From the President's Desk

The Olde Ball Game

It’s Sept. 29, and I’m tossing around topics in my head, not getting very far with any of them, as the deadline for this issue’s column passes in front of me. Does the University really need another budget commentary from me? Or another statement on the risks of alcohol and drug abuse? Or another update on our Master Plan? Or another plea for civil discourse and civic engagement? All worthy, even urgent topics. But how about something just a little different, a little lighter, at least once in awhile.

So, scanning CNN online, there’s this lovely reminder that the Major League baseball play-offs are about to begin. Play-offs without the Yankees, yet with Joe Torre. Two Chicago teams, none from New York. Ken Griffey Jr., in search of his first World Series ring, on one of them. The Red Sox, again, burying the Curse of the Bambino, again. When is a curse officially exorcised, anyway? Tampa Bay, which had never won more than 71 games in a season in their history, until they dropped the Devil from their nickname and became just the Rays. And some say God is dead. Angels from LA, Brewers from Milwaukee, and the Phillies by default.

So, with no apologies for my passion, or embarrassment for my admission, simply said, I found the irresistible topic. I love baseball. I just love the game—this marvelous game that combines strategy, skill, chance, mutual encouragement, and individual achievement so beautifully.

I love its timelessness. And since baseball time, as Roger Angell once observed, is measured only in outs, a game theoretically could go on forever. Time stands still, and we never age. I love this game!

I love its promise in the spring, when it begins anew and every team and fan are hopeful; and its heartbreak in the fall, when the summer game ends just as the winds and rains of autumn arrive and we’re left counting the stranded runners and blown saves that frustrated the championship season that could have been. Oh well, wait ’til next year.

I love its certitude. It is a world without grays—ball or strike, safe or out, a game won or lost beyond question or appeal. Well, except for an occasional instant replay on home-run calls.

Yet, it is a world filled with ambiguity and unanswered questions. Like the strike zone. Does a tie really go to the runner? Should Shoeless Joe or Pete Rose or Barry Bonds be in the Hall of Fame? What was the point of the asterisk that accompanied Roger Maris’s 61 home runs for so many years? Why was Boston’s Bill Buckner playing first in the final innings of the sixth game of the 1986 World Series? But, who cares!? The Red Sox atoned for the sins of the Puritans, in 2004! And they did it again in 2007! Hallelujah, we’re all saved!

I love its imagination. Not just Gaylord Perry’s spitball or Bill Veeck’s promotions, including sending 43" tall (or short?) Eddie Gaedel to the plate in 1951 for a four-pitch walk, but its artistic and literary expressions in the works of Robert Rauschenberg, Jacob Lawrence, Andy Warhol, Bernard Malamud, Carl Sandburg, W.P. Kinsella, and so many more artists and writers who have found meaning in a bat and a ball and a diamond.

I love its sounds. The anthem, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” Abbott and Costello doing “Who’s on First?” James Earl Jones reciting “Casey at the Bat,” Krukow and Kuiper on the radio, John Fogerty’s “Centerfield,” the ballpark organ, the crack of the bat, boos and bench jockeys, groans and cheers.

I love its places. Dugouts and bullpens. Power alleys and foul poles. Lead-off and clean-up. Fenway and Wrigley. Cooperstown and Williamsport. A sandlot in San Francisco. A cornfield in Iowa. A minor league ballpark in Chico.

I love its stories. Babe Ruth calling his shot. Curt Schilling’s bloody sock. Jackie Robinson’s friendship with Pee Wee Reese. Shadow ball and sugar ball. Red Stockings and Red Sox. Yogi Berra’s malapropisms. Roy Hobbs striking out the Whammer. The boys of summer. Damn Yankees. Willie, Mickey, and the Duke.

I love its peculiarities. The balk. Pepper. The infield fly rule. Defensive indifference. The Abner Doubleday creation myth. A 20' hit and a 400' out.

And I love that the diamond is not perfect. It is human. Labor-management struggles, steroid and drug scandals, unruly and obnoxious fans. The designated hitter. But the imperfections compel a return to focusing on the game. And the game delivers. Just as it did in Civil War camps in the 1860s and in Major League cities in the 1960s.

Baseball has been celebrated as the quintessential American game. And it may be. It’s the oldest of the nation’s team sports and it has been a remarkably stable game, undergoing few substantive rule changes since the organization of the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869 as the sport’s first professional team. It’s a game that has been analyzed and deconstructed like no other, as historians, sociologists, cultural anthropologists, and psychologists have searched for clues to its popularity and longevity.

Maybe the literary scholar and folklorist Tristam Coffin captured it best: “Satisfying though played day after day, sufficiently complex to fascinate the poet, sufficiently obvious to please the peasant, it is hard to play well, yet easy to learn. It is fun to watch, yet challenging to study.”

Or, maybe, it’s about the memory of sunshine and high skies. Or youth and dreams and fame and success and failure and inspiration and devotion. More likely it’s about all of this—and more. I love this game.

—Paul J. Zingg, President