BASEBALL AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE

Photo from Unsplash.

I was ten years old the first time I attended a major league baseball game. I traveled down to Baltimore, Maryland with my parents to watch the Baltimore Orioles play the Seattle Mariners on a hot Sunday afternoon in August. Oriole Park at Camden Yards had only been open for only a few years at this point, but it was already considered a gem of a ballpark. It would be the start of a revolution in the way teams designed and constructed new parks. This was due to the way it captured the essence of its city, was large and accommodating, but also felt cozy and intimate, like it had been there forever. 

As we walked from the concourse and down a tunnel towards the field to our seats in section 72, out near the left field foul pole, I was struck first by the bright sunlight. But then, as my eyes adjusted, I was struck again by the expanse of green, the perfectly manicured grass and dirt of the infield, and the way the bright white foul lines stretched from home plate into infinity. And then there were the surrounding walls, irregular in their height and angles, there to contain such beauty. While the sensory experience alone was enough to imbed a memory deep into my psyche, it is the feeling of childlike wonder and joy that I cherish to this day. 

Twenty years later, I found myself sitting in a pew immersed in a weekend retreat with Fr. Lawrence Freeman, a Catholic priest and Benedictine monk who also happens to be the leader of the World Community for Christian Meditation. We were spending time in silence, and I was letting the prayer word maranatha (“come, Lord” in Aramaic) roll around in my heart, measured with my breath. Suddenly, I encountered an overwhelming sense of peace coupled with a feeling that I can only describe as the intimate and loving presence of God. Tears rolled down my cheeks, and as I opened my eyes at the end of our session, that loving presence lingered a bit longer, like water in cupped hands. I can draw a line from my experience at that retreat with Fr. Freeman to the shape of my faith today, much like I can draw a line from that first experience stepping out into the sunlight at Camden Yards to my deep love for the game of baseball. Both experiences went beyond any type of logical understanding, but instead rest in the realm of the ineffable, beyond words. 

I’m not covering any new ground here. Any google search for baseball and spirituality will bring forth a flood of articles. But that’s not surprising. Baseball has inspired writers to mine its depths more than any other sport. This includes not just your traditional sports journalists, but also philosophers, poets, novelists, and theologians. It was a University President that helped me make the connections I’ve always felt about baseball and religious life. John Sexton, former President of New York University, legal scholar, devout Catholic, and baseball fan, wrote a book and teaches a course at NYU entitled Baseball as a Road to God. After reading the book, corresponding with him, and even having him as a guest at the campus where I work in Lancaster, PA, I deeply resonate with his central thesis: baseball can help us develop the capacity to see beyond the mundane and have a sense of the sacred. It allows us to experience the ineffable. 

Let us consider time and space. Baseball is unique among most sports in that there is no clock. There is no fixed end driven by a clock counting up or down used to cultivate and heighten drama. Baseball isn’t measured by time at all, but instead can be measured by outs and runs scored. Theoretically, the game can stretch into infinity. Roger Angell, the greatest of all baseball writers, reminds us that “all you have to do is keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time.” (1) When immersing oneself in baseball, either as a player or observer, one is invited into a new relationship with time. As a Christian, I live in a world governed by time, but I worship a God that is before, beyond, and within time all at once. Like sitting in contemplative prayer or receiving the Eucharist at Mass, baseball invites the opportunity to break through the normal, ordinary restraints of time. 

Baseball, in many respects, is liturgical. Its rites, rituals, and rhythms help us to make meaning of the world. The great baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti says as much about the almost liturgical nature of baseball, writing, “I was counting on the game’s deep patterns, three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of the day and to organize the daylight” (2). The game has its high holidays (Opening Day, the All-Star Game, the World Series), and its periods of waiting, expectation, and even penitence. And that time between the last pitch of the fall and the first pitch in the spring sometimes feels like Advent and Lent all rolled into one. That time in between time can sometimes be long and dark, but with baseball comes new life, and hope abounds. The days elongate, trees blossom, and children and adults alike return to the field. It’s fitting that both baseball and Easter arrive each year with the Spring. 

But sometimes the Spring brings the unexpected. That much was true in 2020 when Holy Week and Easter were coupled with quarantine and coronavirus. I had to cancel my plans to travel to France and Spain where I was planning on walking the Camino de Santiago, making the pilgrimage to the resting place of Christ’s apostle St. James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The pilgrimage will have to wait until 2022, though every time I walk into my parish at Saint James Episcopal Church in Lancaster, I see the scallop shell on the glass doors of the chapel and am reminded that my pilgrimage has already begun. 

Similarly, my yearly trip to Fenway Park in Boston didn’t happen in 2020, but last week when I simply had the chance to sit and watch my college baseball team practice, I couldn’t help but feel a surge of emotion. Pilgrimage lies at the heart of baseball. 

Let’s take a look at one common place of pilgrimage, the ballpark itself. Each ballpark is unique, with its own shape and dimensions. Each one situates itself uniquely within the city it inhabits. Traveling to these ballparks gives us a chance to feel the game more deeply, because in each of these places, we find something both particular and universal. I have friends whose goal it is to visit every Major League Baseball park in North America. While I don’t know if I will ever achieve this goal, I do try to seek out a ballpark if I’m visiting a city and the home team happens to be in town, much like if I’m in a new place I might find a church to stop and pray. A church, like a ballpark, often feels both particular and universal. 

And then there is Cooperstown, New York. I recently took my three boys there for the first time to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame. Cooperstown is the mythological birthplace of baseball, the ultimate pilgrimage for a fan. And while the game may not have actually been invented there, Cooperstown is where the history, heart, and soul of the game lies. It is Eden. It is Jerusalem and Rome. For a baseball fan, going to Cooperstown is like coming home, and in baseball, coming home is the entire point. We leave with a swing of the bat and celebrate when we return home. As a Christian, much is the same. We are called out into the world, but we always know we can find home in Christ.  

I’m only scratching the surface. Themes of faith, love, doubt, and hope are central to baseball. Conversion experiences are common narratives for many baseball fans. Saints, sinners, blessings, and curses abound in the game. Most fans of the game probably have relics in their home that help them connect to the game and their favorite players. Baseball even has its own canon of great texts that illuminate the game and our place in it. All of these ideas, among many others, are central to baseball and also might help illuminate a life of faith should we be inclined to make those connections. Ultimately, what I do know is that baseball, this seemingly secular game, has provided deep insight for me as I make my way through this life as a Christian. Baseball might not do this for everyone, or even for most people, but my hope is that everyone will find God in seemingly unexpected places and find a way to experience the ineffable in their everyday lives.