The baseball mania has run its course. It has no future as a professional endeavor.
— Cincinnati Gazette editorial, 1879
The origins of the modern game of baseball can seem somewhat illusive. Long memorialized as “America’s Pastime” there are elements of it dating back to the mid 18th century English game of “rounders.” In the 1830s and 1840s, amateur teams playing a version of a game we would absolutely recognize as baseball were popular around the United States. The first documented official baseball however was not played in the United States, but in Ontario, Canada in 1838. In 1858, the former amateur U.S. teams, playing the game with a variety of different rules, formed a national governing body and adopted universal rules - and thus The National Association of Base Ball Players was born. It was followed in 1871 by the creation of the National League and then finally in 1901 by the American League. The first World Series was played in 1903 between the Boston Americans, who in 1908 became the Red Sox, and the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Americans won the best of nine series five games to three.
In 1879 the Cincinnati Gazette ran a story that included the quote you see above: “The baseball mania has run its course. It has no future as a professional endeavor.” Folks have been predicting the demise of baseball since the birth of baseball. Over the past several years professional pundits have been clamoring over, seemingly giddy by the thought, of baseball’s decreased popularity and its coming, inevitable destruction. And yet, here it is and here we are. There may come a day when we lose the game of baseball, but it is not this day and it will not be any day in the near future. You will never convince me there is a better place to be than a summer night or a spring afternoon at the ballpark - and the thousands in attendance at each game across the country seem to agree. It is, without question and with exception, the greatest game in the world.
It is also the most beautiful, most perfect expression of absurdism that I know.
The playing and watching of sports are, in general, absurdist activities. Our silly superstitions betray our rationality and display this absurdism. I have seen educated, successful grown men argue about which spot on the couch they should sit on because the last time the Patriots won, they sat here and not there. I know a Celtics fan who will only wear green when the Celtics play on the road and white when they are at home - as if his attire determines the success and failure of Jason Tatum. We get absurdly happy when “our” team wins and are devastated when they lose. We defend the actions of a stranger like Tom Brady with the vigor of a parent defending a child because he wears our team’s colors and we are willing to go to the mattresses in defending the GOAT - don’t test us! We feel betrayed when a former hero chooses another team or another city and we turn our one-time hero into the ultimate villain in a sort of WWE style heel turn.
And baseball may be the most absurd in this symphony of the absurd. There is no other game that inspires more superstitions or has more unwritten (or written) rules than this beautifully absurd game: Don’t say no-hitter when there is a no-hitter going, don’t show-up the pitcher, don’t run too slow after a home-run, don’t run up the score, don’t bunt during a no-hitter, don’t steal signs (except when it’s okay to steal signs), don’t stand up in the crowd and block others but you should know when you should stand up in the park, don’t swing on 3-0 unless you have a green light, a pitcher shouldn’t show-up his fielders, a hitter shouldn’t walk in front of the catcher, position players shouldn’t step on the mound on the way in or out of the dugout, pitchers shouldn’t step on the baselines, if the umpire gets hit with a foul ball the catchers should go for a walk, if the catcher gets hit with a foul ball the umpire should clean the already clean plate, don’t make the first or third out of an inning at third, and for the love of the baseball Gods, if you are an adult at a baseball game and you get a foul ball, give it to a kid! Seriously!
And there are more - so many more.
Each year on Opening Day at Fenway Park, I get a new hat for that season and it’s the hat I wear at each game I go to during the year. This is an important ritual, more important than any of you probably realize. If I choose wisely fortune will smile on the Red Sox, but if I choose poorly, it can make for a very long summer and a non-existent fall for the Sox. Thus far I have only displayed wisdom four times in my hat selection: 2004, 2007, 2013, and 2018. This year my daughter, whose middle name is literally Fenway, selected the hat for me. We shall see if her wisdom exceeds my own.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy other sports, but none come close the sheer poetry and beauty of baseball. I have a great time watching football and I played during high school. When the World Cup comes around I pretend to care about soccer because I love the spectacle of sports and anything that gets the entire world riled up has value. I like watching the Celtics and the Bruins but I have no problem owning the fact that I am very much a bandwagon fan when it comes to my support and loyalty. I do love Friar Basketball and take each loss personally and each victory as a personal achievement, but it is still not the same. Baseball is different. It has always been different and always will.
No other sport has the associated mythology or the deep connection to whatever we mean by Americana. Each baseball game today is as much about the games of yesterday as they are about the current moment in time. No other game is as devoted to or defined by is great records and numbers. To the faithful of the Church of Baseball, the numbers are sacred and etched into the collective consciousness of the game itself.
And regardless of what happened last year and what is expected to happen this year, each spring Opening Day offers hope. For my family, Opening Day is a High Holy Day. We take the day off from work and we pull the kids out of school. We spend like we are on vacation because we are on vacation. It is a brief detachment from reality and responsibility. The day is filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of the ballpark. The chatter in the stands, the hot dog guy, the green of the grass, the perfect sound of the ball hitting the bat - pure symphony.
And none of it really matters, but nothing matters more. If the Red Sox win or lose, my life doesn’t change. The joy as seeing them win the World Series is temporary, momentary, as is the pain of seeing them get to the brink, only to lose in spectacular fashion - it is all temporary, but at the same time lasting and poignant.
In my life I’ve had what I consider to be three moments of real tragedy. While I’ll save you the details of two of them, I will share with you the one that happened on October 16, 2003 in the Bronx. It was Game 7 of the ALCS and the Red Sox had had a lead for most of the game before Grady Little decided to stick with Pedro in the 8th inning. The Yankees tied the game. In the bottom of the 11th inning, Aaron Boone stepped up to the plate against one of my all-time favorite ball players, Tim Wakefield. Boone crushed a pitch from Wake into the night sky and when it landed, the Yankees had won the pennant and were headed, once again, to the World Series. Wake walked off the mound with his head down and Trot Nixon destroyed a water cooler in the dugout. That night I was at a viewing party with some friends and for most of the night we were having a great time. When Boone hit that home run, no one yelled, no one swore. The host simply turned off the television and walked down the hall to his room and closed the door. Without saying a word, people grabbed their coats and walked silently into the night to their cars. My girlfriend and I did not say a word on the twenty minute ride home. It felt very much like someone died. The next day I was feeling grief, actual grief - and so were so many of my friends who did not have an actual memory of 1986 and so this was really our first taste of being a Red Sox fan - we had earned our stripes. If the Sox had won that night, my life would not have changed, I know this, but that didn’t make the feelings any less intense or real.
In 2004, a year I chose my hate wisely, the Red Sox reversed their normal pattern of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and came back from a 3-0 series deficit against those same Yankees and won the pennant and then the World Series, finally. Truth be told however, the joy of that win did not match the sorrow of the previous year’s defeat.
The beautiful absurdity of this game.
Like life, baseball needs to be done and observed. Each moment offers something real, something to learn, something to laugh or cry at. I think Yogi Berra said it best, whether baseball or life in general, “You can observe a lot just by watching.”
But ultimately, the game will break your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone - waiting, once again, for spring.