Month: July 2018

My Fantasy Baseball gathered the day after the All-Star game to draft players. Each of us wanted to replace those who had underperformed during the first half of the season. We talked about the ten home runs in the game, four more than the previous record number, and how many strikeouts there were. The game was a mirror of the current trend in baseball—all or nothing.

I mentioned to one of our group that I thought professional sports offered a revealing perspective on the condition of the social order. Pundits think baseball, once called “America’s pastime,” is too slow nowadays, games averaging nearly three hours. Football has emerged as a widely-shared passion for many who follow sports although more and more people are questioning whether playing the game involves too much risk of permanent brain damage.

Mixed martial arts, where the object is to use whatever body part you can to beat your opponent into submission, has rapidly developed a large fan base of men and women nationally. Brawling used to be consigned to the streets. At least boxing involved padded gloves.

With all due respect to my friends who are fans of football or brawling in the ring, I submit that our nation might benefit from being reintroduced to some basic American values if baseball were to be celebrated again as our national pastime.

Readers who do not like professional sports are rolling their eyes now. Given all the turmoil in the world, does it matter what sport one watches or how long the games take? Really?

Full disclosure: I would not have been at Zippy’s across town for the after-All Star draft if I didn’t love baseball. I am biased.

I can’t remember when I first developed a love for the game. I do remember playing third base and pitching for the Mission Hills Realty Giants when I was ten. I can probably still name the starting lineups for the New York Yankees and Milwaukee Braves in the 1957 World Series.

I got excited when Mom married a descendant of the fellow who codified the rules of the game in the 19^th century. And, I relish the memory of sitting with Joe Torre’s sister in the third row behind home plate in Yankee Stadium for a Yankees-Blue Jays game in 2002.

I learned geography from baseball and how to compute batting averages, expressed as they are in decimals. A trustee who was involved in hiring me as Headmaster at Sacramento Country Day School says that an answer I gave in the interview that involved baseball won me the job in his view. (Asked what I would have been had I not been in education, I said, “Center fielder for the Yankees. Only the lack of size, speed, and talent stopped me.”)

And now, thanks to a friend, I have a daily date with mlb.com to see how the guys I chose to play for this week did in the games that day. So, impartial I am not. What fan is?

In a recent The Atlantic, Pete Rose is quoted as saying, “Baseball is a team game. But nine men who reach their individual goals makes a nice team.” Can the genius of the ideal of America be expressed any better? If all Americans reached their individual goals, wouldn’t that make for a nice country?

We keep statistics about all of the players on a baseball team—hitting, fielding, pitching—so players and fans alike see the individual nature of playing the game. No one tracks how many good blocks the left guard made in a season; the left guard has a specific assignment within the context of a larger play plan or game plan. He is a cog in the wheel, important but not individuated.

For better or worse, our country is comprised of individuals pursuing their own goals, coming together from time to time to achieve common ends, but inevitably judged by their individual accomplishments. In baseball, a player can make it to the Hall of Fame, based on his career statistics, without his team ever having won a championship. Think Ernie Banks.

Baseball games are measured in innings, not minutes. Those who complain about the length of a baseball game block out the fact that, in the precisely timed 60 minutes of an NFL football game, there is actual action for less than seven minutes. Baseball’s concession to the clock demands that a pitcher throw the next pitch within 20 seconds of receiving the ball back. Imagine action every 20 seconds!

The synonyms for pastime are: hobby, leisure, sport, game, recreation, amusement, diversion, avocation, entertainment, interest, sideline. A pastime implies relaxation and enjoyment. When did taking time out of our lives to relax and be entertained give way to watching the frenzy and violence of football as a good use of time?

Baseball executives fret that the game is too slow for millenials. Given the centrality of electronic devices and social media to that age group (but not just that group), I can understand the perception of a mismatch.

But, People of a Certain Age, why must traditional virtues be sacrificed to the frenetic pace of chasing current fads? Why not take the time to make the case, to educate the younger among us about the virtues of enduring values?

George Carlin once observed that, in baseball, the object is to reach home. What’s not to like about that?

Daniel E. White

July 2018

You People of a Certain Age who are around my age did not, in all likelihood, grow up watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. But, I bet few of you have not heard about him. He was an icon to millions of children, valuing slow over fast, love over hate or indifference. He made clear that he cherished the spirit and soul of every child with whom he came in contact, in person or on TV.

We saw the documentary about Fred Rogers playing in theaters, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? The film chronicles Rogers and the phenomenon he embodied on a medium where most other programming for children was inane or violent or both. Can you imagine anybody these days in any of our entertainment media putting a clock on the counter, setting it to tick for sixty seconds, and saying to the audience, “let’s find out how long a minute is,” and then staying silent to watch? Or having a child fix her eyes on a hand puppet while Rogers used one of his many voices to talk, not trying to pretend that he was doing the talking? Some special neighborhood!

Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister who summarized his theology as “love your neighbor” and “love yourself.” Anybody was his neighbor. Presbyterians don’t canonize but if they did, St. Fred Rogers would be enshrined. Acerbic TV host Tom Snyder once asked Rogers if his square, upright, kind, and gentle image was really him. By all accounts, it was.

Rogers’ goals started with the desire to make every child feel special and wanted, just as he or she was. Critics didn’t get him. They thought he was fostering the sense of entitlement epitomized by such actions as giving every child a trophy for excellence or rewarding as good behavior what should have been expected behavior. Critics often do not understand goodness.

Rogers was talking about a child’s spirit. His was the plainest explanation of the Christian belief that every child is a child of God. He knew that every child wants to love and be loved, and there are no trophies for that. It ought to be how we all behave, every day, child or adult.

The film suggested that his own childhood was not entirely a happy one, the affluence in which he grew up notwithstanding. He was a plump kid who was bullied. That might help to explain why he wondered about his own self-worth his entire life. He used his puppets, especially Daniel Striped Tiger, to talk about his own hurts, doubts, and disappointments in a way he could not otherwise do. Indeed, as he lay dying, he asked his wife if she thought he have lived a virtuous enough life to have earned a spot in heaven.

Individual children by the millions were his primary audience yet he could touch the hearts of adults profoundly. The film related the story about Rogers testifying before the U.S. Senate. President Johnson had signed the legislation creating the public/private partnership called PBS and described it as addressing the spirit of the nation. President Nixon wanted to stop public funding for PBS, and his chief ally, Senator John Pastore of Rhode Island, held hearings about the funding.

Rogers began by noting that he had prepared a philosophical statement that would take about ten minutes to read. But, he said to Senator Pastore, “I trust that you will read that.” Rogers then proceeded to pour out his heart about children and what a publicly funded PBS might provide in its programming that countered the other kinds of programs for kids. Rogers even quoted the lyrics of one of his songs for children to help make his point.

When Rogers finished, Sen. Pastore turned to the rest of the committee and said, “Well, you just got your $20 million.”

Rogers also used his show to make moral statements. When news media splashed the story nationwide about how a hotel owner in the South had poured chemicals into his pool while African American and white swimmers were in it, Rogers had the African-American who played the policeman (another subtlety) share Rogers’ wading pool to cool off his feet on a hot day, and Rogers toweled the man’s feet dry.

One of Rogers’ moral statements late in his career made clear his acceptance of gays. That prompted anti-gay activists to picket his memorial service, the intolerant protesting tolerance.

Contrast his ways of making a statement with the incivility that makes the news today.

Therein lies worry and hope.

Is there still room for Mr. Rogers in the world? On screen, one interviewee asserted that “there are lots of Mr. Rogers out there,” blunting my concern by contending, not only is there room but there are real people like Fred Rogers still around. Their stage might not be national TV. Theirs are neighborhoods, figuratively and literally, and in those neighborhoods there is no litmus test to be a neighbor. They touch the lives of others through profound and simple actions taken out of love.

Mr. Rogers had trouble, in the end, believing that he had made a difference because the challenges are so big. Really Fred? For those who try to live their lives doing daily “little unremembered acts of kindness and of love” (Wordsworth, via Dad) as a habit, you are a saint.

Daniel E. White

July 9, 2018