Behind Baseball

As I watched Mark McGwire's record-setting home run creep over the left field wall in Busch Stadium, I was overcome with the same emotions that have always filled me when something historic and momentous has occurred in sports. At first, I feel elation, jubilation, awe that I am witnessing such a spectacle, that this man has just shattered Roger Maris's mark, the most coveted in all of sports. But as I watch this hulking human being circle and stumble around the bases, thrusting forth to bash forearms and offer hugs to anyone willing to receive them, I must admit that it all seems somewhat silly.

At these types of moments, it becomes time to reflect upon why sports have the power that they do - in my society, my country, and in me. On some level, McGwire's feat, and all of sports, are trivial. But in a sense that goes well beneath the surface of the issue, sports possess a timeless force that is almost unparalleled. In terms of forces that have held power throughout history and across cultures, sports may rank up there with sex and war.

David Halberstam has said that if somebody wants to understand America, if they have just one night to do anything in this country, they ought to catch a plane to O'Hare and grab a seat at the United Center to see Michael Jordan and the Bulls play. The arena of sports acts as a forum on which our national character often comes to be understood. In sports, everything American, and everything human exists. Sports smack of money, power, materialism, consumerism, heroism, the glorification of physical prowess and beauty, and the great triad of issues that overwhelm America - race, gender, and class.

In the swish of a basketball through the net, the crack of a bat, the beauty of a running back eluding a would-be tackler, the absurd and the meaningful come together. While these are games of which we have artificially made the rules, defined the terms, supplied the importance, and raised the stakes, they at the same time have a quality that could be understood by anyone who did not know the rules nor comprehend the vitality of the contest. For in the athletic arena there are spectacles so make-believe yet so real. While in crude terms, all that McGwire has done is whack a ball of cork with a stick, I would contend that in another sense, he has done much more. In the contest of one-on-one, one human attempting to beat the other, to tame him, bend him to his will, McGwire has prevailed. In swinging that bat, shooting that ball, or eluding that tackle, humans can become transformed. Indeed, for some people, sports are the only times in their lives when they can assume the role of masters of their fates and captains of their souls.

And when our national elegy is written, the baseball record books surely will not mean a lot. The names McGwire, Maris and Ruth will sit beside the numbers 60, 61, and who knows how many. But inside that book, maybe underneath it, perhaps within it, a greater story can be told. It may not be the whole story of America, but in it glimpses of our character will be provided. There will be Jackie Robinson as the courageous warrior who became both the cause and effect of a great change in our nation, and Mantle, Dimaggio, and Ruth, each simultaneously epitomizing and captivating the America of their time. And if the writers of that elegy would look to other sports, they would see Muhammed Ali, and in him pictures of Malcolm X, the Vietnam War, and the Nation of Islam would emerge. If they looked forth to the nineties, they would see a world becoming governed by fewer and fewer people, a world in which Rupert Murdoch has just purchased the English football club Manchester United for $1 billion and the NBA's players and owners cannot agree upon how many millions they will make.

But as time passes and we undergo changes, sports act as both catalysts and reactors. Just as the sound of a stickball game could be heard in many urban neighborhoods seventy-five years ago, today the cities are lined with basketball courts, teeming with visitors. These are the places where dreams are chased, hopes die, and a piece of America comes to be. So to those people who pen our national elegy, I would ask you to read the papers, watch television, and form your own opinions on whether McGwire is making history, or simply exposing the foolishness of these games on which we place so much importance. But know that amidst that decision, and amidst that judgment that you are making, in this arena called sports and in these games that we play, a story is told. And one might call it the national character, another may call it the human spirit. But whatever term we charge these feelings with, the emotions are still there after the game is played, and they are as powerful, as paradoxical, and as revealing as ever