Pitchers and Catchers Report!
There may be many a sweeter verse in the English language, but none more
pertinent at this time of the year. Yes,
the annual rites of spring and the coming baseball season are making its way
through our culture once again… a sure sign that there is a God. It is the quintessential American experience
and recreational diversion in a world filled with financial, political and
spiritual upheaval.
Not that we haven’t been entertained and sidetracked through
the winter by football, Tebow and the Republican debates. More recently, a global tidal wave has surrounded
another young, Christian athlete –Jeremy Lin-- who has taken the basketball
world by storm. And it’s a much bigger
storm in China. The Lin story has been wonderful with its unlikely component of
an Asian kid from Harvard getting his chance to shine brightly on the big stage
of the Big Apple with the New York Knicks being the last stop before oblivion. While Tebow at least has a stellar college
career, Lin emerged from total obscurity to forge a commendable run in his
point guard role. More importantly to me
was the timing of Lin’s ascent, who was thrust into the spotlight to fill the slow-news
sports gap between the Super Bowl and
those four glorious words appearing in sports sections and on the lips of
sports reporters around the country. The
world may need love, sweet love, and look to Lin but it needs the return of baseball
more. Can I get an Amen?
But don’t take my word for it. A noted French born American historian, named
Jacques Barzun has what might be the best, most comprehensive quote ever
attributed to the game; "Whoever wants to know the heart and
mind of America had better learn baseball....”
Noted political pundit, intellectual and rabid baseball fan
George Will was asked on his Sunday political roundtable what movie will win
Best Picture. As a man who is highly
paid to give opinions, he responded as one might expect with this year’s crop
of nominees… His pick was the only film he “actually understood” (his quote) –
and that was Moneyball, which he saw four times, because “what else is on TV…
until the real games begin”. In terms of
art imitating life, Hollywood has always been enthralled with the sport of
baseball and its visceral beauty and simple quality. Its film history would be household names (Pride
of the Yankees, Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, and The Natural). Even it’s ballparks are legendary – Chicago’s
Wrigley Field, Boston’s Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium, “the House that Ruth
built” (until the new one opened a few years
back). No other sport conjures up
descriptions of sports stadiums as cathedrals…
hence the religious overtones of this great sport.
Will hasn’t been the lone scholarly voice espousing the cerebral
underpinnings of the game. Bart Giamatti
was the president of Yale before being appointed to the post of Baseball Commissioner. Critics were aghast! Giamatti explained it away by saying, "There are a lot of people who know me who
can't understand for the life of them why I would go to work on something as
unserious as baseball. If they only knew."
Therein also lies its beauty... it appeals to the
intelligent, the affluent, the poor, the foreigner and the average Joe. Giamatti as a college president certainly had
a way with words and waxed poetic during his Ivy League tenure expressing this
sentiment about baseball which still resonates today as a connection to
American life: “It
breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the
spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer,
filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come,
it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone."
We in
Southern California may not relate to ‘chill rains’ in the form of weather but
we all share in the flawed human condition often enough to grasp the magnitude
of that vision.
The game also derives its richness
from one of our most influential and important human relationships –that of a
father and son. Playing catch with Dad becomes a rite of passage from toddler status
to “kid”. Who can forget picking out
their first baseball glove, that first bat and donning that cap with the rolled
brim and attending that first big league game?
Like a Norman Rockwell vision, many of our earliest memories of growing
up revolve around those activities.
This is not to suggest that our
fair-maiden gender be excluded… not by a long shot. My mother is 91 years old,
lives in Philadelphia and every time I speak with her between November and
February she never fails to convey her impatience for the season to begin so
she can watch her beloved Phillies. During the season our phone calls begin
with three questions; “How’s the weather,” What time is it out there?” and “How
’bout those Phillies?” Is there a better
way to spend 6+ months of the year than watching our national pastime in your 90’s?
Not to be outdone, my wife Angela has
also joined the baseball bandwagon. We spend many spring and summer nights
captivated by the golden voice of Vin Scully over the TV and radio airwaves or in
attendance at Dodger games (yes we still are among the shrinking legions of
fans interspersed throughout the park).
She can even recite the sacred four words that are bound to ignite a
growing bond between us. Equipped with
this new found jargon and love for the Dodgers, she has spearheaded a trip to
Arizona this month to wallow in the leisure of life’s simplicity that is spring
training.
The good news, or so I’m told, is
that there must be baseball in Heaven. I just hope I’m not pitching anytime
soon. The advent of pitchers and catchers reporting is a little like Heaven on
earth.
