Contents of Sports Return

Lecture Notes

However, when sports made a comeback in the weeks after 9/11, baseball served as a primary vehicle for healing and the production of meaning in American society. As Scott Miller of CBS SportsLine noted: "People have made joking references to baseball as religion. In its' own small way, what we saw amid the horror not long after 9/11 was baseball as prayer. When it was time to begin moving forward again from the physical and emotional wreckage, however gingerly, baseball - and the unique healing powers it can offer to those who love it - resumed on Sept 18th after a weeks worth of postponements." Here, we can see one of the ways that baseball provided meaning: it united the country by reminding them about their shared values, their history, their traditions - including baseball - and it highlighted that baseball was integrally tied to the nation: it was more than a sport, it was a integral part of our identity, our nationality, our ability to create meaning for ourselves in a time of crisis.