Re: baseball
thank you rabbi gellman for expressing it so greatly.
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Oct. 25, 2006 - The arrival of the World Series this year convinced me that God is dead (proof: the Mets are gone) and that God is not dead (proof: the Yankees are also gone). Trying to stretch beyond my own parochial rooting interests, I want to make a serious case for the proposition that baseball is the most powerful path to assimilation into American culture. Without assimilation America dies and immigrant cultures are radicalized. America is not just another country, not just another culture, not just another experiment in democracy. America stands for a single great truth, [I]e pluribus unum[/I], ?out of many, one.? Our self-understanding demands that we welcome and assimilate all those storm-tossed travelers who pass beneath the golden torch.
The ways this assimilation has proceeded are well known to us all. We speak English. We have no monarchy. We have no inherited ruling class. We believe in public education. We gather in public parks. We live in integrated neighborhoods. We respect all religions and establish no religion. Our humor does not insult. Most of us buy our clothes from the same stores and most all of us own blue jeans. We don?t all like the same music, but we know the same music. We can all sing ?God Bless America? and we can all say the Pledge of Allegiance. Mostly, nobody cares when your ancestors came to America or if they were here all along. We celebrate very few holidays together, but the ones we do celebrate, like July Fourth and Thanksgiving, are celebrated by all Americans. We all eat pizza and the same junk food.
Not all these paths of assimilation are working now as well as they once worked. Many immigrants don?t learn English; this hurts them and it hurts America. Many people are so rich that their children are beginning to behave like royalty; this hurts them and it hurts America. Our parks are not all as safe as they should be, and some neighborhoods remain frosty to ?others.? The status of public schools and public-school teachers is too low. The music my kids like is violent noise. But on balance, America is still able to gently seduce, not coerce, millions of immigrants into a passionate love for this place.
Of all the ways we have tried to make one out of many, the most powerful cultural force has been baseball. Basketball is too small and too new, soccer is too European, hockey is too white. The football season is too short and the squads too few. Baseball provides America with emotionally compelling teams, and these teams allow anyone to be a fanatic?a culturally constructive fanatic. At 162 games, the baseball season is long enough to get deeply involved in your team?s fate and gives you a chance to attend a game (there are 81 home games, compared with eight in football). The teams have enough players so that, no matter what your ethnic background is, there is bound to be a professional baseball player whose grandma served him the same greasy, artery-clogging ethnic food you were forced to eat as a child. Baseball is just as good on the radio (I think it?s better), so you don?t need a television to watch it. It is filled with stupid and important statistics that kids can memorize. It also has neat packs of player cards.
I do not believe that beginning every baseball game with the national anthem is an instance of excessive patriotic zeal. I believe it to be a joyous and unifying secular hymn whose last words are always overwhelmed by fans cheering their team and their country and their freedom and their joy at being blessed to live here: ?O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave/ O?er the land of the free and the home of the brave??
In participating in these secular rituals of baseball, you make a team [I]your[/I] team?and you make America [I]your [/I]America. Your team divides you from the fans of other teams, but that?s strangely unifying. All the fans of all the teams love the game. Your team is different from your religion, which can be divisive and is usually grimly serious. Your team is different than being an American, which is so big a characterization that it is almost meaningless. Your team is the way you break up America into bite-sized pieces. And when you are at a game, and when your team scores, you slap hands with people you do not know. This, and not your passport, is what really makes you into an American.
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