Baseball as a Spiritual Metaphor
May 6th, 2004

Reverend Barry Bloom

Take me out to the ball game
Take me out to the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks,
I don’t care if we ever get back.
For its root, root, root for the home team,
If they don’t win it’s a shame.
For its one, two, three strikes you’re out
At the old ball game.

Readings:

The church of baseball from Bull Durham

Baseball, poem, by Linda Pastan

“Baseball has been very very good to me.” Line from retired Latino player on Saturday Night Live.

And . . . . to me. [Read My Dad and Me] 

laying catch on the used equipment lot. Having conversations with Dad.  Wow.  Stan Musial, “old pop up.” Many of the males here, and a few females, may have had a similar experience.

Baseball represents far more than contact with our dads, however. It brought a ready made universe to learn and practice over and over. Rituals of life far more meaningful to a boy than catechism or communion, though not unlike them.

[Excerpt from Tao of Baseball]

Playing the game of baseball holds many lessons. My first was humility. I was the skinny right fielder inserted as a sub in the top of the 7th inning in a 7 inning game. On the rare occasions I did bat, the outcome was inevitable. Yet when we won the whole team rejoiced together. Despite my personal ineptness, I felt an important part of something larger than myself.

Part of the ritual of baseball as a kid was collecting baseball cards. Mainly made by Topps, they came with bubble gum which I chewed incessantly. A major collector such as I received instant diety status in tiny Perry, MO. If I had them now, I would be wealthy.

More than rich time with my dad, and more than the daily summer rituals, baseball offered something more to me.

It was a way of seeing the universe. A way that gave the universe meaning.

As the excerpt from the Tao of Baseball brings out, it was its own universe. I reveled in the safe and predictable way a baseball game listened to or watched slowly unfolded. No violent collisions or taunting in your face intensity here. Rather, the poetic unfolding of a morality play. Like the 1964 World Series where the evil NY Yankees were beaten by the underdog, and surely blessed, St. Louis Cardinals, my home team. Bob Gibson pitched heroically, Ken Boyer hit a tome run at just the right moment, and the universe was sublimely in order. When they lost, as every team does, constantly, I had to call on some inner strengths to get me by.

As a grown-up, the movie, The Field of Dreams, summed up many of my feelings about baseball as a spiritual metaphor. If you remember the story, Ray Kinsella, played by Kevin Costner, hears a voice saying, “build it and they will come.” Not unlike Noah hearing a voice on a clear sunny day saying “build an ark” for the coming flood. With his trusting family at his side, he concludes that he is supposed to turn some of his fertile Iowa farmland into a baseball field, much to the chagrin and ridicule of his farmer neighbors. When the field is finished, Shoeless Shoe Jackson and other members of the Chicago White Sox of 1919 mystically show up to play. In the process, there is redemption for this tarnished team, and for Ray and his long dead dad.

Louise Westfall writes, “The movie invites us to believe…believe in yourself and the voices that nudge you to action. Believe in the smile on future’s face, even when it appears uncertain, even hopeless. Believe in your dreams. Believe that love overcomes all and endures. But even more, belief can easily be reduced to naivete or wishful thinking without the transcendent dimension. The film pushes us to the edge….against all odds, beyond reason and intellect, believe in a power greater than your own strength, believe in a love deeper than that which you posses. Believe in God . . . ”

. . . even a god/goddess who would show up in an Iowa corn field.

Ultimately, what baseball shows us in spiritual metaphor is: to let go, practice the daily rituals, trust the process, give yourself over to it.

Baseball teaches that, indeed, there IS good and evil in the world, on the field and off it.

That there will be long boring times, the work is to stay present, stay interested.

Despite failing again and again, keep trying…..the BEST make outs 2 out of every 3 times at bat.

You will make errors in the field…some days are better than others. The next day you may be brilliant.

Stick it out no matter what.

When you get on base strive to make it home safely. Don’t forget to touch 2nd and 3rd on the way.

When you succeed, don’t get too high, you may well lose tomorrow. And vice-versa.

Wake up. Pay attention, or you’ll get hurt.

Respect and care for your teammates, give them your best support. Your success, your life, depends on it.

Respect your enemies or you will become like them.

Don’t let the praise of the crowd go to your head or you’ll lose your power.

Stay within the base paths and you’ll be all right.

Relax and let the natural, grounded, instinctive part of you be in charge. Don’t think too much.

When hit by a pitch accidentally, don’t whine. When hit by a pitch on purpose, remember that doing well is the best revenge.

No matter how many errors you have made, you will always be welcomed back at home, safe.

Baseball as cosmic spiritual teacher.. It may seem a little much. But rest assured, when the umpire sweeps the plate for the last, perfect touch, stands and straightens his chest protector, raises his hand in the air and bellows, “play ball”, there is a chill that sweeps up the spine of those of us who were molded by America’s pastime. A chill of recognition that all is right in the universe, that Stan Musial, Harry Caray, and my dad are close to my heart, and just like the first day of every new season, anything is possible. It’s then that I feel home, safe.

MY DAD AND ME

Watching the baseball play-offs on my crisp Sony
calls back warm memories
of a kind but distant father who
engaged his son around America’s pastime.

Huddled around the radio in tense silence
listening to the Cardinals win or lose another
one filled the hours of our dad-son together time.

And the rare special trips down US 40 to Sportsman’s
Park to watch the real heroes seemed too
sweet to talk about lest it sour on the
tongue.

All that time, just us,
together in the Studebaker, in the park, hot dogs a
savored treat.

A stop at Skyline on the way back
for a piece of lemon pie, Dad his ever-present cup of
coffee, Camel burning bright at his
fingertip, slowly delivering its death sentence.

But that belonged to a
future not guessed at.

Then there was just Stan Musial, Harry Caray,
My dad and I
Loving life in our way
Wishing it could last forever.