Baseball and basketball's differences reveal a lot about American culture. Plus, they're kind of funny.
BASEBALL vs. BASKETBALL
The baseball uniform looks like a formal outfit, something you wear to church.
The basketball uniform looks like a bathing suit, something you wear to the pool.
Baseball looks like a battlefield, with a few soldiers trying to pass through enemy territory.
Basketball looks like a dance floor, with couples trying to decide who they should dance with next.
Baseball is played outdoors, on green grass.
Basketball is played indoors, on a beige floor.
What lies beneath these differences? Baseball comes out of 19th-century agricultural America. Basketball comes out of 20th- and 21st-century office culture: fast-paced, lots of teamwork and immediate, visible rewards, all
played out in clean indoor spaces with florescent lights. Baseball is slow and formal. Basketball is fast and informal, like the times when they rose to popularity.
Both baseball and basketball entertain millions of people, so there's no use asking that impossibly subjective question, "Which is better?" I just want to suggest that the entertainment in each case draws on resonances with larger economic and cultural trends, at least for some people in messy, semi-conscious, and individual ways. Obviously there's no such thing as a single "America," and probably few people look at basketball uniforms and think "That's a bathing suit." This baseball-basketball comparison is partly a joke, but not completely. I hope it encourages thinking about the resonances between sports and larger cultural forces. (Sorry, I can't think of a funnier way to say that.)
Wait, Baseball Is Connected to War:
I'm obviously paying tribute here to comedian George Carlin's famous riff on the difference between baseball and football. But while I love Carlin's comparative method and most of his insights, I can't agree with his depiction of baseball as gentle and peaceful. Baseball is actually like a battlefield, as I just suggested. It's as much rooted in warfare as football—just a different kind of warfare.
Baseball's underlying combat structure is not World War II's "long bombs" and "aerial assaults," which Carlin rightly connected with football. Instead, baseball resembles and re-enacts the basic combat structure of the American Civil War: line infantry, i.e., standing out in the open while the enemy fires at you, and you try to return fire and get closer to them. The central challenge for many soldiers in the Civil War was to have the courage to stand on the field while someone shot at them from close range, and that's the same challenge faced today by a batter who has to stand in place while a pitcher throws a hard, fast projectile at them.
I'm obviously paying tribute here to comedian George Carlin's famous riff on the difference between baseball and football. But while I love Carlin's comparative method and most of his insights, I can't agree with his depiction of baseball as gentle and peaceful. Baseball is actually like a battlefield, as I just suggested. It's as much rooted in warfare as football—just a different kind of warfare.
Baseball's underlying combat structure is not World War II's "long bombs" and "aerial assaults," which Carlin rightly connected with football. Instead, baseball resembles and re-enacts the basic combat structure of the American Civil War: line infantry, i.e., standing out in the open while the enemy fires at you, and you try to return fire and get closer to them. The central challenge for many soldiers in the Civil War was to have the courage to stand on the field while someone shot at them from close range, and that's the same challenge faced today by a batter who has to stand in place while a pitcher throws a hard, fast projectile at them.
And baseball still revolves around a primary emotion stirred up by the Civil War: longing for home. White soldiers constantly talked in their letters about wanting to go home, African-Americans had much more vexing longings for home, and the single most popular song for soldiers on both sides was "Home, Sweet Home," (see Susan J. Matt's book, Homesickness: An American History). As much as they wanted to, though, almost nobody could get back home. Most soldiers were afraid to desert the army for fear of losing their honor, so they stayed in the war...and, during its long down times, played lots of baseball. Soldiers from far-flung states with idle time in camp spread enthusiasm for the game and standardized its rules of play. The Civil War's silent battlefield signals with hand gestures were even turned into baseball's sign system, more or less the same system used by pitchers, catchers, and other players today (see Paul Dickson's The Hidden Language of Baseball, p. 24-34). Baseball as we know it today owes a lot to the Civil War. Standing at the plate today, all these years later, a batter still embodies the central dilemma of a soldier in the Civil War: the attempt to "balance the competing demands of a love of home and a desire for honor" (Matt, p. 77).
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| Painting by Otto Boetticher, "Union Prisoners [playing baseball] at Salisbury, N.C." |
After the war, the feelings of homesickness turned into nostalgia, a longing for a home that could never be fully recovered. During the late 1800s, this sense of nostalgia rose as American society got roiled by racist segregation, urbanization, industrialization, migration, immigration, and other social changes. Not coincidentally, baseball, a game that is all about trying to go home, continued to rise in popularity during this same period. During this traumatic war and its aftermath, baseball became America's "national game," attempting to create imagery that could unite large parts of a deeply divided and wounded country. (See, for example, George Kirsch's book about the interweaving of baseball, the Civil War, and patriotism, Baseball in Blue and Gray.)
So when you play, watch, and enjoy baseball today, you're essentially viewing the Civil War through the refracted lens of ritual, play, and art. Of course, few people today are literally thinking of the Civil War when they watch or play baseball. But even if you don't know anything about baseball's historical origins, you still understand the courage and honor it takes to stand up to a fastball thrown inches away from your body. And you can imagine what it's like to want to get off the battlefield and go home. As George Carlin said, "I just want to go home! I hope I'll be safe at home!"
One of the few people to write about baseball's violent core was former MLB Commissioner Giamatti, who said baseball consists of a man standing on a hill throwing a rock at a man below him holding a club (Giamatti, A Great and Glorious Game, 1998, p. 58). More recently, this New Yorker cartoon came up with a similar Paleolithic comparison:
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| "A lot has happened since your last at-bat." (By John Fistere, finalist for Caption Contest, July 30, 2018) |
Like Carlin's comedy riff, this New Yorker cartoon builds on a truth not often talked about: violence is part of baseball's subtext. (I hope I'll be safe at home!)
Related posts:
All posts about baseball, including posts on my baseball fanatic cousin who got ALS, sliding and rebellion, the foul ball, the catch and sharing, feeling good in crowds, and Basketball vs. football.
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