Rounding the Bases: Baseball and Religion in AmericaAfter identifying early conflicts between churches and baseball in the late-nineteenth century, Price examines the appropriation of baseball by the House of David, an early twentieth-century millennial Protestant community in southern Michigan. Turning then from historic intersections between baseball and religion, two chapters focus on the ways that baseball reelects religious myths. First, the omphalos myth about the origin and ordering of the world is reflected in the rituals and rules of the game. Then the myth of curses is explored in the culture of superstition that underlies the game. At the heart of the book is a sustained argument about how baseball functions as an American civil religion, affirming and sanctifying American identity, especially during periods of national crises such as wars and terrorist attacks. Building on this analysis of baseball as an America's civil religion, two chapters draw upon novels by W. P. Kinsella and David James Duncan to explore the sacramental potential of baseball and to align baseball with apocalyptic possibilities. The final chapter serves as a full confession, interpreting baseball affiliation stories as conversion narratives. In various ways |
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Page 24
... national pastime , Greenberg opted to play on Rosh Hashanah , belting two homeruns for the only Tigers ' tallies in a 2-1 victory over the rival Red Sox . For the most part , to his relief , the public supported his decision to play ...
... national pastime , Greenberg opted to play on Rosh Hashanah , belting two homeruns for the only Tigers ' tallies in a 2-1 victory over the rival Red Sox . For the most part , to his relief , the public supported his decision to play ...
Page 46
... National Pastime during the decades following the Civil War . By the turn of the twentieth century , Billy Sunday had accelerated the acceptance of baseball allusions to explain the Christian faith to audiences frequently unfamiliar ...
... National Pastime during the decades following the Civil War . By the turn of the twentieth century , Billy Sunday had accelerated the acceptance of baseball allusions to explain the Christian faith to audiences frequently unfamiliar ...
Page 77
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Contents
| 10 | |
| 47 | |
The Pitchers Mound as Cosmic Mountain Baseball and Religious Myths | 71 |
Conjuring Curses and Supplicating Spirits Baseballs Culture or Superstitions | 93 |
Safe at Home Baseball as American Civil Religion | 111 |
Fusing the Spirits The Sacramental Power or Baseball | 176 |
Now and There Here and Then Kinsellas Millenarian World of Baseball | 200 |
Here I Cheer Conversion Narratives of Baseball Fans | 219 |
Works Relating Baseball and Religion | 239 |
Index | 253 |
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Common terms and phrases
Adventist Angeles athletes ball ballpark Bambino base baseball and religion Baseball Chapel baseball fans baseball's batter believed Billy Billy Sunday Brothers catcher celebration century championship character Chicago Chicago Cubs church cosmic mountain Cubs Culture curse David team decades devotion dimension Dodgers Ebbets Field experience Faith Nights father featured field of dreams Fimrite Giamatti Hall of Fame heroes home plate home run House of David Ibid identified infield Jesus Jewish Kincaid league teams major league memory Muscular Christianity myth mythic National League national pastime omphalos one's organized outfield pennant pitch pitcher pitcher's mound players playing baseball playoff power of baseball provides Purnell Quoted Red Sox religious Rickey ritual runner Ruth Sabbath sacred season Shoeless Joe significance social spirit Sports Illustrated story Sunday superstition Tiller umpire University Press W. P. Kinsella winning word of baseball World Series Wrigley Field Yankee Stadium Yardley York
Popular passages
Page 205 - The scripture representations of conversion do strongly imply and signify a change of nature : Such as " being born again ; becoming new creatures ; rising from the dead ; being renewed in the spirit of the mind ; dying to sin, and living to righteousness ; putting off the old man, and putting on the new man ; a being ingrafted into a new stock ; a having a divine seed implanted in the heart ; a being made partakers of the divine nature, Etc.
Page 158 - Praise the name of baseball. The word will set captives free. The word will open the eyes of the blind. The word will raise the dead. Have you the word of baseball living inside you? Has the word of baseball become part of you? Do you live it, play it, digest it, forever? Let an old man tell you to make the word of baseball your life. Walk into the world and speak of baseball. Let the word flow through you like water, so that it may quicken the thirst of your fellow man.
Page 59 - It is my guess that sport spectating involves something more than the vicarious pleasures of identifying with athletic prowess. I suspect that each sport contains a fundamental myth which it elaborates for its fans, and that our pleasure in watching such games derives in part from belonging briefly to the mythical world which the game and its players bring to life.
Page 96 - The truly religious devotee has his soul directed to the final outcome; and every one of the extraordinarily rich multiplicity of movements of the baseball game acquires its significance because of its bearing on that outcome. Instead of purifying only fear and ^ pity, baseball exercises and purifies all of our emotions, cultivating hope and courage when we are behind, resignation when we are beaten, fairness for the other team when we are ahead, charity for the umpire, and above all the zest for...
Page 75 - The diamonds and rituals of baseball create an elegant, trivial, enchanted grid on which our suffering, shapeless, sinful day leans for the momentary grace of order."23 So we return to the rain delay conversation between two teenage boys in the bleachers at Wrigley Field. "Why," one asked, "is the pitcher's mound higher than any other part of the field?
Page 196 - We're not just ordinary people, we're a congregation. Baseball is a ceremony, a ritual, as surely as sacrificing a goat beneath a full moon is a ritual. The only difference is that most of us realize that it is a game.
Page 115 - Things worthwhile generally don't just happen. Luck is a fact, but should not be a factor. Good luck is what is left over after intelligence and effort have combined at their best. Negligence or indifference or inattention are usually reviewed from an unlucky seat. The law of cause and effect and causality both work the same with inexorable exactitudes. Luck is the residue of design.
Page 50 - Robert S. Ellwood and Harry B. Partin, Religious and Spiritual Groups in Modern America, 2d ed.
Page 121 - Those carefully rehearsed symbolic motions and gestures through which we regularly go, in which we articulate the felt shape and rhythm of our humanity and of reality as we experience it, and by means of which we negotiate the terms or conditions for our presence among and our participation in the plurality of realities through which our humanity makes its passage
Page 156 - You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.