Strong memories—of good times, of challenges met, of shaping experiences commonly shared—are the critical foundation of a good and meaningful life, particularly if you are young. Cherished memories of days passed can spur us on, can exhort us, and can motivate us when our own days seem dark and unendurable. On my desk sits a [...]
More and more Americans, all of them convinced that their side is losing, try to rig the game in their favor. No longer willing to play fair, they want only to win… Born on October 4, 1809 and orphaned at the age of twelve, Robert Cumming Schenck overcame his early difficulties to earn a bachelor’s [...]
"My guiding philosophy was that playing every day for your team was the most honorable thing you could do. They were counting on you. You had a challenge that day, and you came to the ballpark to meet that challenge. You played. That was the highest level you could achieve." —quoted in The Streak: Lou [...]
It's rare that an author billing his work as a piece of revisionism ends up, seemingly unwittingly, reinforcing the traditional interpretation of his subject. But Charles Leerhsen accomplishes this unusual feat in his biography, "Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty." Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty by Charles Leerhsen (464 pages, Simon & Schuster, 2015) It's rare [...]
Our deepest norms of order can still be seen in operation on the diamond when they’ve been adulterated everywhere else. Baseball is our Utopia — not in assuring us of the victories we dream of, but in guaranteeing ideal conditions even of defeat. We are players or spectators of other sports, but citizens of baseball. [...]
“Ryan is the only guy who puts fear in me. Not because he can get you out but because he can kill you.” —Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson It was the last day of our spring training odyssey: Sunday, March 28, 1993. For the past week, I, along with my friends Mark and John, had [...]
"I like your interest in sports ball, chiefest of all base-ball particularly: base-ball is our game: the American game: I connect it with our national character. Sports take people out of doors, get them filled with oxygen generate some of the brutal customs (so-called brutal customs) which, after all, tend to habituate people to a [...]
The Yankee franchise represents the worst side of modern baseball and is thus the fittest of villains in the cosmic drama embodied by the game... "They are the 'Dark Side.' They represent all that is evil about baseball, and about our society in general." —Bill Lee, former major league pitcher It was the late winter of 2002, [...]
When the fielder loves his record More than victory for his team Doubtful chances miss his glances For his caution is extreme. Going after every grounder Means a slip-up here and there, And in terror of an error He will choose the chances fair. Spotless records are enticing In a ball game as in life, [...]
The film “Field of Dreams” beautifully portrays in a contemporary idiom the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but even more so, the grand cosmic drama to which that Parable points: that of Paradise lost and Paradise regained. In view of the beginning of baseball season, and as the father of two Little Leaguers, I thought [...]
Idolatry is a dimension of the value that is now placed on sports in America, and is expressed in unbridled adoration of physical feats, and in bowing down to the things of the world… “A technologically supported secularism would make men as gods whose mere desires transform material reality to suit their needs.” So writes [...]
“April is the cruellest month,” T.S. Eliot wrote in the first lines of The Waste Land, but for baseball fans it is the month of September that marks the time of bitterest disappointment. Whereas April, the opening month of the baseball season, is filled with hope and promise, September is the final full month of the regular [...]
Recently I went to see a baseball game. The New York Yankees were playing the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium. Usually I am perfectly content to watch sports on TV in the comforts of home and avoid the contingencies of weather and traffic, and the costs of parking, tickets and concessions. I am also sensitive [...]
On April 25, 1976, the year of the American Bicentennial celebrations, Chicago Cubs outfielder Rick Monday saved an American flag from being burned by two protestors who had trespassed onto the field during a game at Dodger Stadium. As the bottom of the fourth inning got underway, the protesters placed the flag in left-center field [...]