BASE TO BASE

Dear Spike:

My father likes to tell people that I was just three days old when I attended my first baseball game.

We waited a bit longer to introduce you (mostly because the local team has been on the road since you were born) but I’ll still be proud to tell folks that we took you out to the ball game when you were small enough to fit into my mitt.

The home team won, 7 to 3. You saw your first home run and your first 6-4-3 double play. And when the visiting batters were retired in the top of the seventh, you stretched out your arms as if, by instinct, you knew what to do.

And in doing so, you participated in a noble ritual.

There’s something religious about baseball. Maybe its the strict adherence to an ancient liturgy, to rules and seance and tradition. Maybe it’s the communion of peanuts and Cracker Jack. Maybe it’s the hymns.

You don’t have to love this game the way I do (and your grandfather does, and your great-grandfather does) but I hope you’ll understand it and respect it. It’s as important a part of our country’s heritage as our national anthem and our flag.

Maybe more.

Yes, I think more.

That might be patriotic sacrilege in these days of bumper-sticker nationalism, but I think it’s true.

Like our nation, the game was born of British stock. And like our nation, it quickly and hubristically came into its own, maturing during our country’s darkest hours as men gathered in Army camps and war prisons — officers with enlisted men, side by side.

When the Civil War ended, baseball survived — though like our nation it remained soiled by racism and segregation for generations upon generations to come. And like our nation, it ultimately righted itself of that evil.

It still remains segregated in one sad way: At some point along the line, women were relegated to the derivative game of softball. And with very limited exceptions at the higher levels of the game, they do not play alongside men.

Maybe you could change that. Like our nation, baseball is ever-changing.

Much as our Constitution has proven both supple and resilient, the game has proven able to evolve and yet remain affixed in ordinance and tradition.

Much as our government has proven stronger than any President, Congress or court, baseball has proven stronger than its players, its owners or its fans.

And much as our nation has increasingly come into the possessorship of corporate interests, so too has the professional arm of the game.

And yet it survives.

Three strikes, four balls, three outs. Nine innings, nine players. Ninety feet, from base to base.

Peanuts and Cracker Jack. The seventh-inning stretch.

Rules and seance and tradition. Suppleness and resilience.

No, you don’t have to love this game the way I do.

But I do hope you’ll let me take you again. And again. And again.

Love,
dad