It would be easy to draw a parallel between baseball’s place in America and the place of the Bread and Circus sports of ancient Rome, given that Americans are so fond of finding similarities between our republic and that antique one. The two sports, however, could not be more different in their social role. The gladiatorial contest appealed to the people’s animal appetites for violence and it was intended to distract from an ailing empire. Baseball did not arise among decadent decline, but as a neighborhood pastime in the heart of optimistic, peaceful farmland somewhere in the Northeast of the country, and people love baseball, not as an idle distraction for the senses, but, I would contend, for its poetry.

By poetry I mean the way in which the beauty of the game holds a depth of meaning for us. Poetry is the way something beautiful resonates with meanings and memories; it is found where our appreciation of one thing blends into appreciation of all sorts of others. The object of our appreciation resonates with a thousand other things besides itself, and this is why, for so many, the game is more than just the game. Baseball is supremely resonant for the American soul: it is neighborhood kids, wiffle ball in the cul-de-sac, and catch with Dad; it is Fourth of July fireworks and easy summer nights; it is the great American novel acted out in ash wood and leather. Friendship and familial bonds and the dance of the community enter the pattern of the game and rest therein.

Wherever we encounter poetry, whether in nature, in music, or in sport, we are lifted out of the normal workaday flow of time with its anxieties and plans. Baseball is particularly good for this: the sanctuary of the diamond operates on its own kind of time that is measured in runs and outs and not minutes. The very pace of the game and the epic length of the season are invitations to contemplation and reflection, and they give space for the unfolding of timeless narratives.

When we enter the rhythms and patterns of the game, the pull of daily worry drops away and the leash of daily duties goes slack. The aperture shifts our focus towards community, the loveliness of the game, and all that these represent and stand for. This is why the game provides that valuable check on the anxious impulse to climb the ladder and prove oneself by wealth and career success: poetry, music, and baseball are ultimately done for their own sake, and not for some external profit. They are not about grasping and taking, but about standing back and appreciating.

I’m being a bit idealistic, maybe, but I don’t find anything so objectionable in describing a thing in its perfect and pure form, and if no ballgame is perfect, still none is so humble that it fails entirely to participate in these spiritual pleasures. Wrapped up in the game is a great deal that is fine and worthwhile in an imperfect people and an imperfect land.



And there is another gift that the game’s poetry gives to those who enter into it. In the confines of the ballpark, partisan affiliations are shed like winter coats and profession and wealth become nigh indistinguishable, as rich and poor alike don the same cap and the same team colors. Our fights and squabbles lose significance before that which remains untouched by the petty concerns of the passing hour: the game.

I remember being at the Minnesota Twins’ ballpark in the midst of a hotly contested state referendum vote (one which had brought a tenseness to the veneer of Minnesota Niceness). But here, in the oblong field, we were neighbors again, and the only enemy were the Toronto Blue Jays. What’s more: in baseball, unlike in politics and ideology, the generous rule of sportsmanship reigns above the proceedings, and mandates that even enemies embrace, when all is said and done, as brothers.

The Federal Sport