Cheer!
For your team. For a great play by either team.
I want to talk about shouting. It tells more than most realize about who we are. I’m thinking about the people in the stands, the “fans.” Different sports, different shouts.
Hold that line! Hold that line! Football?
Defense! Defense! Defense! Basketball?
Some kind of inarticulate roar! Something called a cheer. Baseball?
Baseball is a defensive game by design. The only major sport where the defense starts with the ball. Like the country where it grew up, the team on the field commands the advantages. You stand in the batter’s box and in front of you are nine people. Bad odds. You don’t see open spaces. You see guys with gloves. You don’t throw the ball up in the air, swing the bat, and try to hit that tiny space between third and short, or maybe down the line. Some ten foot tall maniac is throwing at you, at 90 plus miles an hour and you have a fraction of a second to figure out how to hit it. It’s where they first came up with nano-seconds.
And then, if you hit it, it’s run like hell until you find a safe space (called a base, not a fortification, just a hard mat). From there it’s figure out when it’s safe to run or steal or sacrifice yourself. Or maybe get picked off.
No one chants” hold the line.” It’s not a line; it’s a conspiracy.
And we on the bench or in the stands, and the difference seems to narrow, are cheering are stamping are clapping. We are celebrating with you, all the way. We know it’s an accomplishment. “Ment,” accomplishment? Not in the sense of intended, surely. There’s something less finite about it. Promised by the God? That’s closer. It’s more an “astonishment.” Against the odds, but not against our faith in ourselves and our team. It’s worth cheering.
Yes, it’s this way by design. A counptry game that grew in an urban environment when the immigrant had to battle the people, “already occupying the turf,” to go out into their territory and do what could be done, legal or not, to bring “home” some “score.”
Sports are popular because they reproduce the challenges of our lives in a setting that offers catharsis, release and hope. Japan, Central America? Similar?
And a final thought about the “cheer.” We cheer for the great play, even the great defensive play or the great pitched game. We even cheer for a great play by the “other team.” We cheer for a triumph over the odds of life. We cheer for humanity.
For there is always something to remember, to cheer about, to be astonished by, over a few beers after the game.
Remind you of life? Of your life?
John - you know that I share your love of baseball. It is not, though, the only major sport in which the defense controls the ball. Cricket is another, and cricket is nearly a religion in many parts of the world. Baseball is the only major American sport in which the defense controls the ball, but America is only a fairly small part of the world, as much as many Americans like to think otherwise.