We’re Skipping School and Making the Pilgrimage

On Wednesday, May 8, I’m taking our 6 and 8-year-old grandsons out of school for the day.  It’s not for academic enrichment or to observe a religious holiday.  We’re going to a Dodger game.

I chose this game for three reasons.  1) The game starts at noon, which is ideal for young kids since you’ll get home at a decent time. 2) Unlike the Yankees, Red Sox, Giants, or Cubs – teams with millions of fans all over the country — the Marlins have few fans.  As a result, I was able to get terrific seats for a fraction of the usual price, and the traffic should be light.  3) I love the idea of ditching school or work to see a baseball game.

The first time I made the journey to Dodger Stadium was with my father, 62 years ago.  I’ll never forget the feeling of coming out of the tunnel and seeing the splendor of the emerald-green grass of the outfield, the red brick dust of the infield, and the perfectly delineated white chalk foul lines.  There is seating for 54,000 people and everybody is happy as they find their seats. As a kid who loved baseball, I was in heaven.

We will be retracing those steps on May 8.  We’ll take the same “Stadium Way” offramp from Interstate 5.  Then, like pilgrims going to a sacred mountain, we will slowly ascend to the sacred site.  After parking we will continue heaven-ward on foot, using escalators as needed.  Then we’ll take our seats.

But this journey is not just about reliving childhood dreams.  The deeper reasons for making this sacrifice of time and treasure were revealed anew to me this week as I read “Ballparking It,” an article in the April 1 New Yorker, by Adam Gopnik.

Gopnik begins by focusing on the history of baseball in New York City.  He then gets philosophical, exploring why baseball and sporting events of any kind evoke so much passion in so many. Here is a sampling of his points with my comments:

Referring to the legendary sportswriter Damon Runyan from the last century: Runyan knew that these two things were true: the contests were epic in the enjoyment they provided, and they were miniature in their importance. That makes sense.  Why would millions of people watch the Super Bowl, March Madness, or the World Series when the outcome doesn’t make any real difference in the world?  Because they can be “epic in enjoyment,”

Sports are an artificial, deliberately narrowed activity that we create, in order to have moralizing stories to tell. I have a weakness for “moralizing stories.”  Barry Bonds may have hit more home runs than anyone, but we knew he was a cheater who used steroids.  We booed him when he came to LA.  It felt great.

We live with our bodies and honor them by admiring ones nimbler than our own. There seems no way out or up from this preoccupation. It gets its grace by becoming common.  Have you ever watched Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors play basketball? He’s as graceful as any ballet dancer, and he’s got five 200-pound guys chasing him.  He makes it look easy; “grace becomes common.”

The strength of our moralizing instinct is shown in the vindictive nature of our assessments of right and wrong in sports. See the Barry Bonds comment above and the Houston Astros comment below.

Only in games do we pursue orderly means towards ridiculous goals: touching home plate with your toe is by itself a meaningless purpose, but we learned to do it in ways that are beautifully shaped and orderly and teachable. Both our grandsons play Little League.  Every time they come around to score, there is a sense of victory. I know the feeling.  You’ve been out in the world exposed to danger and now you’re safe; you’ve come home.

Sports are “an unstructured escape from responsibility…” Some might say it’s irresponsible for a grandfather to take kids out of school for a meaningless sporting event — they might miss some important instruction.  But isn’t it important to teach kids that, if you do it well, occasionally escaping responsibility for a few hours can be good for the soul?

The fans regard the game as joyfully ridiculous, and the players regard the fans as deeply ridiculous, and there’s a fluid interchange between the game we see in the play we share.  Who cares if a grown man can take a piece of wood and hit a ball 420 feet over a fence?  It’s ridiculous.  And it’s addictive.  I hope we see some rockets.

That’s why diehard fans, on the whole, take losing harder than the players do. Pro athletes can often say, “They just played better than we did, “or, alternately, “That’s just the way it broke,” more serenely than the fans can. When we watch the players congratulate one another after the game and exchange warm words, the social ritual they are enacting is a way of turning a game back into some decent form of play: Hey, we competed, we all did well, see you next year. It’s been seven years since I sat in that stadium to see the Dodgers lose the seventh game of the World Series to the Houston Astros.  It turned out the Astros were cheating. When I remember that game, I don’t experience serenity.  I feel an emptiness that hasn’t gone away.

Go ahead, baseball, fill me with joy and hope, then break my heart.  Coming back year after year is a discipline — one I hope to pass on to my descendants. 

“Ballparking It: When America’s Pastime was New York’s.” By Adam Gopnik.  New Yorker April 1, 2024