Comparing Basketball, Baseball, and the Civil War

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.

Civil War Reenactment

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).

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:

"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.

What's the Cultural Meaning of the Slide in Baseball? (Peter Wogan)

Sports are like religious rituals: they reflect and instill cultural beliefs and practices. For example, the 24-second shot clock in basketball clearly reflects the fast pace of our era. So what about the slide in baseball? How does it resonate with contemporary American culture?

I think sliding reflects American ambivalence about social authority. Baseball players dress up in formal clothes, as if they're going to church or court—and then they throw themselves in the dirt.

That's the tension at the heart of both baseball and American society: respect vs. disdain for authority. Respect the rules, but kill the ump. Get dressed up, but throw yourself in the mud. Sliding is controlled social rebellion.

This social symbolism becomes more obvious when you think about the formality of the baseball uniform: white pants, a belt, a shirt with buttons all the way up the front. The impracticality of this uniform, and its extreme formality by comparison with most other sports uniforms, throws into relief baseball's social meaning.  

Flickr, Ewen and Donabel.

Most other sports won't even permit you to wear a belt (draw strings hold up pants just fine, actually better than most belts), yet baseball requires a belt. And as Paul Lukas noted on ESPN, "Once you stop and think about it...a button-front format doesn't make much sense for a sports uniform. For starters, a button-up shirt is more awkward to move around in, plus it's more formal, less sporty. That's why you wear a button-front shirt to work and some sort of pullover (T-shirt, sweatshirt, tank top, whatever) at home and on the weekend." Lukas also notes that button-up designs lead to weird problems like billowing and unaligned lettering on the front of jerseys, yet despite these problems and the viability of good alternatives, such as pull-overs, zippers, or laces, the major leagues have almost always used buttoned jerseys since the 19th century.

I would add that the persistence of formal uniforms and sliding in baseball can't be due to mere tradition. Over the years, baseball has made plenty of innovations, from the advent of batting helmets and night games to adjusting the pitcher's mound height and so on; yet the baseball uniform never lost its basic formality, and players never stopped sliding. If getting dirty in nice clothes hadn't felt right—if it hadn't continued to resonate with American ambivalence about authority—sliding probably would have been phased out a long time ago. 


Instead, sliding in a uniform still feels so right that it's hard to imagine baseball without it. As Rickey Henderson of the Oakland Athletics once said, "If my uniform doesn't get dirty, I haven't done anything in the baseball game" (quoted in Diamonds Forever, W.P. Kinsella editor, p. 121).

In fact, the slide was a novelty when first introduced in the mid-1800s and many people opposed it, arguing that players should be allowed to overrun every base rather than sliding. This is how the crowd reacted to one of the first recorded slides, during an 1859 game in Portland, Maine: "the feat fairly astonished the natives, who at first roared with laughter, but Chandler scored the run, and they then woke up to the fact that a large, new and valuable 'wrinkle' had been handed out to them" (quoted in Peter Morris's excellent book, A Game of Inches: The Stories That Shaped Baseball, p. 265).

This early phase in baseball history reminds us that there are alternative ways to reach the bases without sliding, just as basketball could be played without a shot clock. Not every sports rule or practice has social significance, but it seems fair to say sliding does.

Related Posts about Baseball:

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All posts about Field of Dreams (and baseball), including posts on ALS, moonlight, and Jackie Robinson.
 

10-Second Video of a Little League Player Stealing 2nd Base While the Pitcher's Not Looking:

Why is Catching a Foul Ball So Exciting?

Credit: Flickr, SethSquatch.

 I think the excitement is related to the crowd. When you catch a foul ball, suddenly you rise out of the anonymous masses. Out of thousands of fans and against all the odds, you get chosen. The universe loves you, and you have the gift to prove it.

Credit: Flickr, Dizzy-eyed. (Check out the arms reaching upward, to the heavens.)

Of course, there are other, less mystical reasons why catching a foul ball is so exciting: the indirect contact with famous players, the thrill of an athletic achievement, the danger. But being loved by the universe—that has to count for something.

Credit: Flickr, Malingering.

Related Posts about Baseball:

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Vet with One Arm Makes Amazing Foul-Ball Catch (Video) 

I also love this comparative, historical detail: during WWII, foul balls caught in the stands by fans were sent to the troops. See Richard Crepeau, “Baseball and War,” in The Cambridge Companion to Baseball, p. 87.

ALS and Baseball

I learned a lot about life and death and baseball when my younger cousin got Lou Gehrig's Disease.

This cousin, Andy Knipe, was the perpetual tag-along during our childhood. When our families got together on Long Island, with eight of us cousins cracking jokes and poking each other, we'd usually ignore Andy, almost the youngest kid in the group, but every once in awhile he’d crack us all up, usually by squeezing food through his fingers or reminding us about the toilet. His life of mischief was underway. 



Andy, up to no good 

Eventually I moved out to the West Coast, while Andy stayed in New York, got married, and excelled at his job, making funny TV commercials for companies like FedEx and Pepsi. His audience and humor had evolved. His jokes now cracked up millions of people all over the country. He almost seemed like an adult.

Then, at age 37, with a wife, teenage daughter, and two little boys, he got diagnosed with ALS.

At Christmas dinner that year, he couldn’t make the salad tongs squeeze together, but otherwise he seemed fine, so I still thought there must be some mistake, some way out. But there wasn’t. ALS continued to destroy his nervous system, relentlessly. By my summer visit back to New York, he was in a wheelchair, hands propped on the armrests, unable to turn his head from side to side, barely able to swallow. His body was frozen in place, but he was fully alert, watching himself die. 

In his final months, Andy and I connected over baseball. He sent my 9-year-old son a heavy encyclopedia of baseball history, which my son took to bed with him every night and studied like the Rosetta Stone. And Andy answered my questions with emails about baseball legends like Catfish Hunter, Don Zimmer, and Lou Gehrig. Because of his limited physical mobility, Andy's emails came out pithy and tantalizing, like ancient wisdom. To type out a one-line email, he put on a headset that tracked his eye movements, looked ahead at a computer screen, and then clicked with his index finger—one of the only parts of his body with any sensation left—on the word or letter he wanted, one at a time, with great concentration. 

But with his last ounces of energy, Andy didn’t just compose Zen-like emails. He also got on websites for Red Sox fans and carefully clicked out messages like this: 

 “R-e-d S-o-x = S-c-u-m-b-a-g-s.” 

Yes, he spent his final days tormenting Red Sox fans, the arch rivals of his beloved Yankees. Some of his insults were so disgusting that some baseball websites—not known for their decorum—banned him 

After awhile, though, the emails and rants tapered off, as the disease took over every last inch of his body, including his internal organs. In August, 2005, he decided not to get an artificial respirator. At age 38, he wrote a final letter to his kids and got ready to die. 

I couldn’t get a flight to New York in time, but I called to say goodbye. Andy couldn’t speak anymore, so I did all the talking.

I said I loved him. I said I was sorry I ignored him so much when we were little. Pretty soon I was fighting through tears to complete my sentences, incoherent ramblings about childhood memories and wanting to see him again. Up until that moment, I hadn't been able to comprehend Andy's impending death, but now, realizing that once I hung up, I'd never talk to Andy again, the certainty and utter finality of his death sank in.

I finally let go. I hung up, and Andy died a couple days later. 

The funeral on Long Island was mostly a blur. Carrying Andy's coffin through the church with the other pallbearers, my cousins and younger brother, seemed too easy. We just placed our hands on the top of the coffin, to guide it, but the wheels on the cart below did all the work, rolling quickly along the smooth wood floor. How was it that we could walk so effortlessly, while Andy, the youngest among us, was dead and in a box beneath our hands? 

The biggest surprise came after the funeral, at the lunch reception. Suddenly one of my cousins shouted, “Sick Bastard’s here!” Looking over at the restaurant entrance, I didn’t see anyone who looked sick or like a bastard, just a regular guy in his 30’s. I found out that "Sick Bastard” was this guy’s screen name. He was a Red Sox fan who had traded insults with Andy for months, until Andy finally let on that he was dying of ALS. By that point, they’d spent so much time together online, trying to reach new heights of creativity with their insults for each other, that they’d formed a bond. Sick Bastard, who had never met Andy in person, drove down from Boston to attend this funeral in the heart of Yankee territory. 

This was like a soldier walking onto the middle of a battlefield during the American Civil War and screaming, “Shoot if you want, but that’s my brother over there and I have to see him again.” 

My cousins, all faithful Yankee fans, mobbed Sick Bastard, hugging him and treating him like a celebrity.

Even after his death, Andy was still making us laugh...and teaching us how to live. 

I finally started to wrap my head around some of these lessons when I wrote Corner-Store Dreams. Even though that book is mainly about an innocent store-owner trying not to get dragged down by the 2008 Financial Crisis, a subplot revolves around baseball, my kids, and Andy. His death made me realize it was all connected.





Andy in his 30s. 


Andy with ALS. 

 

Andy teaching nephew Ben to drink soda. A few years later, he took Ben to the horse races, as his sister Susan fondly recalls.
 

What's Special about Foul Territory in Baseball?

In most sports, such as tennis and basketball, you can't keep playing once you cross the out-of-bound lines, but in baseball you can. When a baseball player catches a ball in foul territory and makes an out, we see that the foul line is not the final out-of-bounds line, after all. It's an illusion. The foul line says, "This looks like the out-of-bounds line, but actually the game can keep going beyond this line." And since boundary lines in sports symbolically represent social authority--limits, rules, what you can and can't do--the foul line embodies American ambivalence about authority. The foul line represents a desire to both respect and throw out the rules at the same time, a desire to keep play going, even after it's supposed to be over--like moonlight.

This contrarian side of foul territory comes into relief in the movie "Field of Dreams." I'm talking about the scene where "Moonlight" Graham* has been playing on Ray's field, but stops to save Ray's daughter, who has fallen out of the stands and is choking. "Moonlight" steps right up to the edge of the playing area, the point where the dirt meets gravel, a line that runs from the small bleacher seats to what would normally be the grandstands for thousands of spectators. Up until now, the movie has depicted this grandstand line as something the ghost players can't cross. Shoeless Joe stops at this line when talking with Ray and his family, and throughout the movie we never see any other players cross it--until Moonlight Graham does.

As Moonlight crosses that line, he returns to being his older self, Doc Graham. This is a magical, surreal moment--the first time in the movie that we see "time travel" happen right before our eyes. This moment redefines reality. Ray's brother-in-law now sees the players and accepts that what seemed like a fantasy is actually real. Fittingly, this sudden shift in reality all happens in foul territory, an ambiguous zone that is in and out of play at that same time. "Moonlight" switches to Doc Graham in full daylight, but, like baseball itself, he still carries a bit of moonlight inside him.

That's baseball. Like a moon that you can see in the daytime, it keeps going even when it seems like it's over.

Flckr, Neal Simpson, "Daytime Moon in Pecan Treetops," CC BY-ND 2.0

*The name "Moonlight" Graham comes from real baseball history. Novelist Bill Kinsella, the author of the book that "Field of Dreams" was based on, focused on "Moonlight" Graham because he was taken by that nickname and story when he found it in the Baseball Encyclopedia. Yes, Archibald "Moonlight" Graham was a real player in American baseball. He played a half inning in the outfield for the Giants in 1905, was next up to bat in the 9th inning but never got to because the Giants won the game, then he went back to the minors, and later became a doctor in Chisholm, Minnesota. Nobody is sure why Archibald was called "Moonlight," but it seems likely that it was due to his extraordinary speed. Some experts at the time considered "Moonlight" to be the fastest runner in the game, with one newspaper explaining that he is "known as 'Moonlight' because he is supposed to be as fast as a flash" (see SABR and this excellent biography).

Wikimedia Commons

How is the Baseball Catch like Human Evolution?

Referring to the long sweep of human history, a professor of mine liked to say, "Early hominids were friendly, stupid, and good to eat. How in the world did they ever make it?"

The answer wasn't baseball, but close. The key to human survival was sharing—sharing food, sharing ideas, sharing companionship. Without sharing, we wouldn't have made it out of the Pleistocene.

I would just add that sharing is a key part of baseball, too.


The writer/director of Field of Dreams touched on this indirectly when he described a baseball catch as follows: 


"I give to you. I receive from you. It's a lovely experience with nonverbal communication, the sharing of something very sweet."—Phil Alden Robinson, 2009, Sports Illustrated.

"Dad, you wanna' have a catch?"

This is another good reason to have the film end with that powerful image of the father and son simply throwing the ball back and forth. The baseball catch puts us in touch with what makes us human.

Related Posts about Baseball:

All posts about baseball, including posts on sliding and rebellion, the foul ball,  feeling good in crowds, and basketball vs. baseball.

All posts about Field of Dreams (and baseball), including posts on ALS, moonlight, and Jackie Robinson.