On God and Baseball

The Cathedral of St. Louis (Busch Stadium for the uninitiated)

Like Annie in the movie Bull Durham, I believe in the Church of Baseball. Religion and baseball may have nothing to do with each other, but baseball frequently operates in the same domain as religion. Watch any game during the defining moments of a pennant race and you will see hundreds of fans in the late innings with their eyes closed, hands folded in prayer, seeking heavenly blessings for their beloved players and teams. The players themselves appear to sense that God has a stake in the outcome of their games. They cross themselves as they step to the plate. They point to the heavens when they hit a home run or strike out an opposing batter. Certainly, God is not neutral in the affairs of baseball.

I am a rational human being. I accept scientific truths and accumulated knowledge of empirical research. Although my religious upbringing instilled in me a belief in God, as an adult my religious leanings are full of doubt and skepticism. And yet, while I cannot explain it, there are times in my life I have felt God’s presence. In the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “The moment we utter the name of God we leave the level of scientific thinking and enter the realm of the ineffable … which by its very nature lies beyond our comprehension.”

All of this leads to a fundamental question: Is God even a baseball fan? Certainly, God has no love for the powerful Yankees, the money-drenched Dodgers, or any of the evil teams that oppose the Cardinals and all their inherent goodness. In a just world, would not God intervene to ensure my beloved Cardinals won the World Series every season?

I know for certain that God was asleep at the switch when he (or she) allowed the Boston Red Sox to break the Curse of the Bambino in 2004. I did not object when God allowed the Red Sox, down three-games-to-none, to miraculously win the last four games and defeat the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series. But I can only conclude that other worldly matters distracted God when he allowed the Sox to sweep the 105-win Cardinals in that season’s World Series. Now, some people claim the Red Sox won because they played better baseball than the Yankees and Cardinals over that eight-game stretch. But you don’t really believe this, do you?

I am kidding, of course. I know God has nothing to do with how the Cardinals do on any given day or season. But I am convinced that each game’s outcome is determined by the coffee mug I choose to drink from each morning. When I open the kitchen cabinet and reach for that day’s mug, I think carefully about which one will provide the magic to help my team win that night. So far this season, I have chosen correctly 13 of 21 times, pretty good for a team not expected to do a whole lot of winning this year.

Is it possible that my lifelong attachment to the St. Louis Cardinals, a team for which I have no geographical or familial connection, arises from the same aura of ineffability to which Rabbi Heschel attests, that inexplicable, spiritual dimension of human experience that touches the core of our existence? I have been pondering such questions ever since reading Baseball as a Road to God (Gotham Books, 2013) by former New York University president John Sexton, and watching Baseball: Beyond Belief, the companion documentary, which aired recently on FS1.

Sexton is the former President of New York University and Dean of NYU Law School, who also holds a PhD in history of American religion. His book originated from a seminar he designed on baseball and religion, which contends that “baseball can show us more about our world and ourselves than we might have thought” and “can demonstrate the benefits of living a little slower, of noticing a little more, and of embracing life’s ineffable beauties.” Sexton does not literally contend that baseball provides an avenue to God, or that we should take too seriously the connection between baseball and religion. But he does seek to show parallels between baseball, faith, and spirituality.

Baseball, like religion, is full of sacred places and sacred times. Ballparks are cathedrals, a place where the faithful gather and commune. And much like the devoutly religious among us, the baseball fan’s innermost thoughts are filled with elements of faith, doubt, the hope for miracles, a belief in superstitions and myths, blessings and curses, saints and sinners, and a longing for community.

As noted by Sexton, just as the world’s great religions mark significant events on their holiest of days—Passover and Yom Kippur in Judaism; Christmas and Easter in Christianity; Ramadan in Islam—baseball has Opening Day, a time of rebirth and renewal, when every team gets a fresh start and the sins of the past are forgiven in the hope of new beginnings. Most religions point to an ultimate destination, the Road to Damascus, the Promised Land, the search for eternal salvation. In baseball, the postseason playoffs are baseball’s high holy days, and the World Series is the Promised Land. The only way to get there is to overcome adversity and be tested along the way. It is why all 30 major league teams play a long, drawn-out season of 162 games.

Within each season there are moments of heightened awareness, memorable events that become part of baseball mythology; a come-from-behind win, a walk off home run, a remarkable catch. These are the shared experiences of parents and children, brothers and sisters, and close friends that become sacred stories of baseball memories. In any ballpark, Sexton writes, “magic can happen, and the fan can be transported to a space and time beyond, to an experience we know profoundly but cannot put into words.”

Some of the oldest and most historic parks are considered especially sacred spaces, including Wrigley Field in Chicago, Fenway Park in Boston, and Yankee Stadium in New York. Yankee Stadium also contains Monument Park, where the Ghosts of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe Dimaggio, and Mickey Mantle are forever memorialized. On the University of Pittsburgh campus is the remnant of the outfield wall of old Forbes Field, marking where Bill Mazeroski hit the walk-off home run that defeated the Yankees in Game Seven of the 1960 World Series. To this day, people gather at the historical marker every October 13 and play a recording of the radio broadcast to relive that memorable moment in time.

Baseball, like religion, is also about community. After September 11, when the Yankees reached the World Series, it helped unite a city in pain and allowed a period of national healing. Even though the Yankees lost to the Arizona Diamondbacks, that series demonstrated baseball’s power to bring people together and celebrate America.

In Baseball as a Road to God, Sexton tells the story of when he and his best friend Dougie ran home from Catholic grade school on October 4, 1955, to catch the end of the seventh game of the World Series between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees. As they put on the radio at Sexton’s house, they both placed their hands on a crucifix, got down on their knees, and prayed as they listened to the play-by-play. For the final three innings, they stayed on their knees until the Dodgers recorded the final out and became World Champions. For Sexton, it remains one of the most significant days of his life, an occurrence he only half-jokingly refers to as one of the twelve greatest events of world history. For him, it is a sacred memory.

Of course, as Sexton suggests, what is sacred for one person is not sacred for another. For Muslims, the Dome of the Rock is revered as the site of Prophet Muhammed’s ascension to heaven. Others see only a beautiful work of architecture. For devout Catholics and liturgical Protestants, bread and wine represent the body and blood of Christ as symbolized in the Eucharist. For the non-religious, it looks like the makings of a romantic picnic by the lake. Baseball is no different. For me, there is nothing special about the Dodgers, Brooklyn or otherwise, winning a World Series (apologies to Professor Sexton). But if the Cardinals ascend to the mountaintop, well then …

One thing all baseball fans share is a belief in miracles. Even the hard-core atheist understands that remaining loyal to one’s team in challenging times involves a leap of faith that, in any season, the impossible may occur. “A leap of faith,” writes Sexton, “is an embrace of feeling over logic, a willingness to loosen one’s dependence on the purely rational.”

My father experienced a leap of faith in 1951, when his New York Giants overcame a 13.5 game deficit in August to win the National League pennant on the final game of the year by Bobby Thomson’s walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth. For long-standing Giants fans, that season is still remembered as the Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff. The 1969 Miracle Mets and the “Ya Gotta Believe” 1973 Mets are two more examples of the impossible occurring. Ask any Mets fan old enough to have experienced those two seasons and you will hear similar and deeply embedded memories from all of them. And who can forget Kirk Gibson’s pinch hit home run in the 1988 World Series when he came off the bench with two crippled knees to win the game on one swing of the bat, leading to Vin Scully’s legendary call: “In a season that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.” The fans of these teams, I dare say, believe in miracles to this day.

Speaking of miracles, can it be denied that the forces of destiny, or divine intervention, were in play when David Freese hit the game-tying triple with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in Game Six of the 2011 World Series that propelled the Cardinals to a miraculous, come-from-behind World Championship? I think not.

Of course, in religion and baseball, faith and doubt go together. As Sexton explains, “Doubt is at the core of baseball, touching every player and every fan. And doubt is central to the religious experience. They are not separate, they coexist. In baseball as in religion, doubt and faith are intertwined.” As a Cardinals fan, doubt is the essence of my existence. During my lifetime, I have seen too many blown saves in the ninth inning, too many times the Cardinals have blown three-game-to-one leads in the playoffs and the World Series, to ever allow confidence or a sense of calmness to enter my thoughts. When the Cardinals take a lead into the ninth inning, I think of all the different ways things can go badly. And far too often it happens. You aren’t paranoid if they really are out to get you.

And yet, the antidote to doubt is hope. Without hope, the fan cannot survive. I may doubt the Cards will pull out a win each game, but that is a psychological defense mechanism to fend off the dark clouds of despair that lingers should my hopes be crushed by a series of walks and hits and wild pitches resulting in a Cardinals loss. Hope may be deeply embedded in my soul. But only when the Cardinals record the final out and win the game can I finally exhale and experience a sense of calm and inner peace. At least until tomorrow night’s game.

There are certain events that lead to prolonged suffering and the belief in the minds of some fans that their teams have been cursed. Most of the great baseball curses arose from excessively long championship droughts, highlighted by a groundball through the first baseman’s legs (e.g., Bill Buckner in the 1986 World Series) and similar occurrences. Before the 2004 World Series, the Red Sox went 86 years without a World Championship. Did it really have nothing to do with the owner selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees for $125,000 after the 1919 season? Did the Curse of the Billy Goat, inflicted on the Cubs by Billy Sianis after he and his beloved pet goat were removed from Wrigley Field in Game Two of the 1945 World Series (due to the stench caused by the goat), really have nothing to do with the Cubs not reaching the World Series for another 71 years?

Yet again, other teams can lose for even longer stretches of time without any talk of curses. The Philadelphia Phillies did not win a championship for the first 97 years of the team’s existence, and no one in Philadelphia ever talked about The Curse of Connie Mack or anything of the sort. Phillies fans simply chalked it up to a century of bad baseball. And if any team deserved a curse, it was the Chicago White Sox, whose best players threw the 1919 World Series after accepting bribes from gangsters. Not until 2005, 88 years after their last championship, did the White Sox again win a World Series. And yet, fans on the South Side of Chicago accepted that, win or lose, it is about baseball, not curses. Oh, ye fans of little faith.

Baseball, of course, does not really provide a “road to God” and Sexton does not suggest otherwise. But baseball, writes Sexton, “calls us to live slow and notice.” Baseball is a timeless game. It proceeds at its own pace. It teaches us to breathe, to develop a heightened sensitivity to the specialness of our lives. For three hours each day, it forces us to slow down, to set aside the noise and speed of everyday life. Our lives are never slow for long, yet baseball “can awaken us to a dimension of life often missing in our contemporary world of hard facts and hard science. We can learn, through baseball, to experience life more deeply.”

Perhaps in the end, the former President of Yale University and commissioner of major league baseball, A. Bartlett Giamatti, best explained the essence of baseball as a spiritual journey, when he wrote:

Baseball is about homecoming. It is a journey by theft and strength, guile and speed, out around first to the far island of second, where foes lurk in the reefs and the green sea suddenly grows deeper, then to turn sharply, skimming the shallows, making for a shore that will show a friendly face, a color, a familiar language and, at third, to proceed, no longer by paths indirect but straight, to home.

Baseball is about going home, and how hard it is to get there and how driven is our need. It tells us how good home is. Its wisdom says you can go home again but that you cannot stay. The journey must always start once more, the bat an oar over the shoulder, until there is an end to all journeying.