A Sense of Doubt blog post #1498 - Welcome Back Baseball - 2019 - I need you

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1498 - Welcome Back Baseball - 2019 - I need you

Baseball started today, officially. There were two games in Japan last week, and though those count, they do not count as Tigers or Cubs games but as Mariners or Athletics games, and so for me, the 2019 Baseball season just began.

Baseball.

I need it in my life.

Hey, Baseball, thank you for existing.


"Well -- it's our game; that's the chief connection with it: America's game; it has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere; it belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly as our Constitution's laws; is just as important in the sum total of our historic life." ~ Walt Whitman

"Several years ago, as documentary filmmakers engaged in trying to evoke America's most defining moment, the Civil War, for the widest possible audience, we became aware of what a powerful metaphor the game of baseball also represented for all Americans on nearly every level. Now after more than four years of work, we have produced a twenty-hour filmed history of the game for National Public Television, and, as the arc of the life of Ebbets Field, which opens our film and begins this preface suggests, our interest in the game has gone well beyond a round-up of baseball highlights." ~ Ken Burns, Baseball, an Illustrated History 1994.

"Baseball," the poet Donald Hall told us in a filmed interview, "because of its continuity over the space of America and the time of America, is a place where memory gathers."


"The story of Baseball is also the story of race in America, of immigration and assimilation; of the struggle between labor and management, of popular culture and advertising, of myth and the nature of heroes, villains, and buffoons; of the role of women and class and wealth in our society. The game is a repository of age-old American verities, of standards, against which we continually measure ourselves, and yet at the same time a mirror of the present moment in our modern culture -- including all of our most contemporary failings.

"But we were hardly prepared for the complex emotions the game summoned up. The accumulated stories and biographies, the life-lessons and tragedies, dramatic moments and classic confrontations that we encountered daily began to suggest even more compelling themes. As Jacques Barzun has written, "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball"
(Burns and Lynn Novick, xviii, preface, Baseball, an Illustrated History 1994).

"The historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. has remarked that we suffer today from "too much pluribus and not enough unum." Fe things survive in these cynical days to remind us of the Union from which so many of our personal and collective blessings flow, and it is hard not to wonder, in an age when the present moment consumes and overshadows all else -- our bright past and our dim, unknown future -- what finally does endure? What encodes and stores the genetic material of our civilization -- passing down to the next generation the best of us, what we hope will mutate into betterness for our children and our posterity? Baseball provides one answer. Nothing in our daily life offers more of the comfort of continuity, the generational connection of belonging to a vast and complicated American family, the powerful sense of home, the freedom from time's constraints, and the great gift of accumulated memory than does our National pastime" (Burns and Lynn Novick, xviii, preface, Baseball, an Illustrated History 1994).

"I miss my father... God, I love baseball." from Roy Hobbes in The Natural

2006 Detroit Tigers win American League Championship and advance to the WORLD SERIES.

For me, Baseball charts the story of my life and the story from before my life.

It has been my soundtrack and my comfort in the darkness.

It has brought me joy and grief, even though it's just a game.

Like anything, it's very important and really not that important at all.

But I am glad it exists, and every year when it resumes, I am reborn in it and my heart swells with love and hope and promise and happiness.

Thank you baseball, now go out there and get some runs!

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1903.28 - 10:10

- Days ago = 1363 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.