The Flag that Flies Over Wrigley Field

The lesson baseball has for our time

Bart Giamatti said it was the sport of Spring, the game of hope as cold days turn warm.  Each inning a new beginning.  Originally, the field extended to the horizon.  The ball could roll for ever and the outfielders could run for ever. 

In the “real world” We battle time.  We worry that opportunity has passed.  On the sacred ground of a ball field, all time is now and forever.   I think that is why it is a game of youth, at least at heart.  It is “play” raised to a height that reaches joy.  Our strategies are suspended, our planning rearranged by a ball hit an inch to the left of an outstretch glove, a pitch diving past a swinging bat. 

Is that not life itself?  Has that not been the goad and the prize by which evolution took us “by the scruff of our necks” and shook us into self-awareness.

Surely, we can relearn this lesson, even as the playing fields grow darker. In every time of confusion and grief, we must and can remember the all or nothing headfirst slide, the broken bat soft liner into left,. 

There are two houses near a middle school in Tiffin that fly a flag.  Not an American flag.  Not the flag that flies over Wrigley Field. It’s message is not the promise of a nation strong and free from sea to shining sea.  It boldly says “F**k Biden” and then again underneath, “F**k you who voted for Biden.”  It is what the children see as they pass on their way to school. 

Their journey is just beginning.  Before them the cry of “play ball,” the Spring air of fair play, of batter up, of shaking hands in a long line after the game.  We may fail in much, but baseball will not fail us.