In the classic 1989 baseball movie “Field of Dreams,” Terrence Mann, played by James Earl Jones, tells Ray Kinsella, played by Kevin Costner; “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a backboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, it’s part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.”
In 1977, just before becoming president of Yale, A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote “The Green Fields of the Mind.” In it he states, “It (baseball) breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive …”
When he took the Yale job, being a big baseball fan, he joked he would rather be president of the American League. He wasn’t joking. Seven years later, he left Yale for a higher calling to become president of the National League and, less than three years after that, he became the seventh commissioner of Major League Baseball.
Both James Earl Jones and Bart Giamatti were telling us that America’s oldest professional sport (only lacrosse is older) represents more than a game. Baseball represents something really good about us as a country, something that overcomes our political divides. It’s a game that represents us at our most hopeful and most peaceful self. In the last year, we’ve seen a lot “steamrolled” (think East Wing) and “erased” (think DEI and CDC), but I have confidence that baseball will again “mark” and “buffer” the passage of this difficult time.
However, if our democratic republic doesn’t survive the current onslaught, I think a few things will be left standing. They are Harvard, baseball and, because of Native Americans, lacrosse. Harvard was around 140 years before the Declaration of Independence, lacrosse was six centuries before, and baseball, separate from cricket and rounders, was first mentioned in colonial America in 1744. All three represent important institutions that are older than our country and have withstood the test of time.
They represent the best of us and are worth preserving.
Even though there’s still snow on the ground, remember that spring is around the corner. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican, Democrat, Independent, Yankee or Red Sox fan because the smell of freshly cut grass, the feel of warm “sunshine” on your back and the sight of “high skies” is coming soon.
Hope springs eternal! Play ball!
Nick Perencevich is a semi-retired physician who lives in Concord. He is also a Red Sox and Cleveland Guardians fan.