Take Me Out to the Ballgame

More than any other sport, [baseball] summons the past…. Baseball is, I suspect, our most mythological of sports; it has the longest history, it is by its own proclamation our national pastime, and it harbors, I think, our greatest mythological figures…. It is a sport with its own rhythms and graces.
David Halberstam, in Everything They Had

Baseball memories are seductive, tempting us always toward sweetness and undercomplexity.
Roger Angell, in Game Time

For all its changes, baseball has not strayed far from its origins, and in fact has changed far less than other American institutions of equivalent antiquity. What sustains baseball in the hearts of Americans, finally, is not its responsiveness to changes in society nor its propensity for novelty, but its myths, its lore, its records, and its essential stability…. Spring comes in America not on the vernal equinox but on opening day; summer sets in with a Memorial Day doubleheader and does not truly end until the last out of the regular season. Winter begins the day after the World Series…. We grow up with baseball; we mark – and, for a moment, stop – the passage of time with it. It is our game, for all our days.
John Thorn, in Baseball: Our Game

The 2010 baseball season opened this week. The Minnesota Twins will play in a new stadium in this, their fiftieth year in Minnesota (it is my fifty-first year of life – I have grown up with baseball here in Minnesota!).

I enjoy baseball for its rich history. Some of the first historical photographs I remember seeing were old black and white pictures of famous baseball players from the past. I appreciate the leisurely pace of the game. It can get long, can be tedious sometimes, maybe a little boring even – but in our hectic world, a little boredom can be a good thing - - - time to think, time to reflect. I like the combination of team and individual effort that is a part of the game.

Baseball memories are seductive. I am sure I love the game for its deep associations from my childhood. I can still smell the hard bubble gum that came with a pack of baseball cards. I remember the white sugary powder that dusted the pink gum and can still recall its taste when you began to chew. The flavor never lasted long. I remember the games I invented to play with my card collection. I had my cards organized by teams, and the cards alphabetized within teams. One summer I took paper and made rosters for each of my teams, put together starting line-ups, and began playing a season – a season that I never finished. I still have the small vending machine baseball that I used to simulate plays. It is now hard and yellowed. I can almost hear the voices that broadcast ball games from out of a small transistor radio with the single ear piece – Herb Carneal and Halsey Hall. These memories do tend toward sweetness and undercomplexity. Growing up was not always easy. Yet baseball is deeply associated in me with a simpler time, with a certain innocence. I had yet to see some of the complexity and difficulty of the world.

Becoming a mature person, a person growing in faith, hope and love involves, I think, staying in touch with hopeful innocence and peacefulness while looking with eyes wide open at the world in all its ugliness and beauty. We cannot live in sweetness and undercomplexity, but perhaps visiting there once in awhile to refresh our spirits and recharge our batteries is not such a bad thing. Baseball does that for me.

Take me out to the ballgame.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David