Baseball

It is played everywhere: in parks and playgrounds, prison yards, in back alleys and farmers’ fields; by small boys and old men, raw amateurs and millionaire professionals. It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed; the only game in which the defense has the ball. It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn.

Americans have played baseball for more than 200 years; while they conquered a continent, warred with each other and with enemies abroad, struggled over labor and civil rights, and with the meaning of freedom.

At its heart lie mythic contradictions: a pastoral game born in crowded cities, an exhilarating democratic sport that tolerates cheating, and has excluded as many as it has included. A profoundly conservative game that often manages to be years ahead of its time. It is an American Odyssey that links sons and daughters to fathers and grandfathers, and it reflects a host of age-old American tensions; between workers and owners, scandal and reform, the individual and the collective.

It is a haunted game in which every player is measured with the ghosts of those who have gone before. Most of all it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope, and coming home.

Ken Burns, Baseball

In my humble opinion, baseball is the closes thing we will have to a perfect game.

Baseball is an equal-opportunity game. There are benefits to being short, just as there are benefits to being tall. Speed is a benefit, but so is strength. There is an advantage to having natural skill, raw tap, and creative strategy, and yet fundamentals and old-fashioned teamwork can also win the games. While one team may take an early lead, the game is not over until that last out of the ninth inning (or extra-innings). A comeback victory is always possible.

Baseball is a game that is both local and mythical. It is a local game in that it can be played anywhere that a bat and a ball can be found. I have played more than my fair share of games in which soda cans, fence posts, or even a backyard tree served as impromptu bases. We did not care if the field was far from regulation. Gloves were optional, and if we were short on players, we would call “ghost man on third.” High School, Church League, and City League games are a bit more organized, but they still carry a sense of timeless belonging. There is something special about rooting for the home team when the team truly is your “home team.”

And yet, at the same time, baseball is a mythical game. I know no other sport with a pantheon of legends quite like baseball. Shoeless Joe Jackson, Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, and Ty Cobb are names that transcend the sport itself. The first poem I memorized in school was “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer. This poem tried to capture the mythical power of a hometown baseball hero and the reality of learning that baseball players are only human.

As a child, one of my earliest memories was watching Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa compete in the now infamous 1998 home run record chase. I remember watching Mark McGuire break the record, and I remember when someone at school told me he and Sammy Sosa were both cheaters. It was the first time I remember having to rethink how I saw a hero of mine.

I have heard skeptics say that baseball is a boring game, but I feel as though this accusation is more telling of our moment in time than it is of baseball as a game. Baseball is a slower game. It is a thoughtful game, it is a game that allows itself time to breathe, but it is not a boring game. In our fast-paced culture, we need baseball. In an age of rigorous scheduling and productivity, it is counter-cultural to play a game without time limits. It is a game that encourages dialogue, speculation, and meditation.

It is largely for this reason that I am not a fan of sabermetrics, to the point where I intentionally avoid overly statistical analysis. I don’t want a predictable, data-driven game. I like the mythical, mystical, pastoral American past-time. To quote Alan Jacobs, “Baseball was better when we knew less about the most effective way to play it.”

But even in this era of data and over-analysis, baseball continues to call me homeward. There will always be some unquantifiable and immeasurable something about the game that appeals to my soul. It is American in an ideal sense, and I hope that the game will continue long after I am gone, hopefully, played in backyards and cul-de-sacs by my children and children’s children.