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By Root 362 0

of the times in their faces—defiance, cockiness, worry; a studied personal posture on public display. They were fighting the Great Depression, or worrying about loved ones at war, or basking in peacetime pleasures, all of this held in a momentary stasis, suspended, as they turned their attention to another kind of problem solving, but always with one consistent theme: doing a job. That’s how we talk about a baseball player’s responsibility. He does his job. This isn’t romance. It’s a way of looking at the world. Three strikes and you’re out. He got there first. He gets to walk. He hit it out of the park. Keep it in front of you. Hit the cut-off man. Keep your eye on the ball. Don’t make an error. You’re either safe, or you’re out. At games they are all there, the elements to be successful. The way to do a job.

I Go To The Games

So did others, from the very first, by the tens of thousands. A century and a half, or about two-thirds of our country’s history up to now, is wrapped up in this shared experience. Before there were bleachers, people climbed fences, sat on hillsides, stood just beyond the field of play, forming a human perimeter where future outfield fences would one day stand. They climbed trees and sat in the branches like flocks of fedora-wearing birds. At one time, the game must have seemed as new as the country itself. Grandstands had to be constructed. Entrance fees needed to be charged to make the events sustainable. Why did they come? To see local boys make good, to pit one neighborhood or town against another, for civic pride. The game is the curiosity-seeker’s perfect thrill; spectacle conjured from the available elements of open air, open field, wit, and brawn. Wait one more pitch, and just see what happens.

Over time, fans made social and political statements, first with their posture, then, later on, with their appearance. From cocky to colorful. Wealthy or working class. Anti-war or conservative. Socially flamboyant. Posturing or unself-conscious. Patriotic. Contemporary. And, at long last, casual. Fan behavior has run the gamut, from stoic observance to complete rapture, to pandemonium, flooding the streets after Bobby Thompson’s “Shot Heard 'Round the World,” or following the home run king around the bases. Even when away from the game, it is somehow comforting to realize that the game is always being played, as long as the weather is warm and the evenings are long.

Other sports claim to make history. Baseball actually does make history. Whether breaking the color barrier or canceling the World Series to solve a labor dispute, or shamefully allowing an All-Star game to end without a victor at a time when the country itself was enforcing only the laws a privileged elite deemed necessary, baseball runs its parallel course with the struggles of America.

Better sportswriters than I—Red Smith, David Halberstam, Thomas Boswell, Bill James—have chronicled the sport’s inner connection with the American temperament. Like them, at some games I feel the eerie attendance of many generations. At other times, I sense a strange missing element—those fans who have moved on.

Like fans, certain players look as if they could only have existed in the time in which they played. Take Jacob “Old Eagle Eye” Beckley, for instance, who, to this day, holds the record for first basemen, with 25,000 chances. Most putouts, 23,696, most games played, 2,368. He played for Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. He made 2,930 hits and batted .309 for his career. After twenty years in the big leagues, he retired in 1907. Even his nickname seems antique.

But look at John “Happy Jack” Chesbro. Where Beckley looks as though he could only have lived at the turn of the last century, “Happy Jack” looks as though he might be the guy sitting beside you, or stepping through security next to you, at a game today. He won forty-one games in 1904.

Many of the platitudes you hear about the game of baseball are true. For Americans, it is a timeless game. This is more than a play on words because the game is not governed by a clock counting