Welcome to Lecture 4.2. Today's topic: baseball. Material from today's lecture is partially from Michael Mandelbaum's The Meaning of Sport, Chapter 2. We will not be able to cover the entire chapter today in this lecture; instead, I will go over some of the highlights and leave it to you to study the particulars. There will also be a study guide included in this week's lesson so that you can catch up on some of the trivia that I think is important from Mandelbaum's history of each sport. In addition, we will take a look at the role of baseball in American patriotism after the events of September 11, 2001.
Our objectives today are to: understand why Mandelbaum calls baseball the traditional game, think critically about the ways that "sports follow the flag." CASE STUDY: sports and 9/11
Before we begin, let me quickly remind you of the three primary questions Mandelbaum attempts to answer throughout the book. As we focus on baseball, I would like you to think about how our readings and discussions add to our answers for these questions.
Let's begin our discussion of baseball with a short film made by Thomas Edison in 1898 of a baseball game. Click the image to watch the clip. Although you can't see much of the game in this clip, I'm guessing that what you do see looks recognizable: It looks like baseball which should tell you that the game of baseball hasn't changed very much in over a century.
As Mandelbaum points out in Chapter 1, baseball is one of the most traditional (perhaps even pre-modern) sports in America. As this Currier and Ives painting illustrates, baseball is played in "parks," follows the rhythms of nature and the seasons, and has roots in rural and agrarian societies. So is baseball a traditional game or a modern sport? Does it have the characteristics of a modern sport that we encountered in Lessons 1 and 2?
Mandelbaum helps us answer this question by providing reasons for both arguments. He highlights several aspects of baseball that I would like to draw your attention to here. Baseball has many pre-modern/traditional aspects that can be seen in the left-hand column and these can be broken into 3 categories: its spatial configuration, its temporal configuration, and its location. In terms of spatial configuration, baseball is circular, not linear; it plays with ideas of infinity and myth; and its basic contours are non-standard. Mandelbaum mentions a couple of examples of non-standardization, including the distance from home plate to the stands. These non-standard features, along with the mythic and circular nature of play, establish baseball as a traditional game. Likewise, baseball is not regulated by a clock and its play is seasonal and affected by natural rhythms, including inclement weather. Baseball is affected by rain, for example, while football is not. At the same time, baseball does have many aspects of a modern sport; these aspects can be seen in the right hand column. Its players each have specialized positions; there is a bureaucracy in place (the national and American Leagues govern play); rationalization determines strategies for games; standardization is included (think of the distance between the pitcher's mound and home plate or the distance between the bases); and, finally, quantification and record keeping generate plenty of stats that are often used by commentators and for things like fantasy baseball leagues.
So is baseball traditional or modern? The answer may be that it's a little of both. For your activity this week, you will be watching several clips from a 1989 film called Field of Dreams. I'm hoping that many of you will be familiar with the movie, but even if you're not, you can get the gist of the idea by watching the trailer and a couple of scenes from the film. As you watch and answer your discussion questions for the week, I want you to keep in mind this paradox of the traditional and the modern because the film plays with both aspects of the game, but it primarily focuses on the mythic, nostalgic, and traditional aspects of the game. http://www.hulu.com/watch/12384/field-of-dreams-people-will-come
Likewise, Mandelbaum, and plenty of others, compare baseball to a religion - an institution that often governed life before the rise of modern societies. In this quote, Philip Roth makes the case very clearly, arguing that "Baseball was a kind of secular church that reached into every class and religion and bound us together in common concerns, loyalties, rituals, enthusiasms, and antagonisms. Baseball made me understand what patriotism was about, at its best" (77). Like religion, which helps people create meaning in their lives, the sport of baseball provides structure, community and shared values. Importantly, Roth extends his argument to include the nation as well, noting that "baseball made me understand what patriotism was about."
Roth's ideas are echoed in this Sports Illustrated cover that appeared just after the events of September 11th, 2001, in which an American flag is draped over a seat in a sports arena. While there is certainly more to focus on in Mandelbaum's text, and I will provide a study guide for the major points, I want to spend the rest of this lecture thinking about a key idea in Mandelbaum's text: that of baseball, patriotism, and religion. Our focus will be the ways that baseball reacted to and consolidated patriotism after 9/11; my hope is that you will hear echoes of our other discussions about history, sport, and the nation.
In an Associated Press article titled "A Sad, Sad Day," Ronald Blum notes that "Sports came to a standstill Tuesday in the wake of terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, with major league baseball postponing a full schedule of regular-season games for the first time since D-Day in 1944."
In the Sports Illustrated issue I just mentioned, an article titled "A Break in the Action" made some very interesting connections between sports, religion, and nation. Richard Hoffer explained that in the days following 9/11, "continuing our games didn't seem to qualify as a statement of any kind. That was a surprise in itself, how inadequate our religion of sports was in this crisis . . .
Here, Hoffer argues that sports are merely an extravagance; that they are inadequate at generating meaning in a time of national crisis.
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.
In the wake of 9/11, baseball embodied Mandelbaum's arguments about diversion and clarity most of all. As Mike Piazza noted: "I'm glad to give people a diversion from the sorrow, to give them a thrill." The safety of the nation may have shifted, but baseball was still a welcome diversion and a place of clarity in a crazy world.
In closing for today, I would urge you to think about other places and times that sports have been related to issues of patriotism - in both our studies and in your own experiences. Keep in mind that the U.S. is certainly not the only country to bind sport with patriotism and religion. And, be sure to check out the study guide for this Lesson for more important baseball history trivia from Mandelbaum.
