Jacques Barzun, the late Columbia University professor once wrote, Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball. I would like to amend this to: Whoever wants to know the religious soul of America, let him follow baseball. I strongly believe there is an indelible link between baseball and religion, especially the Catholic Church.
Baseball fan Kenneth Craycraft had an interesting take on this subject in his essay, Baseball and Religion Can Teach Us a Lot About Life. While the game can serve as a metaphor for life, it is not a substitute. One can go through a roller-coaster of emotions during a season, just like life. As the adage goes, one has wins and losses while some games are rained out. I have learned how to suffer with my team as the New York Mets, who have become my religious sect since 1962, not only make us sad but joyous when they pull off a miracle as they did in 1969 and in 1923. Religious faith comes with its penances, doubts and self-denials. So does baseball.
Someone once said that there is no clear line between the two. Both faith and the game have enjoyed relatively long histories. The Church had resisted change for over 1000 years. When Barzun wrote those words, baseball had been in a time freeze for a half-century. The game had been constant from 1903 to 1953 when the first of the original 16 teams moved from Boston to Milwaukee of the National League.
Baseball has a liturgical year just like the faith which covers the year with its spring training, regular season, followed by the playoffs and world series. The Church had its own universal language in Latin until the language police changed it to a country’s vernacular. Baseball churches are its green cathedrals, with Yankees Stadium the House thar Babe Ruth built, which is metaphorically comparable to New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Baseball is communal. It is teamwork that wins games. Like faith, there is no place for cheating, selfishness and wanton immorality. The Church also relies on its thousands of parish communities. Like the Catholic church, baseball has its rituals, rites and creeds by which its players try to perfect their talent. Both have distinct smells, such as beer, peanuts and hot dogs for baseball while churches have dim lighting, candle smoke and incense.
While baseball players train their bodies, they all have to develop confidence, concentration and the ability to put team ahead of self, just like a religious community. Like religion, baseball has heretics and heresies that tamper with its doctrines. While the Catholic Pope resides in Rome, the Baseball Commissioner lives in New York City.
While the Catholic Mass starts with Peace be to you, a baseball game starts with Play ball! Many of its teams have religious names at least in theory. I am talking about the Cardinals, Padres, Angels and Guardians, You can also see players and fans alike praying for an injured player and also for a rally to win the game in late innings. Many players look to the heavens in thanksgiving after making a good play. Baseball teaches humility because today’s hero can be the next day’s goat. Unsurprisingly both have a canonization process for Heaven and its baseball counterpart, The Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
John Sexton, Thomas Oliphant and Peter Schwartz explored these similarities in their 2013 book, Baseball As a Road to God. The book consists of 10 innings instead of chapters. His seventh inning is entitled Saints and Sinners. Baseball and the Church certainly have had both. The baseball saints had to include Stan the Man Musial, Cal Ripken and Marty Marion while the Church has its Sts Peter, Paul and Ignatius. Baseball sinners included Ty Cobb, the 1919 Chicago Black Sox* and Pete Rose. Many of the Church’s sinners eventually became its leading saints, such as Sts. Matthew, Paul and Augustine.
Another book, a fanciful novel, the 1982 classic Shoeless Joe, written by W. P. Kinsella, says a lot about baseball and faith. It was adapted into a film, seven years later, called Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones. Like the novel, the film has many allusions to baseball as a religion with talk of heaven, forgiveness and personal sacrifice, as well as trust and hope with elements of time travel thrown in.
Ray Kinsella, the author’s protagonist, tries to redeem the reputation of one of baseball’s greats, Shoeless Joe Jackson, the third leading hitter in baseball history. Jackson, who was not known for having a sharp mind, suffered a lifetime banishment for being one of baseball’s Black Sox, who fixed the 1919 World Series. Kinsella was an Iowa farmer, who starts hearing voices, not unlike St. Joan of Arc or St. Francis of Assisi. These voices haunt Kinsella, with odd requests: If you build it, he will come…Ease his pain and so on. He follows the voices as if he were a visionary on a holy mission.
The first one prompts the farmer to Build it and he will come. He interprets this to mean Jackson, who was his late father’s favorite player. He heeds the call, both as a tribute to his estranged father’s memory and a redemption for not only the ball player but Ray himself. This leads to Ray’s plowing up several acres of prime farmland, endangering his family’s livelihood to fulfill his dream.**
Before the film ends, we have had a glimpse of the remaining Black Sox and familiar names from baseball’s past, including Smokey Joe Wood and even Gil Hodges from my Brooklyn youth, all playing pick-up games on Ray’s field. The lost players, who have been in the midst of a contrived purgatory, all emerge amidst the corn fields of Iowa. They bathe in the sweet warmth of their long-lost camaraderie and playing the game they loved.
Baseball has a pristine aura that celebrates everything that all that is good about life on earth. During their hours of escape from behind the corn, they find a bliss, a peace and solidarity on a green field playing a child’s game again that only old ball players and children could understand. Joe asks Ray after their first encounter, Is this Heaven? He responds, No, it’s Iowa. After repeated by a few other players, it is easy to see how this could fit their idea of an afterlife.
This dream concludes with Ray’s surprise visit with his father, who was wearing a mask as the game’s catcher. After introducing him to his wife and granddaughter, they enjoy the long-time ritual of having a father and son catch. It ends with his father saying Heaven is where your dreams come true. This may not be high theology but it certainly rings a bell of truth for me.
Baseball, like religion, enjoys the gift of humor. A religion or a game that cannot poke clean fun at itself is destined to fail. Baseball humor is often laced with religion, especially Catholic players like the late Joe Garagiola and his childhood friend, Yankee great, Yogi Berra. I spent an afternoon with Joe several years ago while he was taping a new pilot for TV. During the breaks between takes, he regaled me with several stories of his childhood’s friend’s celebrated wit and wisdom, known as Yogi-isms. I believe Garagiola was the Boswell for Yogi’s Johnson.
The former catcher also drifted to baseball and Catholicism, satirizing the game’s religious sentiments. He suggested that Latino players bless themselves so many times, he feels they are up there to say a novena rather than hit. He told a great story about Jimmy Piersall whose mental troubles were portrayed in the film Fear Strikes Out. He was played by Pyscho star Anthony Perkins. When Piersall came to bat, he would draw a cross in the dirt, asking for God’s blessing. Garagiola would immediately get up from his squat and rub it out, saying why don’t we just let God watch the game.
I have been a baseball fan almost as long as I have been a Catholic. I have been faithful to both team and church ever since. I did not pick my teams, so much as they picked me. I started out as a Brooklyn Dodgers fan who loved the Bums, who always seemed to be the underdog, a trait I have had ever since 1953. Most Catholics and baseball fans have been members of both of these communities their whole lives. I made my first communion 73 years ago and saw my first game three years later.
I am afraid Barzun’s quote no longer holds any value, as he retracted it, not too long ago when he wrote: I’ve gotten so disgusted with baseball, I don’t follow it anymore…what have they done with our most interesting, best and healthiest pastime? Simply said, they have changed it…again, and again.
Baseball and Catholicism have shown declines in some areas, and gains in others. Their owners and bishops have panicked for fear of losing their relative power. The absolute greed of its owners and some bishops have been the aftertaste of their great success. Like the Catholic Church, quick and radical changes, which play to the fads of the times eventually destroy their reliance on the familiar and the traditional. Some of Pope Francis’ modern reforms among marriage, gay people and liturgical changes have often alienated long-time Catholics in the hope of attracting the young, fallen-away and the fair-weather believers.
Just recently, Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred raised the question of the Golden At-Bat, which has created a buzz among owners. This silly innovation first appeared in a game with the Savannah Bananas, whose barnstorming exhibitions sound more like the reincarnation of the Indianapolis Clowns or basketball’s, Abe Saperstein’s Harlem Globetrotters.
Commentators say that Banana Ball is a cross between a baseball game and a circus act. It bears no resemblance to Billy Ball or Whitey Ball, the names given to the strategic and personal way former managers Billy Martin and Whitey Herzog managed the game. Banana Ball is played purely for laughs and crowd entertainment. One might believe that its inspiration, emanated from late baseball impresario, Bill Veeck, who said if you can’t give them championships, at least give them entertainment. I believe in the early years of Vatican II, the Church had guitar Masses and similar popular additions that smacked more of entertainment than religious devotion.
The Bananas’ owner, Jesse Cole, wears a yellow tuxedo to each game. The game has modified the rules so as to add more color and interest in it, attacking baseball’s sometimes boringly slow pace. In Savannah, if you catch a foul ball in the stands it can count as an out for the team that hit it. Instead of runs, points are given for which team scores the most runs in an inning, except for the last inning when all runs count as points. Huh?
The way the Golden At-Bat works is that, instead of having your worst hitter come up in the ninth inning with the game on the line, the manager can substitute his best hitter for the scheduled batter, for a Golden At-Bat. Presumably, this gives his team a better chance to win the game. In Baseball you cannot change horses in mid-stream by putting a pinch-hitter who has not already appeared in the game. This makes the GAB a kind of unnecessary duplication.
Baseball has enjoyed several heroic moments during its rich history. Don Larsen’s perfect game in 1956, Bob Gibson’s 17 strike-outs against Detroit in 1968 and Freddie Freeman’s walk-off home run in the last World Series. They have to happen from the game’s natural flow. Drama cannot be contrived. If it is, it becomes routine, a step away from boring.
This also meddles with the all-important baseball record books which is pure gold to the baseball purists. Only casual fans will buy this. When the novelty wears off, they will move to something else. Meanwhile MLB has lost the heart of its fan base. Similarly, when the Church changes its traditions, or will not fully address a major scandal, many people will leave the community.
In Savannah, all games have a two hour limit. Players cannot step out of the batter’s box, bunting is not allowed, batters can steal first base, while walks are outlawed. Every fielder mush touch the ball before it becomes live. The runner can steal as many bases as possible. No mound visits. If a tie after the two hours, there is a tie-breaker.
Imagine if MLB adopted even a few of the above. To me the Golden At-Bat will backfire into the faces of its executives. Just add this to the extra innings ghost runner, pitch clock and shift bans that have already perverted the once-tradition-laden game, they might risk destroying the game itself.
What is hurting baseball is its idolatry of Sabermetrics, coined by Sabermetrician Bill James. It is the game’s reliance on algorithms and analytics that have added an artificial component to the game. Thanks to Analytics there have been too many home runs and strike-outs. The lack of action on the field is what’s really hurting the game. Managers spend too much time analyzing instead of letting them play ball. As for the Golden At-Bat, it reminds me of Moses and the Golden calf, the Old Testament symbol for pagan idolatry, which has made a come-back these past two generations.
Major League baseball wants to tamper with the game, to make it more competitive and with that comes additional revenues. MLB is terrified that their money tap maybe starting to dry up. More Analytics and game changes, like the Golden At-Bat are not the solution but the problem. MLB has to stop experimenting with the essence of the game. And so does Catholicism. Both institutions should be concerned for their futures because fans and the faithful church-goers will continue to vote with their feet or will completely ignore the collection basket.
* The infamous Chicago Black Sox were chronicled in the book Eight Men Out that explored their sinister history as the team who threw the 1919 World Series.
** This idyllic field really exists in Dyersville, Iowa. The New York Yankees played the Chicago White Sox in August of 2021. The game actually counted in the standings with the Sox prevailing 9-8.