Robert Elias

WHY BASEBALL?

Who would have known? It’s a strange road I’ve taken to write a baseball book and teach a course on the subject. For more than two decades, I’ve been teaching and doing research about the underbelly of America: on war, crime, racism, sexism, poverty, violence, repression, victimization, imperialism, corporate tyranny, government corruption and on related—and similarly “uplifting” themes. I’ve given America a hard time, and in some ways it’s returned the favor. For the uninitiated, in contrast to these weighty themes, taking on the subject of baseball might seem a bit frivolous, or at least irrelevant. So how did I happen to focus on the national pastime?

It turns out that I have a history with baseball about which I was not, until recently, fully aware. In his book, Baseball and the Cold War, Howard Senzel describes the experience of first embracing and then abandoning baseball:

"In the process of forming my . . .moral attitudes, baseball got closed out [and was]. . . .taken over by another drama--politics. Racism, Imperialism, Anti-capitalism, Revolution, Drugs, and Rock and Roll Music replaced baseball as the arena where I could define myself as an insider...Without sentiment. . .I turned my back on baseball. Invigorated by that great
American energy of progress and self-development, I was moving on to more important things. Baseball was dying inside of me, but . . .I saw it only as an awakening out of childhood and into the wonderful world of serious things."

I had an intense baseball childhood but, as Senzel describes, I left it behind for more “serious things.” Indeed, sports—including baseball—seemed, after a certain point, not merely irrelevant but positively counterproductive. In retrospect, despite my “puppy love” for the sport, I guess I eventually viewed baseball as an “opiate for the masses” that would only obscure people’s true condition in American society.

Under those circumstances, then, why would I allow baseball back into my life? Senzel describes the rediscovery of baseball and how the game, rather than being frivolous, actually has a serious and personal meaning:

". . . there is a part of me that has been in turmoil. . .and which still asks me, Why baseball? Why not Greek tragedies and symphonies? [or]economics, history and philosophy? And if it must be so esoteric, why not something closer to a master plot? . . . And now, finally, I can answer that question, because baseball is now a part of me that I can see. [a]nd it runs deeper than other culture. Not traditional philosophy and . . .history, because in my identity. . .[b]aseball is so deeply rooted that it is not subject to will. Baseball is the strongest, least vulnerable, and most confident piece of myself that I am in touch with: . . .the metaphor of baseball. . ."

And so, as I went about trying to put into perspective years of frustration about the American system, I stumbled back into baseball—or it stumbled back into me. This probably began a bit more than a decade ago when I joined a Baseball for Peace tour of Sandinista Nicaragua. In the face of interventionist and counterrevolutionary Reagan administration policies, we spent a few weeks in Nicaragua—under difficult conditions-- playing baseball, repairing war-torn baseball fields, donating baseball and construction equipment, and generally trying to use baseball to build good will between the American and Nicaraguan peoples. For this eye-opening insight into baseball’s impressive influence, I’m indebted to Baseball for Peace director, Jay Feldman. But it was not until far more recently that baseball’s ramifications finally hit home for me.

After years in the sobering process of “tearing down” what seemed to me the injustices of American society, I became more interested in how to “build up” the best in our culture. In particular, I wanted to understand what good there was, if any, in the American dream. Aside from all the pomp and circumstance, what really was that dream, how did it begin, what does it mean today, and how could it be more positively constituted for the future? When I groped around for a productive tool for completing this task, suddenly there was baseball again.

I began to sense what some baseball scholars have long known: the national pastime is not merely a diversion but rather a longstanding reflection of the strengths and weaknesses of American life. But in line with Senzel’s insights, baseball presented itself, I suspect, for far more personal reasons: it was a hidden part of my identity (as I now sheepishly admit to some of my friends) and could now serve as my refuge from the ravages of America’s conflicts and strife. Baseball has returned as a metaphor for me. It serves not as a hiding place (however tempting it might be to have one) but rather as a buffer against the continuing problems in the American system.

But more than that, rather than being an “opiate,” I now see that baseball need not obscure social conditions but instead can serve as a revealing mirror of American life—a reflection we can use constructively rather than destructively. Baseball provides a common denominator that cuts across conflicting political ideologies. Baseball offers and also illustrates some of the best that America has to offer. It also features some of the more disturbing characteristics of U.S. society. Baseball is an enigma, but in the end, despite the contradictions, it serves far more as an inspiration than anything else.

The French philosopher Albert Camus once wrote that “the true patriot is one who gives his highest loyalty not to his country as it is but rather to what it can and ought to be.” That’s the perspective I now apply to baseball, and also to our broader society and the American dream. When America and the national pastime fail to live up to their ideals, having a critical perspective seems like the only truly patriotic response. As James Baldwin once suggested: “...precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself in conflict with your society. It is your responsibility to change society if you think of yourself as an educated person.” And so, we should pose (and my book and course specifically asks) some critical questions: What should baseball and America be? When and why do they fall short? What can be done?

However one ultimately assesses the sport or the state of American culture at the moment, the most important thing is to stimulate new interest in baseball’s importance to our society.