The history of baseball is murky to say the least, but we do know that the game was being played in the Greenwich Village section of New York City as early as 1823. We also know that by 1866, it had been declared the national pastime. This just one year after the nation itself survived a four-year civil war. So in just 43 years, a new sport had risen to the exalted status of national pastime.
Conversely, the United States declared itself an independent nation in 1776, but didn’t give the right to vote to Black men until the 15 th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1870. That’s an embarrassing 94 years. Even more embarrassing, however, is the fact that half the population – namely the female of the species – wasn’t given that right until 1920, four amendment ratifications later, nearly a century and a half before the country was declared a free land.
So why was baseball on a much faster track?
Now that the World Series is upon us, before the umpire even gets to shout, “Play ball!”, let’s take a look at some of the metaphysical reasons that the game has been referred to as our national pastime. Four of the most popular sports in America are football, basketball, hockey and baseball, although not necessarily in any order. The first three are determined by a clock; even though baseball recently instituted a clock to regulate how quickly the pitcher must throw a pitch to the batter, the sport has no clock. It can go on literally forever. In fact, a minor league game played between the Red Sox’s Pawtucket AAA affiliate and the Orioles’ Rochester Red Wings team lasted 33 innings, nearly eight and a half hours after the first pitch was thrown.
Basketball and hockey are played indoors, and while football is mostly played outdoors, it often is held on extremely frigid fields. In fact, the 1948 NFL championship game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Chicago Cardinals was played in a blinding blizzard. Baseball games, on the other hand, are canceled by rain. Unlike the other sports unaffected by Nature, baseball is only played with the cooperation of the elements – the gods, if you will.
The clock sports score points or goals only when a ball or a puck settles into a net or a zone. Not so in eternal baseball, where a run is scored only when a human being returns safely home. A ball that arrives before him actually prevents him from scoring.
Baseball is the only one of these four sports in which a play called a sacrifice actually exists. It’s called a sacrifice bunt, in which one player surrenders his at bat (his life, if you will) to advance his mate. This reminds one of Buddhism’s Bodhisattva teachers, who sacrifice their own enlightenments for the enlightenment of their fellow men and women. Christianity tells us that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, surrendered his very life to a long and painful crucifixion on a cross, to remove the sins of mankind.
Baseball is played on a diamond. And a diamond, remember, is a girl’s best friend. It’s also a man’s best friend, as this most cherished of stones endears almost any woman to any man. The diamond is also a Buddhist’s best friend, as anyone who’s ever read “The Diamond Sutra” will tell you. This sacred text recounts a dialogue between the Buddha and his disciple, Subhuti, on the nature of Perception and Reality.
Baseball begins every spring, like the rebirth of Nature herself. It’s a pastoral pastime played in a park. And the sports fans’ hopes spring eternal for their favorite team, as the new season gets underway.
The game is played by nine participants; the number nine is considered a sacred number, associated with completion, fulfillment and good fortune, and is believed to have transformative properties. Nine is also connected to spiritual awareness, compassion and wisdom, and its significance is deeply ingrained in the culture and traditions of India.
But let’s return to the idea of scoring a run. If a baseball player returns to where he started – home plate – everything is different: he’s welcomed by teammates in the dugout for his success. A player starts at home and must move around the bases, only to return home again. This is the perfect metaphor for the arc of life’s deepest journey available to us. You’re born in innocence, essentially at one with everything that you see. In time, you’ll then fall from that kind of grace, from a blissful paradise, only to gain what we call the experience of the world. Mythologist Joseph Campbell said that we’re all alive to take the hero’s journey, to evolve your consciousness until you reach the realized stage of the archetypal sage. In this enlightened state, the duality of worldly life coexists with spiritual oneness. That’s the joy and freedom of which Jesus spoke when he said that an adult doesn’t enter Heaven unless he becomes unadulterated, like children.
“The end of all our exploring,” said T. S. Eliot, “will be to arrive where we started. And to know the place for the first time.” This pertains both to baseball and the inner journey. As with baseball, we delight in how safe it feels to be at home again.