Baseball and America
Siva Vaidhyanathan is a brilliant young scholar at NYU. His blog site, www.sivacracy.net, is always a source of humor and deep insight. Siva got his PhD at Texas when I was there, and was a regular for a time at the same bar I was. I only really got to meet him once, when he was on my team for the bar's annual golf tournament, but ever since then I've considered him a "friend" since he is just such a nice and thoughtful guy. Our bar was a baseball bar, and we share an intense passion for the game.
Siva wrote the following bit for Altercation.com. I think it says it all.
From: Siva Vaidhyanathan
Hometown: "Say Hey" CityHey, Eric.
I had some trepidation about making a joke about airport security on 9/11/01. But I never thought it would be Bill Buckner fans who got offended! For the record, I loved Buckner when he played. I always started him on my baseball card All-Siva teams. He and Bill Madlock made the Cubs fun for a lot of years.I have been walking around New York City all week with a New York Giants cap on. If the Giants had stayed in Manhattan they would be my favorite team. Alas, on more than one occasion some young whippersnapper sought solidarity with me for being a Mets fan. Why couldn't the Mets develop their own logo? Someone should work on that.
This week I also started staying home with my three-month-old daughter three days a week. We got to watch opening day games together. Because I have agreed to raise her as a Red Sox fan (the compromises we make for love and family harmony), we watched the right-winger/hander Curt Schilling win his first game of the season while switching over occasionally to a half-empty Shea Stadium.
My daughter and I watched two teams I loathe, yet we loved every minute of it. Every time Coco Crisp came up to bat I made her giggle by saying "COCOCRISPCOCOCRISPCOCOCRISP" really fast with a funny face.
I can't quite describe the joy of sharing a baseball game with my daughter. So far, it's all about my self-indulgence. She could be just has entertained by the Simpsons (which hypnotizes her). It's really just me wishing for the day that she can sit next to me and keep score at a game and ask me about the first time I saw Barry Bonds jack two homers in a game.
Yeah. I can even get excited about seeing Barry Bonds hit, even though we know what we know. I can't help being willfully naive and embarrassingly sappy about baseball every opening day. I hope I never lose that. I don't ever want to be that smart and cynical.
Loving baseball and loving America are deeply intertwined for me. They are both troubled and unjust right now. But there is always hope and goodness in the details, the small things, the margins.
See, even though our government is corrupt, our air polluted, our ice caps melting, and our security and credibility eroded, I still believe that there is something powerful and beautiful about seeing the American flag wave over a center-field wall.
I still get the chills when we stand for the Star Spangled Banner before a game.
I still smile when I see a parent share a game and a bag of $5 popcorn with her child.
I still listen in awe as two people from completely different places and standards of living -- a Wall Street broker and a Bronx public school custodian, for instance -- engage in a high-level debate about whether the hit-and-run really creates runs efficiently.
These are among the things that first made me fall in love with this great nation. Along with Texas barbecue, Los Lobos, and Stevie Wonder, these things keep my love for America alive and strong.
I hope my daughter loves America as much as I do. She can even hate the Yankees as my wife does. I don't care. Plenty of good Americans do. They are just a lot less happy than those of us who support the Bombers. That's their choice -- freedom of choice is what we are all about -- as David Brent of The Office would say.
But I know it's going to be harder for my daughter to feel as passionate about these little things. Loving America will not come as easy for her. My father and his eight brothers and sisters immigrated here. They chose this place for all the right reasons. Most of my relatives who did not immigrate were military. They modestly risked their lives for the rest of us. My entire life has been framed by these choices and sacrifices. My daughter, on the other hand, will be distant from all that. She won't know the risks my father took to establish a life here. She won't understand what it meant that my grandfather volunteered for his third war at the end of his naval career to captain a small plastic craft in the Mekong Delta so that rich Republicans like young George W. Bush could get smashed every weekend in peace.
The America she is growing up into has already spent all her money on tax cuts for those same rich draft dodgers and on a futile war that has no good resolution. The America she will get to know will be more economically stratified, more debt-ridden, more atomized, and more hated than even my own post-Vietnam, post-Watergate America. How can I teach her about the beautiful things? How can I inspire her to let America inspire her?
At a baseball game, we can rise above all that political pettiness (except when fans boo the great Carlos Delgado). We can all be Americans. We can all pay attention to the beautiful little things like a clean pick-off move or a perfect bunt. We can all giggle when homophobes sing along with "YMCA" and "We Will Rock You," and those who would never be caught dead listening to a "Bonzo goes to Bitburg" chant "Hey, Ho. Let's Go." It's the great unifier.
Sure, I wish baseball players were clean. I wish tickets were affordable. I wish the drunks would leave the stands and let the kids enjoy the game without having to hear "show us your tits" in the seventh inning. I wish George W. Bush would resign from office to become baseball commissioner so he could clean up the game. I wish the Giants had never left Manhattan and the Dodgers had never left Brooklyn. I have a lot of wishes that will never come true. That's part of being American as well. At least we have dreams and wishes. We can imagine a better life. Around the world, billions of people can't.
As Paul Simon reminds us, "We come in the age's most uncertain hours, and sing an American tune." It's all right. It's all right.
I sing my daughter to sleep with that song. And it makes me cry.
posted by cc at
8:59 PM
4 Comments:
There are so many things out there that state the same as your friend. "There is always Baseball." And for good reason.
Was this sentiment the basis of "Field of Dreams"? That no matter the differences, you can always talk about baseball?
It has everything to make a good story; talent, competition of perceived good and evil, human drama, action, and luck. The plot line can be whatever moral (in a lesson sense), arguement, inspiration, or mystery you want to make it.
I played the game, not just because my brother did, and so did our friends. I played because I knew that there was always a chance that I could make that play that counted. I was horrible at bat, as my brother gleefully pointed out with my first hit, "Now your average is something like .00001!" Yes, I remembered that, as well as the hit.
Yet, I still have the game ball I earned with a triple play. Was it luck, most likely, but it was a chance to say I did it, and I could have only done it if I was playing.
I could never understand the obsession of stats and who is who, but I could always understand the value of teamwork, good talent, and favorable luck. Don't get me wrong here. I believe luck is not a random thing, but rather a reflection of one's devotion and determination. Was it a random act of luck, or the persistence of the player not to give up that caught that ball?
This is so American, Baseball that is. Not because it was invented here, but it developed here. It has taken on the characterizations of our society and country. A moral can be found in the annuals of baseball for any situation. A story can be found for any need of inspiration.
My personal favorite is of Dummy Hoy, or Billy Hoy, the first deaf/mute in professonal baseball. An outstanding outfielder who is often credited with starting the hand signals the umps use. Not in the Hall of Fame, unless he was elected after 2001, the last time I checked, but a huge inspiration to the Deaf community everywhere. It is obvious what they decided to call the diamond at Gallaudet, Hoy Field.
Baseball is perhaps the greatest invention for America, for America's stake. For, "There is always Baseball".
Bro,
Thanks so much for your comment. I honestly didn't know you liked baseball that much. You should have fought harder for your son to not turn to soccer! :) I kid.
I remember giving you grief about your batting, and for that I'm sorry. Kids are particularly nasty people. But, for some reason, I don't remember that triple play! Maybe it was sibling rivaly and the fact that I didn't want my little brother to have achieved something I never did; maybe I just wasn't there and you didn't mention it to me (you were more humble in that regard than me). But that's pretty damned impressive. I once made an unassisted double play, and I thought I was hot shit. A triple play? Get out of town. That's crazy hot shit.
Not so much that I liked baseball, for it is a great sport, I have grown to hate organized sports after college. Okay hate is harsh. I dislike the emphazise some parents put into it and forced their kids to ridiculous expectations. Hey, they are just kids that want to play. If you can teach them a few things along the way, great.
As for the kids, Karen and I really push the "you have to have fun doing this". I will not let either one of them quit after a few hard practices, but I refuse to drag them to practice after practice if they really hate it. This is what happened with baseball. Soccer is what he wanted, so I let him grow in that garden so to speak.
I mean, look at my daughter, Sport Acrobatics? Who even heard of such a thing in our family and she is now half-way to qualifying for nationals. In fact, this Friday there is a good chance she and her team will qualify. (They need two qualifying scores)
As for the play, I was filling in at second from my usual third. There was two on. I caught a line drive, stepped out a runner at second and threw it to first for the same, for they left their bags thinking that hit was good. It was unreal. I thought I only got two, until I was slapped from behind by another player as they were running to the dugout. Too bad I could never have another triple, but it felt good and baseball served it's purpose that day. It was at the time we were both playing, so you may have been at your own game.
Hell, I'm proud of both of you. Not just for your youthful trials an tribulations as kids and athletes, but especially now in the manner in which you talk to one another and vent your personal feelings via this media.
Da
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