Baseball as a Road to God

NYU President John Sexton has written a book Baseball as a Road to God, based on a course he gives with the same title.  He gave an NPR interview about his book on the Leonard Lopate Show.
To listen to it, visit  http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2013/mar/13/nyu-president-baseball-road-god/
Click on the (lower) "Listen", just above the photo of Busch Stadium.

Three things stood out for me:

1.  You're born into a team, like a religion:  "We're bequeathed our team."  This was my experience, although in an unusual way. When I was 4 or going on 4, my oldest brother had me point at a list of teams in a newspaper, and, seeing which team I'd pointed at, declared that I was a Cincinnati Redlegs fan. And that was that. This is one of my earliest memories, I wasn't sure that it really happened until he confirmed it a few years ago.

Sexton adds that this early choice of a team is more important than the early choice of a religion, because the choice of a team is more likely to stick.  Certainly true in my case. On a related note, he says:  "It gets you when you're young, in which case it sticks, or not at all."

2.  His most interesting statement, about what Americans, in particular the citizens of Brooklyn, learned in 1958:
"If the Dodgers could be taken from Brooklyn, there's no institution we can trust."
Historians see the New York Giants leaving for San Francisco and the Brooklyn Dodgers leaving for Los Angeles - both in 1958 - as an indicator of a turning point in 20th century US history.

3. Toward the end they mention Bart Giamatti,  whom I knew at Yale before he became the President of Yale.  Later he became the Commissioner of Baseball.  He has written beautiful essays on the spiritual side of baseball, which were collected into a book Green Fields of the Mind, which is required reading for the course.

I have a Bart Giamatti story which captures (1) above, I'll save it for a live telling.

His only mention of God is in the context of prayer.  He refers to a God within and unnamed Asian religions. About prayer: "Prayer changes the one who prays."

One for you Ted:  He refers to an article that uses phenomenology to interpret the ritual of a baseball game as based on the ritual of a  Mass.

Refers to John Updike's poem: Tao in the Yankee Stadium Bleachers.

Religious themes:
Fatih and doubt.
Faith: Tug McGraw's "You gotta believe"  seemed to carry the underdog 1973 Mets to a World Series.

Doubt:  "Baseball incarnates doubt."

Curses & Blessings:
  blessing - a release from accursedness

Brooklyn Dodger fans responded to a curse with hope -  "Wait Till Next Year", which finally arrived in 1955.
Cubs fans, who are still waiting, respond with humor "The Cubs just had an off century."
(Based on the cliche "The team just had an off day.")

Religions advise against hubris.  So does baseball.
"In baseball, a player better have humility, or he will fail."

The sacred and the profane:  the baseball - the sacred rock; the baseball stadium - the sacred shrine.

Things he doesn't mention:

In Bull Durham,  Susan Sarandon played a woman who was very into 3 things: religion, baseball, and sex.  She observed that the number of beads in a rosary is the same as the number of stitches in a baseball.

The Holy Trinity and baseball as the game of threes.  Three strikes to an out, three outs to an inning, three innings for each of the three (beginning, middle, and end) parts of a game.

Also, quite remarkably, on average over time, a batter safely reaches base one in three times at bat, and a team scores a run (or more) in one of three innings.

This is the source of the statement "Failure is the norm" in baseball.

Big Red Machine Part II

Some more of Ted's keen observations regarding the players of the Big Red Machine.


"You can count on Concepcion." Dave Concepcion went to have a 19 year career as the Reds shortstop, staying with them long after most of the others in the famed starting lineup had left for more money elsewhere. He was the best shortstop of his generation, and one of the ten best of all time. Won five Gold Gloves (at the end of the season the players and coaches vote on the best defensive player at each position, the winner for each position is awarded a Gold Glove); nine all star games, one of which he won with a game-ending home run. He is a popular hero and legend in his native Venezuela, the land of great shortstops (Luis Aparicio, Omar Vizquel, others).

"We should take George Foster out for a drink and ask him what's bothering him." Ted said this upon hearing that the Reds' slugging outfielder did not hit a single home run in the month of September 1976, remaining stuck at 30. The implication was that George was a sensitive guy whose feelings could affect his performance. George hit a home run that nite, as, with my brother Bill in his apartment, we watched the Reds win the first game of 1976 NL Championship series against the Phillies. George helped win the third and clinching game of that series with a dramatic 9th inning home run. In 1977 George hit 40 home runs, and then 52 in 1978: he was the only player of that decade to hit as many as 50 in a season. By the end of 1981, George had firmly established himself as the best power hitter in baseball. But he didn't want to stay with the Reds anymore, he wanted big money in a big market. So the Reds traded him to the Mets, where in 1982 he hit a paltry 11 home runs and played poorly overall. The NY fans booed and George's feelings were hurt, he never recovered. He had a mediocre 1983 and then, in the middle of 1984, the Mets released him. His career was over.


Asked to comment, George said: "It was a dream that didn't come true." Had he stayed in Cincy, George would most likely have continued his prodigious slugging and would now be in Baseball's Hall of Fame. George is now a mellow and humble man. When he was elected to the Reds team Hall of Fame a couple of years ago, he was proud and pleased. In the end he knew that Cincinnati was his town, not NY.

Big Red Machine

Ted is a very casual baseball fan but his keen powers of observation hold in this domain too. He made some truly prescient remarks about several members of the Big RedMachine.

Don Gullett, ace starting pitcher. With a view of Gullett, standing motionless on the mound, from the center field camera, Ted said: "There's something structurally wrong with his left neck and shoulder. " Gullett was picked up as a free agent, for a huge amount of money, after that season by the NY Yankees. He pitched 2/3 of a season for the Yankees in 1977, missing 1/3 due to a left shoulder problem. He pitched one game in the 1977 World Series, and after the game was reported to have reinjured his shoulder. He never pitched again.

Rawly Eastwick, closer: "He looks good, but you can't count on him." Eastwick later gave up a 3 run home run against the Red Sox in the 8th inning of the very famous Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. The Reds were on the verge of winning the Series in 6 games, but instead the score was now tied 6-6. The Red Sox went on to win that game 7-6 in the 13th inning on Carlton Fisk's legendary home run. The Reds won Game 7, 4-3, without using Eastwick. The following year, in Game 1 of the 1976 National League Championship Series against the Phillies, Eastwick entered in the 9th inning with a 5 run lead. He quickly allowed 3 runs and was removed from the game. The Reds held on to win that game, and did not use Eastwick again in that postseason, as they went on to sweep the Phillies in 3 games and then swept the Yankees in 4 games in the World Series.

In 1977, with free agency in effect for the first season, Eastwick announced early in the season that he wanted a multi-year contract with a lot of money. The Reds traded him to the Yankees, as George Steinbrenner was eager to plunder the Reds. But Billy Martin, the Yankees manager and a cowboy/tough guy, didn't like the preppy pretty boy Eastwick, called him "Steinbrenner's Kid" and refused to use him in meaningful situations. Eastwick fell apart mentally and quickly faded into oblivion.

Coming attractions on this post: More astutue mid-70's observations from Ted on Dave Concepcion, Pete Rose, and George Foster.

World Series 1975 or dengue fever?

>> Read from bottom. Ted replied ... >>
What a memory you have!! After you describe the event, I can almost see it! I enjoy it when you help me to remember little incidents from our Trumbull years!!

The summer of '75, I would have been recuperating from dengue fever, and early termination from my Peace Corps assignment (22 months, not 24). ( Oh, the sting of that! I thought I was more grown up!) I recuperated by helping my parents paint the outside of their garage. I tried becoming a waiter at a posh ( & probably gay) restaurant in Westport, but Heinz encouraged me to focus on the programming apprenticeship at Monroe Calculator in Fairfield. What made Monroe's opening possible was state money for training workforce newbies.

Some days I biked to Fairfield-- through N. Bridgeport and a housing project. The apparent danger and daring of that appealed to me.

Was it the end of '75 and '76, that I began staying with you and Shelly in New Haven? When I slept at your apartment, I would wake 2-3 hours before you, and enjoy morning quiet with your cat. Around 11 am, you would rise and have Wheaties.

I met Tupou in the later half of '76 at a Peace Corps wedding. We rendezvous-ed in Boston. There was a huge blizzard in Boston in December of '76 . I remember walking around with a protective cardboard box on my head.

At this time, I still entertained thoughts of becoming a meteorologist. Aug thru Dec of 1977 was when I had a chance to try atmospheric sciences at FSU in Tallahassee. I said farewell to Tupou in Maryland, on the drive down.

On 9/17/07, mgburke1@optonline.net <mgburke1@optonline.net> wrote:

Hi Ted,

Jacob Ellsbury is a rookie who just came up with the Red Sox. He's an outfielder and is making a big splash. Mary and friends would have been watching the Yankees-Red Sox series this past weekend. Their rivalry is commonly viewed as the most intense in Anerican sport. Their fans get very emotional about their games, etc. For publicity and hype it goes beyond any sports rivalry that existed in the 70's.

I'll write Mary. I believe she is a Red Sox fan. Back in 1975 I remember watching game 1 of the Reds-Red Sox World Series at your house on Shelton Avenue. Mary was interested and as I recall she was leaning towards the Red Sox, althogu at the time she didn't inderstand all the fuss. The Sox are New England's team. I have more memories of that day. My brother Bill was there loudly rooting for the Red Sox which annoyed me because he had no real interest and knew how big a Reds fan I was. I remember Heinz stopping by the tv room for a minute and expressing amazement that people could watch grown men hitting a ball around for hours.

- Mike