Baseball, Richard Greenberg writes so eloquently in his Tony-winning best play “Take Me Out,” is unrelentingly meaningful.
Writers from George Bernard Shaw to Red Smith have tried to capture the romantic essence of the game in words. Smith deemed the 90 feet between bases the most perfect measurement in the universe. Walt Whitman was first to declare baseball “the American game.”
Roger Angell wrote: “Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young.”
More often than not, though, writers fail, falling victim to overwrought prose and purely nostalgic poetry in an attempt to write the next “Casey at the Bat.” In one of the world’s most famous English-language poems, Ernest Lawrence Thayer immortalized the game: “Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright; The band is playing somewhere; and somewhere hearts are light; And somewhere men are laughing; and little children shout; But there is no joy in Mudville – mighty Casey has struck out.”
For any fan of baseball’s mystique there is joy in reading anyone who gives elusive chase, a quest that has never been limited to writers. Actress Tallulah Bankhead opined: “There have only been two true geniuses in the world – Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.” Humphrey Bogart said: “A hot dog at the ballpark is better than steak at the Ritz.”
“Even someone who is not interested in baseball can find enormous excitement in the ancillary qualities of the game,” said Greenberg, whose monologue about how baseball is better than a democracy is often cited as a reason his play was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. The play is being performed in Denver by the Curious Theatre Company.
In that spirit, The Denver Post asked an eclectic panel to write its own homages to the sport, whether a poem, anecdote or observation. The group includes nationally renowned author Frank Deford and Colorado poet laureate Mary Crow, a self-professed baseball neophyte. Mayor John Hickenlooper penned his own narrative – no ghostwriting necessary. He was so taken with the exercise, in fact, that he returned his submission on May 3. That was the day baseball provided some preoccupation as voters were approving a new $378 million jail for the city.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
EXCERPT FROM “TAKE ME OUT”
“I have come to understand that baseball is a perfect metaphor for hope in a democratic society. It has to do with the rules of play. It has to do with the mode of enforcement of these rules. It has to do with certain nuances and grace notes of the game.
First, it has to do with the remarkable symmetry of everything. All those threes and multiples of three calling attention to … the game’s noble equality.
Equality, that is, of opportunity. Everyone is given exactly the same chance. And the opportunity to exercise that chance at its own pace. There’s none of that scurry, none of that relentlessness that marks other games. …
What I mean is, in baseball there is no clock. What could be more generous than to give everyone all of these opportunities and the time to seize them in, as well? And with each turn at the plate, there’s the possibility of turning the situation to your favor. Down to the very last try.
And then, to ensure that everything remains fair, justices are ranged around the park to witness and assess the play. And if the justice errs, an appeal can be made. It’s invariably turned down, but that’s part of what makes the metaphor so right. Because even in the most well-meant of systems, error is inevitable. Even within the fairest of paradigms, unfairness will creep in.
And baseball is better than democracy – at least than democracy as it is practiced in this country – because unlike democracy, baseball acknowledges loss. While conservatives tell you, “Leave things alone and no one will lose,” and liberals tell you, “Interfere a lot and no one will lose,” baseball says, “Someone will lose.” Not only says it – insists upon it!
So baseball achieves the tragic vision that democracy evades. Evades and embodies.
Democracy’s lovely, but baseball’s more mature.
(pause) ….
Another thing I like is the home-run trot.
– Mason, as written by playwright Richard Greenberg in “Take Me Out”
FOUR WORLDLY PLAYERS EXPRESS THEIR LOVE FOR THE GAME
Mary Crow
As I grew up, baseball seemed to have an aura as an elite sport, like tennis. Baseball had glamour and seemed to be an intelligent athlete’s game where players weren’t as mean-spirited as they too often were in sports like hockey. Baseball seemed to have honor as well as intelligence, and our baseball heroes weren’t sleazy (or maybe we just didn’t know as much about their private lives). Babe Ruth was an original, and Marilyn Monroe’s ex-husband was a romantic who put roses on her grave for years after her death.
Baseball, then, had a vague mystery and attraction, and I admired it from a distance, aware of how many male writers have found in it a truly American subject but one that never had enough attraction to pull me, a woman, into it because women seemed to have so little room within it.
Mary Crow is Colorado’s poet laureate
Anthony Powell
Truth be told, my connection to baseball has much more to do with great memories of going to games with my late dad than any real gut involvement with the sport.
During the ’60s and ’70s, Papa was a radio newsman at KSFO in San Francisco, the station known then as “The Voice of the Giants.”
My perks for being a journalist’s kid were threefold: 1) Getting to hear Beatles albums two weeks before any of my peers; 2) Learning at an early age to venerate Edward R. Murrow; and 3) Going with my dad to see the Giants play at Candlestick Park absolutely free and then hanging with sportscaster Lon Simmons in the booth afterward.
Today, I can’t go into Coors Field without feeling that Papa is right there beside me. Dorky as it sounds, I’m most attracted to baseball by the whole “peanuts and popcorn and Cracker Jack” thing. And let me tell you, my dad would have been absolutely appalled at today’s sky boxes, smoking sections and overpriced hot dogs. He could curse like a sailor. Steroids? I can hear him bellowing about the current baseball scandals even now.
Anthony Powell of the Denver Center Theatre Company is the director of Curious’ upcoming “Frozen”
John Hickenlooper
I’m not exactly sure how baseball first wrapped me in its grip, but grip me it did. The Philadelphia Phillies were my team, and I drifted to sleep wrapped around a palm-sized transistor, listening to the faint, tinny voice of the radio play-by-play. I listened and suffered as the Phillies lost 23 consecutive games in 1961. And when my Phillies, transformed in 1964, blew a 5 1/2 game lead and the pennant with nine games to go, I had one leg out the third-floor bathroom window.
My dreams for the Phillies were always most ripe in the spring, when buds were opening and the world seemed alive with potential. In the fall, those dreams would fall like dead leaves from the trees, the results of missed bunts, fluke hits and other lost opportunities.
Bart Giamatti, the president of Yale University who ascended into the presidency of the National League before his untimely death in 1989, once mused that in its essence, baseball was all about getting home. One has many freedoms on the basepaths, but the goal was always to come home. In a country where so many have come to create a new home for themselves and their families, this makes baseball uniquely American. And with our Western heritage of homesteading, uniquely Coloradan.”
John Hickenlooper is the mayor of Denver
Frank Deford
Baseball connects with us more than other sports do. Maybe that’s because it’s a game of the summertime, and it’s every day, and so it manages to innoculate us in ways that other games can’t begin to. The fact that baseball is so languid, punctuated by spurts of energy, relates better to the pace of our own lives. Baseball, I think, is a love that grows. Other sports may be more intense, like affairs.
Baseball is marriage.
Frank Deford is an NPR commentator, a writer for Sports Illustrated and author of the new book “The Old Ball Game”
