am glad that my children never played the game. How could I wish anyone’s kids to play?  Thank God, baseball, America’s first great game, faces no such problem. We can watch without nagging guilt. Baseball gives us a gift.

Sport attaches us to our times and to history. 

Sitting watching the Rochester Red Wings play AAA baseball in old Silver Stadium (long gone) on Knot Hole Gang day (free tickets for kids!) is a happy childhood memory that continued off and on through young adulthood. I missed the longest game ever played, but kept hearing on the radio that the team was still playing for so long that I am not sure I believe the game ever ended.

Dad could tell me about games from his childhood and until he died, my Papaw Reynolds listened to the Reds on his bedroom radio. The game is played today, was played yesterday, and (God willing) can be played tomorrow.

This is a (nearly) innocent pleasure.

It is possible to love baseball more than God, I suspect this of all Yankee’s fans, but that is to twist the game. Baseball as baseball is pure. There is nothing illicit about the pleasure to the point that a man must generally bring outside vices to the game. You can be drunk at a game, but given the quality of the beer, if you do so, then baseball did not create the problem. A man could ignore his family obligations for sport, but he can also take his family to games.

It was great fun to watch Mary Kate play softball and one son had a legendary season (in our family) of Little League.

We can play the game. 

I can get out my (not very used) glove and throw a ball in the back yard with the (now adult) kids, though badminton is more our speed. When I was a kid, I got a “pitch back” and could throw at the mesh for hours pretending to pitch my way through the World Series. This got me outside, was exercise, and had such scope for the imagination.

We can “fight” and discuss over topics that do not really matter.

Sport, like all fandom, gives us topics for disputation that do not matter. As such, they are an excuse for jolly disputation and the question of the “best pitcher” of all time can act as a training ground for more serious topics that are to come. There are facts and there are opinions, emotions and passions, but (save for weirdlings) everyone knows it does not really matter. This is the training ground of philosophy.

Sport is a great sub-creation. 

When my daughter counts down the days to visit Fenway this spring (Why the Red Sox, Mary Kate? Why? I thought I raised you well.), I rejoice to see her joy. Humans have created something fun out of nearly nothing. Someone took a field and built some stands. Money was made, but places like Fenway (and ownership of teams) are not just investments, but the depository of dreams.

There is no way to say anything like this about baseball or any sport without falling into 1930’s sports writer tropes, but that is only to say that we care, because we choose to care. So far as we know, we are the only beings in the cosmos who can cry when a man catches a ball or cry harder when a man cannot catch a ball.

This is a great thing.

A few Christmas’ messages ago the Queen of England recognized the importance of sport in our annual speech. This might have seemed odd coming from such a pious Christian, but was very appropriate. God’s great gift to humankind was Himself and one aspect of Himself was the ability to take pleasure in creation. God looked at what He made and said it was good. Humankind can go to the park this baseball season and look at the essence of the game, the motion of the human body, the thrill of fans in innocent pleasure, the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” and say: “this is good.”

The boys of summer are back and I am glad.