By Allan R. Andrews
Stripes Managing Editor
First published December 18, 1994
in Pacific Stars and Stripes, Tokyo, Japan
Film producer Ken
Burns
gives us a curveball portrait of American culture in his massive
documentary,
"Baseball."
One doesn't have to love baseball to appreciate the commentary on
American
history and culture that dominates Burns' 18-hour collection of
episodes.
For an avid fan like me, Burns' film is humbling. I come away realizing
how provincial has been my appreciation of the game, discovering that
for
decades before I came along there had been baseball beyond New York
City;
indeed, Casey Stengel did more than manage the New York Yankees.
Many stars of the game have been dusty names in print for me: Christy
Mattheson,
Walter Johnson, Lou Gehrig, Carl Hubbell and even George Herman "Babe"
Ruth. Burns' "Baseball" brings these great players to life. For
me, baseball had begun with Joe DiMaggio, Bobby Thomson and Jackie
Robinson.
Thanks to Burns, I am convinced the "Bambino" was all the player
he's reported to be. Perhaps my lack of appreciation came from my
quasi-Puritan
background that stands shocked at Ruth's off-field persona.
(Interestingly,
my quasi-Puritan immigrant parents, neither of whom gave baseball a
second
thought in their youth, became zealots for the Dodgers -- and later the
Mets -- when they arrived in New York.)
When I'm reminded by sports editor David Okrent that Babe Ruth may not
have
been the offensive and defensive player that was a Willie Mays but that
Ruth also was one of baseball's greatest pitchers, my appreciation for
the
Babe matures.
Sportscaster Bob
Costas
tells in Burns' documentary of an Englishman in an argument who insults
America as badly as he can conceive of doing by insulting Babe Ruth.
This,
Costas notes, speaks volumes about America and baseball. He's right.
In a year when major league baseball hibernated because of financial
controversy,
Burns' film reinforces America's need for this game and shows how
deeply
woven it is into our national consciousness.
The importance of baseball, often overstated among intellectuals who
write
idealized analyses of the game, is underscored by the sports malaise in
the late summer and early fall of 1994. Love it or hate it, America
missed
baseball.
Somewhere a former
Congressman
or governor is probably blaming baseball for his loss of office.
Without the national pastime, the 1994's voters grew restless and
cantankerous
and sublimated their anger with a need to "t'row da bums out!"
To be sure, there is academic sociology -- perhaps even political
science
-- in baseball. It is a game rife with racial and ethnic prejudice. Not
only were African-Americans and West Indian natives barred until 1947,
but
Jewish boys, like the Tigers' Hank Greenberg and Dodger pitching ace
Sandy
Koufax, had to suffer the biases of anti-Semites.
Also, as many players demonstrate, baseball is a breeding ground for
upward
mobility among immigrants and the children of immigrants, from John
McGraw
and Honus Wagner to Felipe Alou and Raul Mondesi. There's been a
progression
in baseball displaying dominating Irish-American players,
German-American
players, Italian-American players, African-American players and
Hispanic-American
players. Some believe the future lies with Asian-American players.
Perhaps
there will even be a place for female players, officially banned from
the
major leagues since 1952.
True, as well, is the charge that baseball is slow when compared with
games
that finish by becoming breakneck races against a time clock.
Nevertheless,
the lack of a clock-defined conclusion makes baseball a drama without
comparison
in the sports world.
In baseball, as in most of our moments of joy, the movement of the
clock
is irrelevant.
Also, alongside
its emphasis
on the individual player, baseball demands every player contribute in
turn.
A good pitcher needs good fielders behind him, and the best hitter must
wait his turn at bat. As Costas again so eloquently states in Burns'
film,
in baseball, you can't keep going to your best players every time you
need
to score. In fact, alone among the major sports, baseball says a player
is finished for the day once he leaves the game.
Every man on the field has a task on every pitch, despite the
television
screen's reduction of the game to a pitcher and catcher playing cozy
with
a hitter. Once a ball is hit, baseball's action begins, and much of
that
action occurs away from the ball.
As in life, one need not be in the center of the action to play a key
role
in baseball. Few leisurely activities in American life emphasize this
democratic
truth as does baseball.
When Gen. Douglas Macarthur reintroduced baseball to postwar Japan in
the
'40s, he did so in part because he thought the game would have a
democratizing
influence.
All this being said, baseball remains a game, and the summer of '94
proves
America can get by without it. Burns' film, however, dramatically
demonstrates
that without it, we wouldn't be the same America.