Guestblog: Robinson on Baseball

Concerning athletics, I can say baseball was my first love, though it soon was overtaken by basketball and then, later, running. Is there a "progression" at work here, a move from the lower to the higher? I often describe basketball as the most poetic of sports, and running the most philosophical. The former, at its best, is marked by a grace of movement that I find remarkable: 10 human beings in a confined space moving to rhythms both spontaneous and delimited by the adverbial (if you will) conditions of the game. Basketball is the athletic instantiation of Oakeshott's ideal of civil association -- within the rules a nearly endless proliferation of creative moves are possible. With running, its solitary character seems to me to be most important. It is the thinking man's activity, the ultimate way to process the the lurking problems in your head. This is why so many people run with ipods -- they unwittingly prove that you must either be intelligent to run long distances (or at least be able to be alone with one's thoughts), or else distract yourself with what undoubtedly is loud, putrid music.

And yet where is baseball in this hierarchy? I think it is the most religious of sports. If I may continue with my allusions to Oakeshott, and consider "religion" to be the marriage of the practical and poetic modes of experiences, then certainly baseball partakes of both modes -- is somewhere between basketball and running. Like basketball, it is a "game" and involves others. It has rules that are (mainly) adverbial rather than substantive. There are occasional interludes of great beauty and grace when this game is played. And yet, like running, it allows for reflection. Its slow pace and the (compared to basketball) aloofness of your teammates and opponents provides the space and time to think. It is the most individualistic of "team sports."

It is unsurprising, then, that baseball also is very ritualistic. All baseball fans know this. The player who won't step on the chalk line; the batter's routine as he stands at home plate; the pitcher who methodically maneuvers on the mound -- baseball lends itself to these things. All sports, of course, are marked by the routines of their players. But baseball, perhaps, brings these rituals to bear on the actual conduct of the players -- the actual playing of the game -- in a unique way. They are not "pre-game" rituals. They are an integral part of the game itself. This reinforces my point that baseball is the most "religious" of sports.

To put all this differently, and to summarize, baseball is a liturgy, the liturgy of my summers. As I partake of its pace and rituals, leavened with beer and hotdogs, I am aware of the beauty of existence, and what it ultimately points toward. For a moment in time, in the cool of the summer evening, as I hear the crack of the bat and feel the buzz of multiple drinks, I know all will be well. Baseball, then, is a form of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat.