Sportswriter Jane Leavy believes that baseball is in trouble, but she also thinks she knows how to fix it. And yet there is a notion that lurks here and there in her new book: Maybe, just maybe, the game is not fixable—at least not fixable in the sense of its ever being restored to its [...]
Eutrapelia—the habit of playing well, of having good leisure—is one way to practice rest by doing something that brings us delight. It prepares us for eternity. If we cannot learn to rest in something good here on earth, how will we be able to rest in heaven? What would alien invaders make of watching a [...]
Baseball was in my father’s bones before he knew he had bones. And so it is for me because it was for him. Like a treasured family heirloom, baseball has been passed down in our family from one generation to the next. Cal Ripken, Sr., and Cal Ripken, Jr. Moments before the opening [...]
It's rare that an author billing his work as a piece of revisionism ends up, seemingly unwittingly, reinforcing the traditional interpretation of his subject. But Charles Leerhsen accomplishes this unusual feat in his biography, "Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty." Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty by Charles Leerhsen (464 pages, Simon & Schuster, 2015) It's rare [...]
More and more Americans, all of them convinced that their side is losing, try to rig the game in their favor. No longer willing to play fair, they want only to win. Born on October 4, 1809 and orphaned at the age of twelve, Robert Cumming Schenck overcame his early difficulties to earn a bachelor’s [...]
Today, as we wash off yesterday’s ashes, we stand six weeks away from Easter. The long winter of sin is thawing; a new day is dawning as the Resurrection approaches. Easter and springtime seem to go together, and with the approach of spring comes yet another reason for hope—Opening Day. While Opening Day may bring [...]
Don Larsen didn’t know he was going to start that fifth game of the 1956 World Series until he arrived at Yankee Stadium and discovered a baseball tucked inside his baseball spikes. Shapes of Philosophical History Mr. Meyer passed away late spring in 1956 leaving behind his wife and one child, a son, Curtis, who [...]
Loving baseball means heartbreak. Every baseball season starts with optimism, especially if you’re a Dominican student brother who supports a team who isn’t afraid to shell out some cash for good players. Perhaps the team has called up prospects with promises of greatness. Perhaps the front office has made a savvy trade. “This season’s the one,” you say, “the [...]
Just as any great ball players should study the form and technique of past athletes, so every Christian, and especially every minister commissioned to preach the Word, should study the Fathers of the Church. We can spend time in their company through their writings. The Power of Patristic Preaching: The Word in Our Flesh, by [...]
Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were both "Godded-up" to an extreme degree, treated at various times as if they could not err, treatment that author Allen Barra thinks contributed to the fact that neither man ever really grew up. Mickey and Willie: Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball’s Golden Age, By Allen Barra [...]
Gil Meche His career stats indicate that he was a mediocre baseball pitcher—perhaps the epitome of mediocrity: 84 wins; 83 losses; a 4.49 Earned Run Average; a Walks-plus-Hits-to-Innings-Pitched ratio of 1.42. Yet Gil Meche, who played for the Seattle Mariners and Kansas City Royals, was responsible for one of the most astounding, yet almost unnoticed, [...]
On April 25, 1976, the year of the American Bicentennial celebrations, Chicago Cubs outfielder Rick Monday saved an American flag from being burned by two protestors who had trespassed onto the field during a game at Dodger Stadium. As the bottom of the fourth inning got underway, the protesters placed the flag in left-center field [...]
More than 75 years ago, Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey made history for the Brooklyn Dodgers by breaking baseball’s “color line." But today’s Los Angeles Dodgers are making a different kind of history by honoring men who put on nuns' habits in order to mock the Catholic Church. The devoutly Christian Robinson and Rickey must [...]
Baseball is beautiful, fun, and enjoyable. It can also help us learn how to enter into the present moment. Of course, one does not have to be a fan of baseball to enjoy life truly. But loving a sport such as baseball can help us to appreciate life as it comes to us in the present [...]