On the Dodgers, Baseball, and Life

Happy Election Day!

Photo by Keith Johnston on Unsplash

This author recently (during the National League Championship Series) published a piece in Ordinary Times, a piece which is about the Dodgers and about baseball and, really, about life.

It seems to me, for the first time in years, that it’s truly October. The temperatures have dropped, and autumn is descending. But sharper than the brisk nights, and sharper than the nipping daytime winds, is the thrill of playoff baseball. And the Los Angeles Dodgers driving towards the World Series. For the first time in years, it feels as if they might just make it.

For those who don’t bleed Blue, I should elaborate. As a 10-year-old — as a fan of any team (besides, perhaps, the Cubs) — every season begins uncynically — with limitless possibility, uncut joy and wonder, and the unsullied excitement of sheer hope. If your team falls in the playoffs — or falls short of them altogether — the motto of the Brooklyn Dodgers is an optimistic fact of your emotional consciousness. Wait until next year. Each Opening Day begins Year Zero.

Then you grow up. Baseball slips from its place as the most important part of your life. As a boy, I tuned father’s 5-pound AM radio to hear the voices of Vin Scully, Charley Steiner, and Rick Monday — I didn’t pay Sling TV an inordinate sum from my paycheck each October for playoff access. And I certainly didn’t mute the game in intervals between innings, and during pitching changes, to work or write. Life has changed, but baseball remains constant.

…

So, this year, October has finally returned. I feel the high once more, knowing full well that the low might well this moment be rounding third base in a Yankees uniform. But the ecstasy and agony are the vivid colors that make baseball beautiful — and make life beautiful; and I am deeply grateful to be taking them at the ballpark in once again.

As Teddy Roosevelt put it:

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

That is baseball well played. That is life lived well.

And perhaps, just perhaps, there is a night approaching on which joy will return to Chavez Ravine. Perhaps, in a short time, we might say, as American hero Vin Scully did in 1955, “the [Los Angeles] Dodgers are the champions of the world.”

For any baseball fan, that’s as good as it gets.

Well, the Los Angeles Dodgers are the champions of the world. And Spring Training cannot come soon enough.

Read the full piece here.

Editor’s Note: Even on Election Day, America is far more than the sum of its politics and political leaders. The Constitution’s purpose is to secure each person’s natural rights to life, liberty, property, a free conscience, and the pursuit of happiness. Government and politics further those ends; they are not, themselves, the end.

Today, vote your conscience. It is your civic duty. Elections, as they say, have consequences — profound consequences. Yet tomorrow, America will remain America; and your fellow Americans — even those with whom you disagree — will remain your friends and neighbors, whom you are duty bound to love. Politics does not progress towards some final endgame. It is the ongoing process of working, negotiating, and disagreeing within a political community towards a more perfect union.