– and that both games were descendents of English games of stoolball and "tut-ball."
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Whether brought by the English or the Irish, or based on a French game from the 14th century, baseball has been with America since the beginning and has, like all great "American" loves, been slowly seduced into bed and kept as our own. In recent years, many have questioned the stamp "national pastime," saying baseball is less popular, slower, less characteristically "American" than, say, football. Baseball’s detractors discredit the game’s traditional place in our society, but they do so without warrant.
Baseball is America not because the game was with us in the beginning, but because the game has come to metaphorically define the American Way of Life – or, perhaps more accurately, the way American’s live their lives.
No other sport can claim metaphorical significance the way baseball can. Two weeks ago, a meeting in Hollywood was begun with, "I hear we’re going to hit a long ball today; what’s the first pitch." (We’re not talking soccer field here.) Similar clichés are used every day in business: swing and a miss, real pitchers’ duel, he really dropped the ball, two down in the bottom of the ninth, knocked it out of the park, he went down swinging, he was clutch.
Other sports can claim clichés that have spilled into our lives (third and long; puts up a prayer; putting from the rough), but none is as descriptive and universal as baseball. Even our high school romances are explained using baseball; and although the obscure meaning of the bases changes from generation to generation, a home run will always remain the same, ultimate goal.
(I don’t know if the British have these same wonderfully descriptive clichés revolving around cricket (he hit three wickets in one night?), but I suppose it’s possible.)
While baseball is America because the American zeitgeist is baseball, there is one overlooked cliché that I believe should be more often used in a positive context.
Last weekend, the New York Times published an article about a pair of economists that published a book based on 800 years of economic data. "Their handiwork," says the Times, "is contained in their recent best seller, ‘This Time Is Different,’ a quantitative reconstruction of hundreds of historical episodes in which perfectly smart people made perfectly disastrous decisions."
The book and article extrapolate an interesting point – many of the disastrous decisions were between doing something and doing nothing. Most often, that something proves to be wrong. But, at times, the nothing is just as frowned upon, as in the still cooling case of Alan Greenspan.
When something is done, the approbation is hailed. But never is credit given to he who did nothing and was right in his decision.
That is of course with the exception of baseball. While basketball has "you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take" and football has the "hail mary" pass, baseball has "good eye" and "good look" and "don’t go chasing balls in the dirt."
With all the other baseball clichés floating around our lives, it may be wise to incorporate the "good look" every once in a while and appreciate the times we said no to Paul Wolfowitz when he suggested we invade Iraq; no to Bernie Madoff when he told us he had can’t-miss investment opportunity; no to Lindsay Lohan when she said she was OK to drive us to In-n-Out at 3am. By the next Fourth of July, I hope we’ve incorporated some more good looks into our lives. There’s a lot we can learn from baseball yet.
