Baseball is Woke
Like many athletic and artistic performances, it "awakens" us to wonder and joy.
I am a fan of a baseball team. That means I do not get my thrills by winning bets. I get my satisfaction when my team wins, or does well, or shows promise for the future. I’m excited when a player in a minor league game goes 5 for 5. The future is with me in the present.
This kind of “fandom” is “intellectual,” or so I like to believe. Perhaps I’m too impressed by Bart Giamatti’s praise of the sport, his ability to connect it to traditions of art and religion in Western culture.
Call it an illusion. It is my illusion, among all the illusions that give life meaning. It does, however, relate to a lament. In all the chatter that clutters media outlets and insults the intelligence of viewers of televised games, I see little willingness to highlight the aura of the game.
Spewing numbers, nuggets as some call them, is a form of profanity. Profane, in that it reduces the game to a carnival booth shooting gallery.
And it is careless repetition. As I wrote before, if I was sitting at a game in a seat next to such a person, I’d get up and go somewhere else to stand and watch the rest of the game.
But, then again, the game mirrors our life, now and in the past, as Americans. And if the commentary is tedious and inane and insipid (ever wonder why we have so many words in our language that point in this direction), isn’t it but another example of how it expresses much of our lives, our culture?
But also, it suggests the right remedy. We don’t have to sit next to the guy with the distracting commentary.
The beauty and the magic of the world is our heritage. We are “right” with the world when we participate in its grandeur.
We can, in other words, “wake up” (woke up?) to the wonder of life. Find in a flower (Wordsworth), or a violin phrase, or a twisting throw from the air to nab a runner at first, all that we need, or can expect, from life.