Thank you.
I’m honored to be here. I’d like to thank Terry
Cannon and the Baseball Reliquary Board for
inviting me to speak. I was thinking about the
artifacts collected by the Baseball Reliquary. I
was reminded of the pitcher Don Sutton’s
response to accusations that he used a
foreign substance on the ball. Sutton said,
“Actually, that’s not true. Vaseline is
manufactured right here in the U.S.” Certainly,
one of Sutton’s Vaseline jars belongs in the
Reliquary collection.
It’s commonly assumed that the
Baseball Reliquary was founded by Terry Cannon.
That’s also not true. It’s just one of those
myths passed down through the years like at that
other museum, in Cooperville or Coppertown,
wherever it is. . . Cannon was a decorated Civil
War General and the Reliquary thought he’d sound
better than the real founder, who actually laid
out the original plans for the Reliquary at an
abandoned brewery in Milwaukee: his name, of
course, is Bud Selig. Unfortunately, Bud
couldn’t be with us today. . .
Let me begin with a few words about
today’s Shrine of the Eternals inductees. For
me, the choices are serendipitous. I’ve recently
begun some writing on Pete Gray, the one-armed
outfielder who played for the St. Louis Browns
in the 1940s. While Gray’s story of overcoming
his physical difference is remarkable, even more
impressive and inspiring is the story of Jim
Abbott. My older son, Andre, accumulated a
number of baseball autographs growing up. One of
his most cherished is the one from Jim Abbott.
I also have a young daughter,
Madeleine, and I’ve wanted to make sure that
she, as a girl, was never discouraged from
playing baseball. Thus, for the last couple of
years, I’ve had a postcard taped up on her
bedroom wall of a woman pitching in a game. That
woman, who serves as a model for my daughter, is
Ila Borders. By the way, I have another young
child, Jack, and I make him watch the Detroit
Tigers and New York Mets. To paraphrase Toots
Shor, “I want him to know life. It’s a history
lesson. This way my son will understand the
Depression.” As you can probably tell, I have
too many kids. . .
In any case, I’ve also been doing
research on Curt Flood and his impact on
professional sports. But you can’t talk about
Flood without also talking about the man that
Hank Aaron claimed is as important to baseball
history as Jackie Robinson. Of course, that man
is Marvin Miller, who I admire immensely. I feel
fortunate to be able to meet our inductees.
Their experiences also relate directly to my
theme. In their cases, on issues of gender,
class, and physical difference, they illustrate
both the potential and the limits of the
American dream.
 |
Robert Elias, delivering Keynote
Address at the 2003 Shrine of the Eternals Induction Day
(photo courtesy of Larry Goren) |
As Terry mentioned, I’ve written a book,
Baseball and the American Dream, and teach a
course on that subject at the University of San
Francisco. Neither the book nor the course
focuses on baseball statistics or records.
Instead, I’m more concerned with baseball as a
reflection of American history and
culture.
In her book, Foul Ball,
Allison Gordon wrote, “I once stood outside
Fenway Park in Boston, . . . and watched a
vigorous man of middle years helping, with
infinite care, a frail and elderly gentleman
through the milling crowds to the entry gate.
Through the tears that came unexpectedly to my
eyes, I saw the old man strong and important
forty years before, holding the hand of a
confused and excited five-year old, showing him
the way. Baseball’s best moments don’t always
happen on the field.”
Yes, baseball’s best moments
don’t always happen on the field. Historian
Peter Bjarkman has written that baseball “. . .
is a game which surely does not mean half of the
things we take it to mean. But then again, it
probably means so much more.” Arguably, baseball
reflects some of the nation’s noblest
aspirations. To understand this, we should
consider baseball’s relationship to our
quintessential national quest: the pursuit of
the American dream.
A
Dream Deferred?
We all know the basic ingredients of
the American dream. However we precisely define
it, the dream makes the country special: it
nourishes the American people, it seduces
foreigners to our shores, and it spreads the
American way far beyond our own borders. Support
for the American dream has been widespread. But
some of the praise is revealing. For example,
one advocate claimed that: “This American system
of ours. . . call it Americanism, call it
capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each
and every one of us a great opportunity if we
only seize it with both hands and make the most
of it.” Unfortunately, those are the words of
the famous American gangster, Al Capone. What
does that tell us?
We might also wonder how much the
American dream has been a reality, and for whom?
To what extent have its promises been fulfilled?
People worry about this, and for good reason.
Many don’t experience the U.S. as a land
of opportunity. Even if the dream were more
widely experienced, some worry about the values
it asks us to live by — materialism,
hyper-competition, excessive individualism, and
so forth. In the end, the American dream may not
be so much the inevitable reality but rather the
dream and also its contradiction. Which one will
prevail?
Baseball as Cultural Mirror
What does this have to do with
baseball? To more specifically examine the
ingredients and performance of the American
dream, we could choose from many mirrors of our
nation. Sports is one possible mirror. But one
American sport surpasses all others in
reflecting U.S. society: baseball. Roger Angell
has suggested that, “Baseball seems to have been
invented solely for the purpose of explaining
all other things in life.” Well, perhaps not
everything. But quite a lot.
About baseball, Walt Whitman said:
“Well — it’s our game; that’s the chief fact in
connection with it: America’s game. . . it
belongs as much to our institutions, fits into
them as significantly as our Constitution’s
laws; is just as important in the sum total of
our historic life.” Bart Giamatti claimed that
baseball “is the last pure place where Americans
can dream.” George Grella says that, “. . .
baseball, not football, will always be our
National Pastime. . . [It] speaks as few other
human activities can to our country’s sense of
itself. . . and should be compared not only with
other sports, but with. . . our painting, music,
dance and literature. . . baseball embodies the
central preoccupations of the cultural fantasy
we think of as the American Dream. . .”
But what, precisely, is the
relationship? Does baseball illustrate the
American dream, and provide us lessons for how
to achieve it? Is baseball itself a route to the
American dream? Does the game challenge the
American dream and its driving values? Is
baseball a narcotic for distracting us from the
realities of the American dream? Or does
baseball serve as a refuge from its endless
strife and accumulation?
Maybe baseball is no single one of
these things. The game has represented different
experiences for different groups at different
times and places. Baseball has a long tradition
dating from the earliest years of the American
republic. It has uniquely mirrored the trends in
the culture at large. Arguably, Americans should
care about baseball because it has been, and
remains, a measure of the health of our
society.
A
Field of Dreams?
With what ingredients of the
American dream have baseball been associated?
Francis Miller claimed that, “Baseball is
democracy in action: in it all men are ‘free and
equal,’ regardless of race, nationality or
creed. Every man is given the rightful
opportunity to rise to the top on his own
merits. . . It is the fullest expression of
freedom of speech, freedom of press, and freedom
of assembly in our national life.”
David Voigt claims that, “. . .
baseball kept alive Horatio Alger’s myth that a
hungry, rural-raised, poor boy could win
middle-class respectability through persistence,
courage and hard work.” Baseball has been “. ..
a vehicle of assimilation for immigrants into
American society. . . [and has] kept the myth of
the American melting pot alive. . .” Immigrant
leaders have advised their peoples to learn the
national game if they wanted to become true
Americans. Buster Olney has observed that, “More
than a half-century after Jackie Robinson broke
baseball’s color barrier, America celebrates his
legacy. . . When Orlando Hernandez, from Cuba,
signed with the Yankees, catcher Joe Girardi
noted the variety on New York’s pitching staff:
Kansas City Irishman David Cone, Andy Pettite of
French descent, Panamanian Ramiro Mendoza,
Hideki Irabu of Japan. And finally, David Wells,
who’s probably from Jupiter.”
For those on the sidelines, baseball
has helped assimilate fans and develop
individual identities. The fans’ affiliations
with their teams have often exceeded their
attachment to their church, trade, political
party — all but family and country, and even
those have sometimes emerged all wrapped up in
baseball.
Baseball has been used to
demonstrate the benefits of play, team spirit,
and sportsmanship. The game has been prescribed
as a preventative against things such as crime,
violence, delinquency, and even the stresses of
modern life. Baseball has been widely
represented in our language and literature. It
exudes beauty and grace, and has been described
as “poetry in motion” and “a work of art.” The
game has been linked to patriotism and
nationalism, and to American prestige at home
and abroad. For these and other reasons,
baseball has been a symbol of Americanism.
Second
Thoughts on the Baseball Dream
Of course, baseball’s long
association with the American dream might also
mask some uncomfortable realities. For example,
the historian, Harold Seymour, worried about
those, “who regimented [baseball]. . . with
their own ideology, to impose values that would
make the growth of capitalism easier by creating
an opiate to distract citizens from imperfect
working, learning and living conditions.”
David Voigt argues that, “In
baseball and the broader society the
opportunities for some groups have been few
rather than many, and for some races, virtually
all access has been choked off for long periods.
As some of the barriers to the American dream
have fallen in more contemporary times, we
nevertheless often find, inside and outside
baseball, that progress still falls well short
of our American ideals.” While the stories of
African-American, Asian-American, and
Latino-American baseball players are often
inspiring, their paths to success sometimes seem
more in spite of the American dream than because
of it.
Some worry about the lingering
obstacles to women’s participation in baseball.
Susan Berkson has written that, “Ken Burns [in
his Baseball book and documentary] calls
baseball a metaphor for democracy. But he’s
wrong. Instead, it’s a metaphor for sexism. The
great theme is that it’s a boys game; women have
been shut out again and again.” Although women
have historically been more involved in baseball
than we commonly assume, the biases against them
largely remain and also extend to other baseball
roles. The former umpire, Pam Postema, who was
driven out of baseball, summed it up in the
colorful title of her book: You’ve Got To
Have Balls to Make It In This League. We
have to wonder whether baseball can be a part of
the American dream for women.
Economic inequalities also prevail
in baseball on several levels, between minor
leaguers and major leaguers, players and owners,
big market owners and small market owners, and
so forth. As John Thorn has suggested, “The lie
of baseball is that it’s a level playing field.
. . That all the inequities in American life
check their hat at the door. That they don’t go
into the stadium. That once you’re there,
there’s a sort of bleacher democracy, that the
banker can sit in the bleachers and converse
with the working man next to him. This is a
falsehood. You have class and race issues that
mirror the struggle of American life, playing
themselves out on the ballfields.”
Gai Berlage worries about the
corporate values that high-powered professional
sports, such as baseball, routinely ingrain into
children. Others warn us about baseball’s
increasing control by media corporations with
little real interest in the game. According to
Peter Carino, the building of new stadiums such
as Camden Yards “demonstrates. . . what a grand
ballpark can mean to a city and the game, [but]
it also illustrates the more unsavory elements
marking the culture this dream represents: the
machinations of power brokers, the sweetheart
subsidies from politicians to the private
sector, and the class structures that belie the
nation’s claim to democracy.” Tom Goldstein
claims that baseball is being run “by network
executives, marketing consultants, and PR
‘wizards’. . . Baseball is America’s newly found
‘cheap’ natural resource. Our communities have
become strip mines, and the fans are the
precious commodity to be plundered.”
Steve Lehman worries that the
growing economic disparities in Major League
Baseball are rationalized by false appeals to
the American dream. For example, when he managed
the wealthy Los Angeles Dodgers, Davey Johnson
claimed that: “Parity is not the American way.
The American way is to dominate somebody else.”
Lehman disputes such descriptions of “the
American way.” “They’re more like the natural
tendencies of monarchies or fascist states than
democratic ones,” Lehman says, “and more like
football than baseball.” Perhaps, then, we have
more than one American dream. Which one do we
want to live by? Must we choose between a
football American dream and a baseball American
dream, as Lehman implies, where football is the
sport for the nation we are and have become
while baseball is the sport for the nation we
were and could be?
The
Lure of Nostalgia
As we search for the genuine
“American way,” it’s tempting to think that if
only we could return to the “good old days,” our
problems would be solved. As one of our oldest
and most unchanging institutions, baseball oozes
nostalgia. It takes us back to a simpler time
when things seemed less fleeting and confusing.
As songwriter Paul Simon asked: “Where have you
gone, Joe DiMaggio? Our nation casts its lonely
eyes to thee.”
In our alienated culture, we long
for community. We rally around things that can
unite us and make us feel good about ourselves
and our society. The danger, however, comes when
nostalgia is used to sanitize the past and
divert us from present realities. Is baseball
once again the “national pastime,” or is it
merely the “national past tense,” nostalgically
describing an idealized, bygone era?
Ron Briley claims that, “in [Mickey]
Mantle’s final days, many of his admirers
recalled lost youth and yearned for [the good
old days]: an America free from crime, decaying
morals, culture wars, economic insecurity, and
social conflict.” But this, Briley says, was
“mere wishful thinking for Americans
uncomfortable with changing perceptions of race,
gender and class.” It was a longing for “the way
we never were.”
Each year, thousands of Americans
make a pilgrimage to Cooperstown, New York and
Dyersville, Iowa (where the Field of Dreams
was filmed). In his study of those sites,
Charles Springwood found that a nostalgia for a
lost America motivated far more visitors than a
quest for baseball history. “Visitors [to
Cooperstown and Dyersville],” he says,
“experience. . . a kind of personal purification
where they make contact with the simple life,
the work ethic, childhood, fatherhood, marriage,
the importance of family and home, the meaning
of the father-son bond.” The “Field of Dreams”
lives on beyond the film that created it. In a
world where life has increasingly become a
movie, the field is real to visitors as long as
it remains true to the film. Both Cooperstown
and Dyersville keep alive a part of the American
dream.
But for whose interests? William
Fischer worries about the recent proliferation
of baseball films and literature. “It seemed,”
he says, “as if baseball. . . was now being
improperly used as a symbol of moral purity, as
a romantic bedrock in [our] modern days of evil.
In the book The Natural, for example, Roy
Hobbs strikes out and is left in ignominious
defeat, a human being swallowed by his human
weaknesses. And yet [in the movie, this] was
transformed into a ‘feel-good’ story about a
‘can-do’ America.” Fischer says that American
politics since the 1980s has pushed the themes
of “Bringing America Back” and “Family Values,”
while watching the middle classes shrink and
corporate values flourish. . . [A] society
emerged that is less human, and more alienating
and artificial. . .” To compensate for this
decline, Fischer argues, we were given the
nostalgic symbol of baseball.
Baseball’s
Deep Resonance
But perhaps baseball can instead play
a more concrete and positive social role.
We shouldn’t sentimentally over-exaggerate
baseball’s influence. Even so, many people find
themselves confused about their society and
world. They view life as chaotic, lacking any
meaningful shape. If in the twentieth century,
baseball provided a semblance of community in
large, increasingly alienated urban centers,
then in the twenty-first century perhaps the
game can help us make sense of an increasingly
complicated and fast-paced age. It may serve as
a metaphorical ointment for those wounded by our
contemporary society.
We want baseball to be good, we want
it to be pure, we want to be able to keep loving
it. For some of us, it’s our refuge, our
salvation. Some people feel as intensely about
baseball as they feel about their nation:
they’re baseball patriots. Baseball remains
deeply ingrained in the American character.
According to Joseph Sobran, “Our deepest norms
of order can still be seen in operation on the
diamond when they’ve been adulterated everywhere
else. Baseball is our Utopia. . .”
In baseball’s evolution, we see key
American issues being played out: politics and
nationalism; labor-management conflicts; class
and economic inequalities; religion and
spirituality; expansion and foreign affairs;
race, ethnic, and gender relations; and much
more. It reflects a host of age-old American
tensions: between workers and owners, scandal
and reform, urban and rural, the individual and
the community, and so forth. In many ways,
baseball is a barometer for the society.
It’s no coincidence, as Frank Deford
has suggested, that the last two words of the
national anthem are “play ball.” Baseball still
strongly reverberates in America. If it also has
its shortcomings, then fixing them can enrich
and even rescue the nation. Bill Lee once said:
“Baseball is the belly-button of our society.
Straighten out baseball, and you straighten out
the rest of the world.”
For example, baseball has been
racist, yet — through Jackie Robinson and
Branch Rickey — it also led the way for greater
integration not only of American sports but also
of American society. Likewise, baseball has been
sexist, yet it was the first sport to allow
women to play professionally, and to allow girls
to play in the little leagues. Baseball has been
classist, and yet — through Curt Flood and
Marvin Miller — it also pioneered the end to
wage slavery not only in baseball but in all
professional sports, and it might yet serve as a
model for America’s broader labor movement.
Consider Flood’s explanation for challenging the
reserve clause: “I guess you really have to
understand who that person, who that Curt Flood
was. I’m a child of the sixties. . . a man of
the sixties. During that. . . time this country
was coming apart at the seams. We were in
Southeast Asia. . . Good men were dying for
America and the Constitution. In the southern
part of the U.S. we were marching for civil
rights and Dr. King had been assassinated, and
we lost the Kennedys. To think that merely
because I was a professional baseball player, I
could ignore what was going on outside the walls
of Busch Stadium [was] truly hypocrisy and now I
found that all of those rights that these great
Americans were dying for, I didn’t have in my
own profession.” This suggests a sport that’s
deeply intertwined with its times. Baseball has
played a transformative role in the past; it can
do so again in the future.
Restoring
Baseball’s American Dream
How can we unleash baseball’s
potential for progress? For example, if Jackie
Robinson opened baseball to people of color, and
if Curt Flood brought some control of the game
to the players, how and who can return the game,
now, to the fans? In our spectator culture,
where most of us watch our games and society
passively on the sidelines, how can fans and
citizens be brought into the center of the
action?
Peter Gammons argues that,
“Baseball can assume its place as the sport of
the American dream, but it will not happen by
looking back. If indeed baseball is on the brink
of a renaissance, then what it needs is a
creative vision.” But that “creative vision”
will not likely emerge from baseball’s ruling
establishment. A new direction for baseball
can come, however, from baseball players and
their union, and from baseball fans and their
communities. Baseball could provide initiatives
to help reform not only the national pastime but
also American society. It could lead the way on
worker’s rights and in revitalizing the labor
movement. It could promote genuine racial
equality and improve race relations. It could
push for serious enforcement of anti-trust laws
and provide new models of public ownership for
teams and other corporations. It could concern
itself with its consumers — the fans — as
humans and not merely as commodities. It could
promote breakthroughs in women’s access to the
game and to sports and American institutions,
generally. As Kevin Brooks suggests, “For those
who have experienced the field of dreams, they
should not retreat to their paradise, making it
an idol, but rather forsake paradise and live
among the people, sharing the good news.” The
players have a particular responsibility along
these lines.
Grassroots organizations can also
play an important role. For example, Ralph
Nader’s Sports Reform Project and his group,
FANS (Fight to Advance the Nation’s Sports),
have put out a Fan’s Bill of Rights. I also
recommend Don Weiskopf’s Baseball Play America,
SABR (the Society for American Baseball
Research), and FAIRBALL, a group begun by the
Elysian Fields Quarterly.
Most of all, however, the Baseball
Reliquary has been working to bring the game
back to the fans and to restore the baseball
American dream. It’s helping us to construct a
people’s history of not only baseball but also
America, to put up against the official story.
As an organization run by baseball fans, it’s
providing us with a deeper understanding of
baseball and its impact on American history and
culture.
The Reliquary’s induction criteria
stand in bold contrast to the mere compilation
of baseball statistics and records. They reward
the distinctiveness of one’s play, uniqueness of
one’s character, and the person’s imprint on the
baseball landscape. They reflect excellence in
character or principle, and contributions to
developing baseball as an arena for the human
imagination. We need only consider the names of
the previous inductees to conjure up their
unique qualities — people such as Bill Veeck,
Jim Bouton, Curt Flood, Pam Postema, Bill Lee,
Moe Berg, Dock Ellis, Minnie Minoso, Satchel
Paige, and so forth. Not to mention today’s
inductees.
In conclusion: At its best, perhaps
baseball is better than American society.
As Reggie Jackson once said: “The country is as
American as baseball.” Baseball can help make
the American dream more worth attaining, and
more accessible to more people. There are
disturbing signs that America is a culture in
crisis. The increasing attempts to impose the
American way abroad seem correlated with a
growing questioning by Americans of their own
society at home. Perhaps America should be
looking up to the best in baseball. As
journalist Bill Vaughan once wrote: “What it
adds up to is that it’s not baseball’s
responsibility to fit itself into our frantic
society. It’s, rather, society’s responsibility
to make itself worthy of baseball. That’s why I
can never understand why anybody leaves the game
early to beat the traffic. The purpose of
baseball is to keep you from caring if you beat
the traffic.”
How can baseball help fulfill the
American promise? John Thorn put it this way:
“Fundamentally, baseball is what America is not,
but has longed or imagined itself to be. It is
the missing piece of the puzzle, the part that
makes us whole. . . a fit for a fractured
society. While America is about breaking apart,
baseball is about connecting. America,
independent and separate, is a lonely nation in
which culture, class, ideology, and creed fail
to unite us; but baseball is the tie that binds.
. . Yet more than anything else, baseball is
about hope and renewal. . . This great game
opens a portal onto our past, both real and
imagined. . . it holds up a mirror, showing us
as we are. And sometimes baseball even serves as
a beacon, revealing a path through the
wilderness.” For those of us pursuing a new and
better American dream, and a renewal of baseball
as America’s national pastime, it’s a path we
should all be gladly taking. Thank you.
Bill
of Rights for FANS (Fight to Advance the
Nation’s Sports)
1. Fans should influence rules
changes.
2. Fans have a right to know about
the operation and practice of organized sports.
3. Fans have the right to purchase
reasonably priced tickets and to be treated with
courtesy and respect.
4. Tickets should be available to
everyone and not just the elites.
5. Fans have the right to see their
interests represented before Congress.
6. Fans should have games broadcast
the way they want them shown.
7. Fans have the right to have their
interests effectively expressed in the
resolution of sports disputes.
8. The interest of fans in the
integrity of a team should also be effectively
expressed.
9. Fans, as average citizens, have a
right not to see those in sports treated as if
they are above the law.
10. Sports entities that rely on
public funds have an obligation to serve the
public and disclose relevant information. |