Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game

by John Sexton

  Giamatti’s writings about baseball fit in a long line of writing about the elevating capacity of the game that can be traced back at least to Walt Whitman. In 1846, as the rules of baseball and the nation’s love for it still were evolving, the great poet’s observations were recorded at least twice:

  “In our sundown perambulations of late through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing ‘base,’ a certain game of ball…. The game of ball is glorious…. I see great things in baseball. It is our game, the American game. Baseball will take people out of doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism, tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set, repair those losses and be a blessing to us.”

  From a different perspective, I have tried to show how many of the elements we find in baseball—faith, doubt, conversion, accursedness, blessings—are elements associated with the religious experience; that inside the game the formative material of spirituality can be found. In short, viewed through a certain lens, baseball evokes the essence of religion. If we open ourselves to the rhythms and intricacies of the game, if we sharpen our noticing capacity, if we allow the timelessness and intensity of the game’s most magnificent moments to shine through, the resulting heightened sensitivity might give us a sense of the ineffable, the transcendent.

  Baseball is defined by wonder and amazement: Johnny Podres’s proud ironworker father from upstate New York, ducking out of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ clubhouse celebration after Game Seven in 1955, crying alone in the players’ parking lot after his son’s astonishing game against the Yankees. This wonder and amazement, this touching of the beyond, is not the domain of the unknown that will someday be known but the domain of the unknowable, of faith.

  But in baseball as in religion, deep faith cannot exist unless there is doubt, its handmaiden; confronting doubt is a central challenge in both religion and life, from the earliest Christian theologians to the 1991 Braves and Twins. This journey takes many roads, but conversion is certainly one of them, and the last steps can be truly miraculous as well as inexplicable. But there is a fine line between agony and ecstasy. Had Willie Mays dropped that fly ball in 1954, Giants fans may well have considered themselves accursed rather than blessed. It helps as well when our heroes are good people and not simply accomplished. Without sinners, our saints would be unremarkable. For each Christy Mathewson, there is often a Ty Cobb. We also want to try to keep them alive, to revisit their stories, both to learn from them and to try to relive their magic. It is no disrespectful sacrilege to observe that Jews gather for Passover Seders each year to re-create the miraculous story of their release from slavery in Egypt and that Pirates fans gather every October to experience Bill Mazeroski’s home run again. And as in religion, some of the most meaningful experiences in baseball are not lived alone but are shared with communities—from a family to a team to a country—that unite us in concentric circles of relationship.

  My NYU course and this book are attempts at exploring the basic building blocks of a spiritual or religious life, finding them, perhaps surprisingly to some, in an institution associated with secular life. The nine innings of this book are an assertion—an affirmation—that there is a meaningful dimension of the human experience (whether seen in what we recognize formally as religions or in a secular pursuit called baseball) that cannot be captured in words. Francis Bacon once observed, “The best part of beauty is that which a picture cannot express.” This dimension, which coexists with the dimension of the known, the knowable, and the wonder of science, affirms some of the most important truths of our humanity, like the joy of love or the significance of our lives. This reflection won’t persuade those who are not at some level already aware of it. As Louis Armstrong once said of jazz: “If you have to ask what it is, you’ll never know.”

  In our times, it is fashionable to force a choice between the worlds of science and religion, of the mind and the soul. Either/or. This, in my view, is a false dichotomy—and perhaps this collection of baseball stories analyzed through a lens (and an intellectual tradition) usually reserved for the study of what are obviously religious experiences can cause some to see why. I embrace enthusiastically the joys of the intellectual life; but I reject the notion that, as a consequence, I must forfeit the wonders of a deeply transformative religious life.

  Baseball calls us to live slow and notice. This alone may be enough—if it causes some to perceive the world differently and more intensely. The game answers the call issued by my late teacher, the Passionate (referring to the Catholic order) priest and cultural historian Thomas Berry, when he wrote that “when we see a flower, a butterfly, a tree, when we feel the evening breeze flow over us or wade in a stream of clear water, our natural response is immediate, intuitive, transforming, ecstatic. Everywhere we find ourselves invaded by the world of the sacred.”

  Father Berry’s words struck a chord with me years ago. I grew up in New York’s Rockaways, with a great beach and the beautiful Atlantic as backdrop to all we did. It was not a neighborhood for the economic upper class, but all of us were enriched beyond measure by the beautiful infinitude that stretched before us at the beach wall. As the physicist Richard Feynman, who also grew up in the Rockaways, put it: “If we stand on the shore and look at the sea, we see the water, the waves breaking, the foam, the sloshing motion of the water, the sound, the air, the winds and the clouds, the sun and the blue sky, and light; there is sand and there are rocks of various hardness and permanence, color and texture. There are animals and seaweed, hunger and disease, and the observer on the beach; there may be even happiness and thought.”

  Such meditations prepare us to probe the ineffable wonders of life—through science and religion, in concert not in conflict.

  In encouraging my students to see the world in this way, I have sought to provoke, not to preach. For some of my students, an exploration of baseball and the experiences, impulses, and feelings it provokes has prompted a way of looking at the world that makes them more capable of embracing ineffable joys, even as they develop the life of the mind.

  Beyond this, studying the game as we do reveals how structural elements we associate with religion often are present in the apparently mundane. In this way, baseball illustrates the nature of the religious experience. This may cause some to investigate further. And that would be good.

  Unrestrained by time, baseball encourages, almost requires in its most meaningful moments, an appreciation of living slowly and in the moment; the kind of differentiated experience that separates the sacred in life from the profane. This experience is where religion begins. As Rabbi Heschel wrote, it “is not a feeling for the mystery of living, or a sense of awe, wonder, or fear, which is the root of religion; but rather the question what to do with the feeling for the mystery of living, what to do with awe, wonder, or fear.” In a way, baseball’s window into the nature of religious experience is more revelatory, frankly, than the window offered by much of organized religion.

  There are difficulties, of course, associated with the word religion—and much evil has come from attempting to take the religious experience and “explain” it—that is, to codify it in dogma. Wars have erupted over that dogma. A lust for power and greed has allowed the sanctification of the material world in God’s name: How high is one’s steeple? How much gold is in one’s chalice? All this for the greater glorification of something that is quite profane—something that can be labeled God but is anything but God in the sense that the greatest thinkers and lovers of religion use the word.

  As beloved, sanctified even, as are Hall of Fame ballplayers, championship teams, and revered figures of the game, there has always existed a matter of perspective in baseball. Arguments sometimes are heated. Thankfully, however, nobody ever had to go to war over the Babe.

  But this book in the end is simply a vehicle to tell some stories that reveal a love of baseball—and (in some of the stories) display the joy of a spiritual life. And maybe it shows that it
is possible, even for a committed intellectual, to embrace both. It is, to repeat Tillich’s words, “to convince some readers of the hidden power of faith within themselves and of the infinite significance of that to which faith is related.”

  Baseball can reveal something about the world and our ways of living in it that goes beyond what we see on the field. It can teach us to notice and embrace the ineffable beyond, to find the sacred amidst the profane. Just ask yourself: Do you, as you read these stories of baseball, see or recognize elements you associate with religion and the spiritual life? Do you see things here that resonate with you in some dimension of your being, which might add value to your life? Do you see a way of looking at the world that might be useful? If so, baseball perhaps is a guide to viewing religion and the spiritual life differently, to living differently, to being in the world in a different way and seeing more in it.

  Okay. Baseball, for most of us anyway, is not the road to God—indeed, it is not even a road to God. But, if given sensitive attention, it can awaken us to a dimension of life often missing in our contemporary world of hard facts and hard science. We can learn, through baseball, to experience life more deeply. By embracing the ineffable joys of the “green fields of the mind,” we can enlarge our capacity to embrace the ineffable more generally. Baseball can teach us that living simultaneously the life of faith and the life of the mind is possible, even fun.

  And each winter, as we long for the possibilities of spring with its awakening, and as we ponder the depths of mystical moments past in baseball and in life, we proclaim our creed:

  Wait’ll Next Year!

  This book has been a true collaboration. It linked the president of New York University and the creator of its popular course, Baseball as a Road to God, with a writer and frequent guest in the course, and with another writer who has assisted in the teaching of it after being its first enrolled student a decade ago. Building on the course and the insights and stories that form its core, we spent scores of hours discussing concepts, topics, and details in-depth together. We researched together. We discussed some more together. We wrote together. We revised together. And we rewrote together.

  Along the way we have incurred huge debts. Above all, we thank two close friends, each of whom has joined John in teaching the course at various times over the years: Michael Murray and James Traub. They added immeasurably to its content and meaning. And we thank the dozens of NYU students who have given the course life.

  We are also indebted to those who gave time and effort to provide us with essential guidance, criticism, and assistance, including professors Jules Coleman and Arthur Miller, Paige Gilliam, Deborah Grosvenor (our literary representative), and Patrick Mulligan (our editor at Gotham Books). And John’s assistant, Dan Evans, who coordinated it all.

  And we are grateful to those gentle critics who helped curb our tendencies toward verbosity and fuzziness, above all Alan and Arlene Schwartz, Susan Spencer, and Dr. Joan Witkin.

  For detailed baseball information, our principal source was the multi-editioned Baseball Encyclopedia, going elsewhere only when necessary. All this help, however, does not absolve us of total responsibility for any errors contained in these pages.

  John Sexton, Thomas Oliphant, and Peter J. Schwartz

  Want to continue traveling along baseball’s road? Check out some of these works that have been assigned over the years in my NYU seminar.

  BOOKS

  The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach

  Brooklyn’s Dodgers, Carl E. Prince

  Calico Joe, John Grisham

  The Celebrant, Eric Rolfe Greenberg

  The Chosen, Chaim Potok

  Cosmos and History, Mircea Eliade

  The Era, 1947–1957, Roger Kahn

  Fair Ball: A Fan’s Case for Baseball, Bob Costas

  The Further Adventures of Slugger McBatt, W. P. Kinsella

  Go the Distance, W. P. Kinsella

  God in Search of Man, Abraham Joshua Heschel

  A Great and Glorious Game, A. Bartlett Giamatti

  Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga

  Honest to God, John A. T. Robinson

  If Wishes Were Horses, W. P. Kinsella

  The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, W. P. Kinsella

  The Joy of Sports, Michael Novak

  Magic Time, W. P. Kinsella

  The Natural, Bernard Malamud

  The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

  Past Time: Baseball as History, Jules Tygiel

  Praying for Gil Hodges, Thomas Oliphant

  The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade

  Shoeless Joe, W. P. Kinsella

  Snow in August, Pete Hamill

  Summer of ’49, David Halberstam

  Take Me Out, Richard Greenberg

  Ultimate Concern, Paul Tillich

  The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. Robert Coover

  The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James

  Wait Till Next Year, Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Why Time Begins on Opening Day, Thomas Boswell

  Articles and Excerpts

  “Baseball: A Spiritual Reminiscence,” Tex Sample

  “Baseball and the Meaning of Life: Are We Destined to Grasp Neither?” Donald Hall

  “Baseball as Civil Religion: The Genesis of an American Creation Story,” Christopher Evans

  “Believing in Baseball: The Religious Power of Our National Pastime,” Thomas Dailey

  Brain Droppings (“Baseball and Football”), George Carlin

  “Civil Religion in America,” Robert Bellah

  “The Coming of Elijah: Baseball as Metaphor,” William R. Herzog II

  Flight of the Wild Gander (“Secularization of the Sacred”), Joseph Campbell

  “God’s Country and Mine,” Jacques Barzun

  Japanese Baseball (“The Indestructible Hadrian Wilks”), W. P. Kinsella

  “The Kingdom of Baseball in America: The Chronicle of an American Theology,” Christopher Evans

  “Louisville Slugger Sure Sign of a Higher Power,” George Will

  “McDuff on the Mound,” Robert Coover

  The Meaning of Sports (“Baseball: The Remembrance of Things Past”), Michael Mandelbaum

  “The Odds of That,” The New York Times Magazine, August 11, 2002

  “On Jackie Robinson,” Red Barber

  Selected Stories (“The Pitcher”), Andre Dubus

  “The Silent Season of a Hero,” Gay Talese

  “Summer Dreams,” Leonard Kriegel

  “Tao in the Yankee Stadium Bleachers,” John Updike

  Underworld (prologue), Don DeLillo

  “With Red Sox, Glass Is Always Half-Empty,” The New York Times, September 3, 2004

  Film

  Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush (HBO)

  Tippy, the maven who sometimes is wrong but never in doubt, offers the following trivia tidbits. As he does, he says: “You can take these to the bank.” I suggest a fact-check, however, before you bet your home on their accuracy. Still, these pieces of baseball lore do reveal some of the game’s wonder.

  Certain “unbreakable” records, perennials on most fans’ lists, are not included because Tippy takes them as part of every true fan’s landscape. For example, Cy Young’s 511 career wins, 316 career losses, and 749 career complete games; Jack Chesbro’s 41 wins in a season (most since 1900); Hack Wilson’s 191 RBIs in a season; or Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak.

  Human Baseball Encyclopedia: Anthony (Tippy) Mannino, outside the friendly confines of his town car

  Twenty Absolutely Unbreakable Records

  1. The Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds played an entire nine-inning game (June 29, 1916) using only one baseball.

  2. The Cleveland Indians played an entire game against the New York Yankees (July 5, 1945) without an infield assist.

  3. Brooklyn (1920) holds the record for most innings played by a team over a three-game stretch: fifty-eight.

  4. The New Y
ork Yankees played 308 consecutive games (August 3, 1931 to August 2, 1933) without being shut out.

  5. The world-champion Pittsburgh Pirates (1960) had a collective ERA of 7.11 in the World Series, the worst ever by a Series participant, let alone a winning team.

  6. Pete Rose (1963–86, Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies, and Montreal Expos) played more than five hundred major league games at each of five different positions (first, second, and third base; right and left field).

  7. Walter Johnson (Washington Senators) recorded nine consecutive seasons (1910–18) of pitching three hundred or more innings.

  8. Walter Johnson also won thirty-eight 1–0 games in his career, a record. He lost twenty-six 1–0 games, also a record.

  9. Christy Mathewson (1905 New York Giants) won three complete-game shutouts in the same World Series.

  10. Babe Ruth (1916 Boston Red Sox) pitched fourteen innings in a World Series game, winning it 2–1.

  11. Red Barrett (1944 Boston Braves) threw a complete game with only fifty-eight pitches; the game took seventy-five minutes from the first pitch to the last. The Giants and the Robins (later the Dodgers) took only fifty-seven minutes, first pitch to last out, to complete a nine-inning game, which the Giants won 1–0 (August 30, 1918).

  12. Grover Cleveland Alexander (1916 Philadelphia Phillies) had sixteen shutouts in one season. Bob Gibson (1968 St. Louis Cardinals) had thirteen.

  13. Greg Minton (1978–82 San Francisco Giants) pitched 269 1⁄3 innings without giving up a home run.

  14. Steve Carlton (1972 Philadelphia Phillies) won twenty-seven games for a last-place team, accounting for 46 percent of the team’s victories for the season.

  15. Leon Cadore (Brooklyn Robins) and Joe Oeschger (Boston Braves) pitched twenty-six innings each in the same game (May 1, 1920). Honorable mention: Bob Smith (1927 Boston Braves) pitched twenty-two innings in a loss to the Cubs, still the longest complete game decision in National League history.