A game of ball

What captures baseball better than Ken Burns’ Baseball series? “It is played everywhere, in parks and playgrounds and 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 two hundred years, while they conquered a continent, warred with one another and enemies abroad, struggled over labor and civil rights, and the meaning of freedom.”

It is also the sport that we first teach our children to play. Small children play tee ball. They progress to coach pitch and eventually to player pitch. It says a great deal about us that we often begin with baseball. Many athletes agree that the most challenging professional achievement is hitting a baseball in the Major Leagues. As Baseball explains: “The batter has only thousandths of a second to decide to hit the ball. And yet the men who fail seven times out of ten are considered the game’s greatest heroes.” This is the game we use to instruct our children. It is not easy for many of them to hit in coach pitch, much less player pitch. Some of them can barely hit off a tee.

Little about baseball is easy. Children begin without keeping score and without much keeping track of strikes—they would almost all strike out. They begin without knowing which base to run to first or last. It takes them years to remember where to position themselves in the field and not to throw the bat. It takes them years to have the coordination to catch and throw well. Some never arrive. Everything in baseball takes time to learn. It even takes time to break in your glove. That, too, has a whole heritage around it. Youth soccer is not played well, but it is much easier for small children to chase a soccer ball and occasionally make contact than it is for them to hit a baseball or throw it without hitting someone.

Yet every spring, summer, and fall, little kids are clinking metal bats and running around bases. Youth leagues ask a great deal of adults, too. Coaches and base running coaches stand along the sides, patiently waiting and encouraging and directing. Parents call out to children picking flowers in the outfield. Youth baseball is played outdoors, there is never air-conditioning. It is often hot. Sunscreen is needed. The pants are typically white even though the dirt is red and the players intentionally slide in it all the time—are even directed to do so. All of this for small children, many of whom will prove unathletic and not play any other sport.

Despite all these disadvantages, it is wonderful that we often begin with baseball.  In that opening episode of Baseball, Bob Costas explains part of what makes the game so appealing. As he says, “First thing about it, and this seems so obvious that maybe we overlook it, baseball is a beautiful thing.” He goes on, “It’s beautiful, the way the field fans out, the choreography of the sport, the pace and rhythm of it, the fact that that pace allows for conversation and reflection and opinion and comparison.” Baseball is beautiful in all those ways and that is part of why it is good for children. It does have a unique rhythm which allows for conversation and reflection. It is not all fast-paced. Neither is it always slow. It requires skill and strength. Parents can chat on the bleachers and not miss much.

Because of its associations with youth and summer, baseball is often closely linked to family and memory. Many children learn baseball from their fathers. It is little wonder that Field of Dreams revealed that many middle-aged adults crave a game of catch with a long-gone parent or realize later in life that those childhood games of catch were some of their happiest moments. Yet baseball is also the freedom and excitement of youth. For a certain generation, nothing captures their youth better than the film The Sandlot. Even children today quote its lines. In that film, baseball demonstrates the ways that young people can begin to take charge of their destiny and forge their way in life without constant parental guidance and surveillance.

For Americans, sports help us envision the world as it should be and are also often our measure of the world as it is. In sports, talent is supposed to be rewarded. Sports are supposed to be a true meritocracy. When that seems in jeopardy or there is a lack of parity in a league, we are unhappy fans. Sports offers us places to attach our allegiances, especially our most irrational ones. Yet sports help us assess reality. They are a place where injustice can be the most obvious and where we expect progress to be visible. We recognize the greatness of the Negro Leagues and the sadness of the need for their existence. People have opinions on the fate of Pete Rose, the steroid use of Mark McGwire, the integrity of Shoeless Joe Jackson.

Baseball is part of our national memory. Relatively few other countries really enjoy it at all, especially outside the Western Hemisphere. Ask Americans who the first African American senator was and they will not know. Ask Americans who was the first African American player in the Major Leagues and they will know. New Jackie Robinson-related clothing, shoes, and gear continues to be release. Beginning children with baseball is introducing our children to American culture, past and present.

“Take me out to the ballgame” is more than one of the most recognizable songs and perhaps the only reason people still eat Cracker Jack. Thousands of Americans consider visiting every Major League stadium a life goal. (You can order a very nice ballpark scratch off poster here.) Historic ballparks are spoken of in reverential ways by everyday Americans, something they do with no other form of architecture. Ballparks that are no more are still mourned, like Ebbets Field. Americans who do not even especially like baseball will go to a game in the summer, because it is the summer thing to do, because it is both a sporting and social event, and because it is lovely to sit under the lights.

Baseball presents a certain way of doing life. It teaches one to observe the seasons. It involves being outdoors and playing, but often at a mostly leisurely pace. It can be played for life. There is backyard wiffle ball. There are church softball leagues. Lately, there are adult sandlot teams and leagues, like the Texas Playboys Baseball Club in Austin, TX, or the Carolina Kudzu Baseball Club in Raleigh, NC. The Texas Playboys are a “pleasure and social club” founded in 2006—they were the pioneers of the “sandlot revolution.” This revolution is bringing baseball back to adults. The teams include people of all skill levels, playing traditional baseball, and building community. The Carolina Kudzu are part of the Carolina Sandlot Collective, inspired by the first wave. This collective tells the curious, “We throw hardballs, we swing wooden bats, we drink cold beer, we celebrate each other’s successes and share each other’s losses.” Games are family events.

Introducing children to baseball is a way of orienting them in the world. You cannot play baseball alone. You will almost certainly not be good when you begin. It takes time and effort and practice to progress and it requires help from others. You have to keep your eye on the ball in order to hit it. You have to “run it out” and hustle for the base even if you suspect you will be thrown out before you arrive. You can play with people of almost all ages and can certainly watch with people of all ages. It communicates so much about the American philosophy and way of life, it is not at all surprising that Americans will wear a baseball cap for a team they know nothing about in order to demonstrate their regional identity.

To return to Garrison Keillor’s voiceover from Baseball, let us end with this 1846 quote from Walt Whitman in the Brooklyn Eagle: “In our sun-down perambulations of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn we have observed several parties of youngsters playing ‘base,’ a certain game of ball… Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our close rooms… the game of ball is glorious.”