One of our local op/ed columnists has written a heady, sentimental reflection on baseball, his father and What It All Means. I was touched, thought you might enjoy...
Baseball communion -- James Carroll, 7/29/03

ZZZZZZZZZZZ........

The same old pretentious twaddle. Lawdy, the yearning of the writers of these pieces to go back to childhood and its alleged "innocence" is just palpable. And sad. And embarrassing.

It's a game. It's a shitty, exploitive business. It's not f**king Euripides or Sophocles.

No wonder that, for the most part, Gen X'ers want nothing to do with baseball.

[ July 29, 2003, 07:23 PM: Message edited by: Jim Allen ]

You know, Jim, I believe you are right about the Gen-X-ers and so forth not being into the game at all. I start to talk to my son or other friends about why I like baseball so much and within seconds, their eyes glaze over. :confused:

I appreciate baseball more than any other sport I watch because of the rules of the game...to me it feels structured but kind of free flowing at the same time. Hockey feels the same to me. So, I love the game but honestly I also realize that the fans just dont enter into the equation any more....their wallets, yes, but not the actual fan...greedy, grabbing owners who care only for the bottom line and selfish, lazy players abound.

I try not to dwell on that last part too often because it can spoil my enjoyment. I like the articles like the one linked to, but I think folks who can relate to that view are fast disappearing as the numbers of the more dis-illusioned (realisitic?) sports watchers increase.

heavy sigh.. frown

I don't know whether to feel sorry for you or not, Jim A. You seem to miss the point about the article and Baseball itself.

All professional sports are big businesses. They have been for decades. Nevertheless, baseball for some reason--often never fully understood--has had a nostalgic charm to it that no other sport possesses. A father having a catch with his son means more in baseball than it does in football, hockey, or any other sport.

One need not be as cynical as you are about the sport to enjoy its charm, its nostalgia, its allure. Too bad your attitude has clouded your view of the game. I quite often am disgusted by a lot of what goes on in the game, yet I cast that aside and do not let it affect how much the game itself means to everyone, especially the fans.

If I quit tomorrow because of the greed and bullshit that goes on, I would love Baseball no less.


"The people of America care about baseball, not about your squalid little squabbles. Reassume your dignity and remember that you are the temporary custodians of an enduring public trust."
---Bart Giamatti

[ July 30, 2003, 12:56 AM: Message edited by: The Umpire ]

I'm one of those people who loves the controversial baseball-as-metaphor speech at the center of the play "Take Me Out", so I guess I can only say that--beyond both the metaphor AND the greed and wretched corporate excesses of not just MLB but virtually every major American spectator sport--baseball is just a beautiful game.

I can honestly say that when I see a great play by Jeter or a great hit by Bernie--whether I'm sitting in the Stadium surrounded by the hordes of others who love the game and the team like I do or sitting alone in my crib watching YES--the purity of the moment transcends cynicism.

As jaded as I can be about most things, I'm still a softy when it comes to baseball. Sue me.

Ooh, somebody needs a hug!

Don't kids at least familiarize themselves with the game by having to play softball in Phys Ed? Or is it all soccer now? And dodgeball... Or is there even Phys Ed any more? (Geezer alert!)

Anyway, the lives and intrigue of some great composers and opera stars have been equally squalid, while their music continued to sound divine. That's kind of the point of the game, or the art -- for an instant, we can forget all that, and feel only the transcendence.

[ July 30, 2003, 03:33 PM: Message edited by: redsoxbreath ]

This isn't the reason, Jim. There are a myriad of reasons, among them being that most so-called Gen-Xers are so caught up with their overly stressful, anxiety-ridden little lives that they can't take the time to slow down a bit and enjoy something else.

"Little lives"? Could you be any more pompous and condescending even if you were trying?

I didn't think so.

It's exactly that kind of "Oh, you stupid kids, you just don't get it" attitude that keeps them at arms length. A lot of kids in the under-30 group find baseball deadly boring, too slow, not enough action. They've been raised on MTV and video games and I completely understand why they'd gravitate towards X-Game kinds of things. In fact, all "ball and stick" games are going to find it tough going in the next 20-30 years; they're team games and the trend is towards individual games. I think there's a huge generational shift going on and I suspect that baseball is going to get swept aside.
Oh, puh-leeze, spare me. I got the point about the article:

Sad, lonely boy yearns for closeness with father. He grabs on to baseball as that means. Now, as an adult, he gets all mawkish and sentimental, inflating a GAME to near God-like status because it helped him accomplish his goal.

Oh, how.....boring. That it was baseball is almost irrelevant. It could have been working on car engines, collecting stamps or any one of a hundred things. And it's sentences like the last one, equating baseball with religion/a religious experience, that make people--say, the two owners of this board--mock baseball, and rightly so.

And don't lecture me about how to react to baseball. I *get* baseball, with a small \"b\". I just don't happen to think that it's as deep and as important as some seem to feel it is.

It's like with opera queens: the Golden Age is always 50 years ago, there's a horrible cult of personality thing, the majority of the crowd is hideously conservative in their tastes and like baseball, it's a thing that has increasingly less relevance to young people. I cringe at the attempts to get people of any age in to opera or classical music; they totally miss the point and like baseball, I think dire times are in store for something I love.
No, the point is that the life of the composer is irrelevant. An opera succeeds solely because of the quality of the libretto, it's stageworthiness and most of all, the quality of the music. No amount of "Richard Wagner was A GOD, a God I tell you!" type of bullshit is going to make Das Liebesverbot a good opera.

[ July 31, 2003, 06:53 PM: Message edited by: Jim Allen ]

Well, Jim, you sure have proven your point.

You've got issues you need to deal with. Perhaps a private chat with Dr. Phil or someone similar might help you. Regardless, unloosen those panties a bit and let some air in. It might help. :cool:

There's a cure for what ails many so-called "Generation Xers." It's called "age and maturity." I've seen it succeed many times these days even for some of the most fatally introverted, self absorbed folks (gay and staright) born in the late 1960s and 1970s . . .

It might have to do with the fact that many of them are entering their late 30's and have taken enough emotional hits to make them snap out of the obsession with "realness" and rejoin the human race.

Playing and appreciating a team sport like baseball requires, among other things 1) patience, 2) a tolerance for legitimate authority, 3) a sense of duty to someone other than yourself and 4) the perspective to know the world doesn't revolve around your own emotions and concerns.

BTW, in case anyone's wondering, the term "Generation X" was popularized by product marketing types in the 1990s, who adopted it from the title of a cheesy late 1980s novel.

Just MHO, my $0.02 worth.

What-EVER, Ump25. You, of all people, advising anyone to "loosen their panties" is risible in the extreme.

I can't stand nostalgia. I hate sentimentality, with a few exceptions (see: Madama Butterfly, Act 2), which is why I had such an antipathy to the man's column. I'm more interested in HOW things happen, not WHY they happen. Like, say, movies: I'm far more interested in camera angles, lenses used, lighting, editing, music underscoring etc. than I am in movies as replication of dream states, cultural touchstones etc. The same with baseball; I love it mostly because of the techniques involved, as a rabid fan and an emotional connection to a much lesser degree. To each his own.

JayP, yeah, that's true about the possibility of people "growing in" to baseball as they mature. But wouldn't you think that they'd had to have been exposed at a younger age to plant the seed, to even want to investigate the sport? Latecomers do happen (see: the playwright of Take Me Out), though most fans I know "caught the bug" when they were young.

And I apologize, I got my terminology wrong. You're correct, Gen-X is the post baby-boom, roughly 1964-1980; it's Gen-Y (another stupid marketing term but still), the kids basically born after 1980, say, that I was thinking of in terms of a "lost generation" of baseball fans.

[ August 01, 2003, 12:00 AM: Message edited by: Jim Allen ]

As opposed to an obsession with "fakeness"? :confused:

Playing and appreciating a team sport like baseball requires, among other things 1) patience, 2) a tolerance for legitimate authority, 3) a sense of duty to someone other than yourself and 4) the perspective to know the world doesn't revolve around your own emotions and concerns.

This sounds like a list Saddam Hussien would create to make sure that people conform to a dictatorship.

Being Real is not a Gen X thing, it is something that baby boomers have always taught, although might not have lived by, thus being hypocritical. Anyways I have always thought the Gen X label is kind of stupid, and this thread has really strayed off topic. Baseball and structure are good things, but things still need to change and always will.

I'd feel more pity for the person who chooses to view the rest of the human race as Fake followers.

[ August 01, 2003, 03:20 AM: Message edited by: Sonix ]

I'm inclined to side with Jim Allen on this issue. It does seem that some people get swept up in the myth of the Golden Past.

(I think in Canada men of a certain age may reflect on the glory years of hockey.)

I think some may reflect on the Golden Age of music or movies or... whatever. But, as JA says, it's all sentimentality for the Past.

But I think today's kids are having those mythic experiences doing other things, and that's just because this is a different time. And baseball as a religious experience is just not relevant.

I'd have to agree with The Umpire here, Jim. I think if you had a sense of humor and weren't so grumpy of an individual, you'd understand his comments. Of course, that's just my 2 cents.

Why do I get the feeling you're the crabby next-door neighbor who sees a ball roll onto his lawn, then runs out the front door screaming, "Get off my lawn, you whippersnappers!!!"? wink

For what it's worth, James, my panties are never in a bunch; I don't let things get to me; I never take things too seriously (or at least not as seriously as you seem to do); and I enjoy sentimentality if for no other reason that it relaxes me and lets me harken to sometimes better times.

Hard to explain the point I was trying to make, which was missed, but here's as much as I can say to make it clear . . . The difference wasn't real v. fake in the literal sense. It was earnestness v. cynicism.