As I enjoy my summer vacation, I will share with you the essay on baseball that was recently published. The full name of the book is Essays and Sermons on Jews, Judaism and Baseball edited by Marc Lee Raphael and Judith I. Abrams, College of William and Mary Press, 2006. An abbreviated version of the article was in The Reporter a few months ago.
Joshua L. Segal
Baseball: Physical, Spiritual and Intellectual
I don't know that a formal study has ever been done to determine what is the most popular team sport among Jews, but baseball has to be considered to be a contender. I suggest that the reason is that the sport appeals to the physical, the spiritual and the intellectual that exists in greater or lesser amounts in all of us.
On a physical level, baseball is a game that most anyone can play. It doesn't cost a fortune for equipment, like hockey. You don't have to be physically gigantic, like football. You don't have to be exceptionally tall, like basketball. It's a game that can be played at the highest levels of competition by average people.
On a spiritual level, baseball has been around a long time. Of the major professional sports in this country, it is older than all. As a result, it has years of history, records, statistics and embarrassments. Jews love history. We study our own. We assess what we are and who we are, based on the records of those people who came before us.
There are lists maintained of Jewish baseball players. Recently, one Jewish baseball fan issued a set of cards of Jews who played the game. There have been a number of Jews who played major league baseball who subsequently found their way to the Hall of Fame: Hank Greenberg a great home run hitter. In his best year he hit 58 at a time when baseball was a haven for white Protestants. Antisemitic remarks abounded over the fear that Babe Ruth's 60-home run record might be broken by - a Jew. The other great one was a pitcher, Sandy Koufax, who was a strikeout king and an MVP/Cy Young winner for a number of seasons. The common thing that both shared Jewishly speaking is that each declined to play baseball in World Series games that were scheduled for Yom Kippur. These heroes provide us with a positive role model for the spiritual choices we have to make in life.
But on an intellectual level, baseball, more than any other sport, parallels day-to-day life and from a specifically Jewish perspective, baseball parallels talmudic thinking.
Let's take a look at some of the features of baseball. There are precise rules. And like the Talmud, the true student of the game likes to hypothesize all kinds of odd problems, such as, "how can a triple play occur with no defensive player touching the ball? " Inevitably, like the page of Talmud, one question spawns another and sometimes the new question is very related to the first and sometimes, it is only tangentially related. Rule changes in baseball are as sparse as constitutional amendments. While an umpire's judgment certainly has impact on the game, the focus of the game is on the ball and the only time that players are in close proximity is when the ball is nearby. Therefore, there is not the opportunity to "get away with things" while the umpire is "looking the other way."
Not only are the rules precise, but even the play is precise. If I were listening to a football game and heard, "the halfback went over left tackle," I don't know specifically what the other 20 players on the field were doing. On the other hand, in a baseball game, with no runners on base, if I said, "there is a ground ball to the short-stop," I know:
Baseball is a team sport and each player has a position to play. But while many of the positions require special skills, each basically combines running, catching and throwing. The expectation of a fielder is for perfection. Sure, errors occur, but there are very few players who do not make 95% of the fielding plays that they are expected to make. That's the way it is in our day-to-day work life. Each of us may be hired for a particular specialty, but we use many of the same skills. Whether a high level scientist or a low level clerk, we all need to read, write, do some arithmetic and these days, probably some keyboarding. Within the jobs we do, we are allowed some errors, but unless you are the weatherman, just like the baseball fielder, you better be correct more than 90%, at least if you want to keep the job. Within the Jewish experience, each year, we wipe the slate clean at the High Holydays and start again. The imagery we are taught is that God opens the "Book of Life" in which is written every detail of what we did publicly and privately in the past year. Similarly, in baseball, our cumulative lifetime record is well known, but the week-to-week statistics that draw so much interest among baseball fans is limited to the current season. The fielding skills of baseball most clearly parallel the inter- human aspects of life. The ball comes your way. You must catch it, know to whom to throw it to, and then throw it in a timely manner. While team play is important, each player also has an opportunity to "go-it-alone" when it is his turn to bat. While it is true that the hitter must coordinate what he does with the coaches and the other runners on base, ultimately, the experience is a one-on-one confrontation with the pitcher.
This is more analogous to corporate marketing teams. Each company has a set of skills and products with which they compete. In this arena the level success is measured, not by batting 1000 or 100%, but by succeeding 20 to 30% of the time. But when the chips are down, the stress level goes up. It's more important how you hit when there are runners on second and third base, and there are times where hitting a home run is no more significant than a single. And that's another reality of life. There are times we lose no matter how well we do and there are times when seemingly insignificant things we do are rewarded with much money and/or great praise.
Sometimes, the hitter nails one, only to be robbed by a spectacular fielding play. Other times, we are the beneficiaries of a judgment error on the part of the fielders. And that's the reality. Sometimes we do everything right and lose. Sometimes, we win, in spite of ourselves. A good baseball team wins 55% of its games. A great team wins 60%.
In summary, baseball is a reflection of the realities of life. It also represents a mix of the physical, the spiritual and the intellectual. In some aspects, 100% is expected. In some 60% is good enough and in still others, 30% is a satisfactory target. While our lifetime record is cumulative, the current year and this moment in time is where the focus lies. We are part of a team, but we are also individuals and as individuals, each of us gets to stand alone occasionally, with the spot light on us.
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