20th annual conference,

Baseball in Literature and Culture

Murfreesboro, Tennessee

April 3, 2015

Spring Trainingand the perennial renewal of life

*Session B2: Baseball and Spirituality

Location: Dining Rm. C Chair:

Phil Oliver, Middle Tennessee State University:

“Spring Training and the Perennial Renewal of Life”

Brian Steverson, Knoxville TN:

“Baseball Literature-Bible Literature: Cultural

Interconnectivity”

Warren Tormey, Middle Tennessee State University:

“Imposing the Genesis Narrative onto the Vintage

Game”

I may be the token spokesman for none (“spiritual, not religious”) on our panel - unless the Church of

Baseball counts as religious.. In the beginning was the Grapefruit (and later the Cactus)...

I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn't work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there's no guilt in baseball, and it's never boring...

which makes it like sex. There's never been a ballplayer slept with me who didn't have the best year of his career. Making love is like hitting a baseball: you just gotta relax and concentrate. Besides, I'd never sleep with a player hitting under .250... not unless he had a lot of RBIs and was a great glove man up the middle. You see, there's a certain amount of life wisdom I give these boys. I can expand their minds.

Sometimes when I've got a ballplayer alone, I'll just read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman to him, and the guys are so sweet, they always stay and listen. 'Course, a guy'll listen to anything if he thinks it's foreplay. I make them feel confident, and they make me feel safe, and pretty. 'Course, what I give them lasts a lifetime; what they give me lasts 142 games. Sometimes it seems like a bad trade. But bad trades are part of baseball - now who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas, for God's sake? It's a long season and you gotta trust it. I've tried 'em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.

But of course the Church of

Baseball counts!

But seriously, “spirituality” is

rooted in espiritu, which

signifies breath. Respiration

is our most natural recurrent

function. Can inspiration and

aspiration be far behind? Not

for a fan in Spring Training,

where spiritual

transcendence is natural and

recurrent too.

So if our subject is beginnings, the

perennial renewal of our national

pastime is at least as spiritual a date on

the calendar as Christmas. Or Easter.

In Richard Ford’s words, Easter is “the

optimist’s holiday… the day for all those

with sunny dispositions… a tidy holiday

to remember sweetly and indistinctly as

the very same day throughout your life.”

Like Opening Day. Or better, like Feb. 15

(or so), when “pitchers and catchers

report.”

But let’s not overthink this. The

really spiritual dimension of

baseball in spring was captured by

Roy Campanella when he said in

baseball you’ve got to have a lot of

little boy in you - or girl, I’m sure he

also meant to say. Games are for

playing, and play is a function of

spirit.

Let’s suppose they’re right. What did

Crash Davis say? It’s a simple

game, “we gotta play it one day at a

time.” And of course, “lesson

number one: don’t think; it can only

hurt the ball club.”

A week ago today my department hosted a

Lyceum address by anthropologist James Bielo

(Miami-Ohio), who related the conviction of

some Biblical theme park designers in

Kentucky that true creativity consists in making

complicated things seem simple.

I’ve been privileged to participate in this event every year since 2008, making it nearly as much a perennial

source of personal renewal now as the game itself. In that time we’ve mostly been graced here by pitchers -

Denny McLain, Mudcat Grant, Fergie Jenkins, Jim Rooker, Tommy John, Jim Bouton (and I just missed Bill

“Spaceman” Lee), so it’s great to see hitters of the stature of Willie Wilson and Ken Griffey stepping up to the

lectern.

For the record (it being baseball, after all): in my previous talks here I’ve discussed Ted Williams & John

Updike, Sidd Finch, the meaning of life, umpires and rules, heroes of my youth like Bob Gibson & later semi-

villains like Mark McGwire, time and eternal recurrence, Nashville’s old Sulfur Dell ballpark... Can’t believe it’s

taken me this long to get back to Spring Training!

People ask me what I do in

the winter when there’s no

baseball. I’ll tell you what I

do. I stare out the window

and wait for spring. Rogers

Hornsby

In March of 1961, The New Yorker sent Roger Angell to

baseball spring training. Being a longtime fan, Angell could

not cover baseball as an objective journalist; it would be like

asking a young child to analyze Disneyworld's rides as a

strict critic - remaining stoic would be impossible...Angell

wrote contradictory to the standard of his profession -

subjectively, in the voice of a fan. Forty years after his first

story about elderly baseball fans at spring training, his

unique formula for baseball writing lives on.

To Angell, baseball means writing in the present

tense: "baseball presents itself so clearly that there

is a tendency to see it as it's happening again."

Baseball means timelessness: every game is

always the same as every other game, and yet

always different. Baseball means facing history:

players not only against their contemporaries, but

against every player in the history of the game.

Baseball means boxscores, the magical

arrangement of names and numbers that when

deciphered reveals the story of a game. Baseball

means dealing with failure: "there is more Met than

Yankee in all of us," says Angell, underscoring

man's natural tendency to err. Roger Angell and the

Meaning of Baseball

Baseball sights and settings are so familiar that reporters reëncountering the game at the spring-training

camps in Arizona and Florida give an almost perceptible little nod as they step out onto the first field of

March and find all in place once again. Here are seven or eight players, larger and younger than one has

remembered (as always), gathered around the batting cage, awaiting their turns at the plate in easeful,

half-forgotten poses that now slide heck into recognition like a foot into a bedroom slipper.

There’s nothing new here; there’s no

end to this, year after year, and yet

each time out, each spring, it feels

surprising as well as comforting,

utterly fresh and known by heart—

the old game in a young season.

Circling the batters, the writer

approaches the cage from the rear,

takes up his own stance (one foot

automatically finds the bottom railing

of the cage, like that of a toper

easing up to the bar), adjusts his

own hat, and tests the tension of the

knotted netting in from of him,

making sure he won’t catch a foul in

the face.

The batting coach, an old acquaintance,

puts out a beefy paw in welcome, but

his eyes go quickly back to the batter. A

couple of the players offer recognizing

smiles or head-bobs, but their attention

is elsewhere; this is business. Then

there’s a shock: a traded-for star, a

towering, famous figure, stands over

there among the rookies and the

regulars, looking all wrong in his

strange new uniform—and then, in the

same instant, looking young and

dangerous in this born-again role. Ask

D., the writer reminds himself in a

mental note. How does it feel, etc.?

Work, of a sort, has begun.

Roger Angell, “A Heart for the Game,”

The New Yorker May 2 1988

HoF 2014

Troy: Why do we inflict this on

ourselves?

Ben: Why? I'll tell you why, 'cause the

Red Sox never let you down.

Troy: Huh?

Ben: That's right. I mean - why?

Because they haven't won a World

Series in a century or so? So what?

They're here. Every April, they're

here. At 1:05 or at 7:05, there is a

game. And if it gets rained out, guess

what? They make it up to you. Does

anyone else in your life do that? The

Red Sox don't get divorced. This is a

real family. This is the family that's

here for you.

Wednesday, October 30,

2013

Hurry Spring

A wise but frustrated old Red Sox fan once

said: baseball breaks your heart.

It is designed to break your heart. The game

begins in the spring, when everything else

begins again, and it blossoms in the summer,

filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as

soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves

you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely

on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the

memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and

then just when the days are all twilight, when

you need it most, it stops.

Then comes the long hard winter. Stories are told, the heart begins to heal, and eventually to hope. For the briefest while, it's only a game.

Bart Giamatti needed to believe

something lasts forever. I just

need to believe Spring Training

will come again. The

countdown begins. Up again,

old heart.*

*Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart!—it seems

to say,—there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the

world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical

power.Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not God, but life, more life,

a larger, richer, more

satisfying life, is, in the last

analysis, the end of

religion. The love of life, at

any and every level of

development, is the

religious impulse." WJ,

VRE

Religion, therefore, shall mean for us the

feelings, acts, and experiences of individual

men in their solitude, so far as they

apprehend themselves to stand in relation to

whatever they may consider the

divine….the immediate personal

experiences will amply fill our time, and we

shall hardly consider theology or

ecclesiasticism at all.

“Although all the special

manifestations of religion

may have been absurd (I

mean its creeds and

theories), yet the life of it as

a whole is mankind’s most

important function.”

Friday, March 6, 2015

Adventure time!

Our father-daughter Spring Break/Spring Training

adventure can't happen fast enough.

Up@dawn

continuing reflections caught at daybreak

We greet the dawn snow-and-ice-bound this morning, she in sub-zero Illinois, me

surrounded by a record (for this date in Nashville) snowfall. But in our minds we're

already there, a stone's throw from the best Grapefruit League venue ever (Al Lang

Stadium) and short drives from next week's games in Clearwater (Tigers-Phil),

Tampa (Red Sox-Yanks), Bradenton (Sox-Bucs), and Dunedin (O's-Jays). So, my

topic for next month's 20th annual Baseball in Literature and Culture conference at

my school is inevitable: Spring Training and the Perennial Renewal of Life.

Speaking of Blue Jays, I hope we see one in particular before our Friday return flight. He's the most interesting pitching prospect since Sidd Finch. If it were April 1 I'd be sure the late George Plimpton wrote this:

Daniel Norris ("The Van Man") has a consistent 92-mile-an-hour fastball, a $2 million signing bonus, a deal with Nike and a growing fan club, yet he has decided the best way to prepare for the grind of a 162-game season is to live here, in the back of a 1978 Westfalia camper he purchased for $10,000. The van is his escape from the pressures of the major leagues, his way of dropping off the grid before a season in which his every movement will be measured, catalogued and analyzed.

If a baseball life requires

notoriety, the van offers

seclusion.

If pitching demands repetition and exactitude, the van promises freedom.

"It's like a yin-and-yang thing for me,"

he says. "I'm not going to change who

I am just because people think it's

weird. The only way I'm going to have

a great season is by starting out happy

and balanced and continuing to be

me. It might be unconventional, but to

feel good about life I need to have

some adventure."

(continues)

We need to have some adventure too, Older Daughter and I. We need to get out of this deep freeze and into the sunshine. Vamanos!

March

2000

Nope, the best moment was in

March 2000, in Jupiter (got the

preposition right that time): Ray

Lankford made up for Mark

McGwire's snub of my then-5 year

old daughter's request for an

autograph by walking behind the

batting cage where he'd just

cracked his Louisville Slugger...

and handing it to her. Nice guy,

Ray.

March 2015

March 7, 2010. Spring Break inevitably puts me

in mind of Spring Training, which it looks like

Older Daughter and I won’t be visiting this year

after all. Alas.

I’d been looking forward to connecting the dots:

ten years ago the whole family went to Jupiter.

Jupiter, Florida. Spring home of the St.

Louis Cardinals. Older Daughter, age 5,

was the world’s biggest Mark McGwire fan.

He was just off his second consecutive

monster season. Nobody yet suspected

anything illicit about his performance.

We ambled into the public access area

between practice fields (along with Younger

Daughter, still in stroller) and observed the

red-clad stars and aspirants taking batting

and fielding practice, jogging and stretching

in the crisp March sun, and slowly waking

to the possibilities of a new season. Next

year was almost here.

McGwire eventually joined his teammates on one of the fields, and Older Daughter patiently awaited

her opportunity to request an autograph. Finally it came. And just as quickly went. The star mumbled

something about club rules preventing him from obliging his young fans, and was suddenly gone.

That could’ve ruined her day, but

thanks to McGwire’s teaammate

Ray Lankford (a very good

centerfielder, 238 career HRs)

she instead collected the coolest

possible souvenir from Spring

Training: his bat. He spotted her

behind the screen and, when his

round of BP concluded,

unceremoniously handed it to her.

It’s in her closet now.

"Daily rituals, especially

walks, even forced

marches around the

neighborhood, can be

the knots you hold on

to when you’ve run out

of rope." Ann Lamott

“The wonder of life is often most

easily recognizable through habits

and routines.” Maria Popova

“Few lament the end of spring training. There is little

like it in the American experience, something whose

beginning is awaited impatiently and greeted

eagerly each year, yet whose demise is met with

indifference, relief, even glee. Any baseball player

or fan will tell you: as good as spring training is, it’s

easily trumped by opening day… there is an

emptiness as well, a sense that something special

has gone and will not return for some time. But it will

return.

Pitchers and catchers report in just 320 days.”

To be interested in the changing

seasons is a happier state of mind

than to be hopelessly in love with

spring.

George Santayana*

*Who also said: “There’s no cure for birth and death, save to enjoy the

interval.” Play ball!

Huggins-Stengel Field, St. Pete

March 10

Tigers 6 at Phils 0

Clearwater

Xavier Avery ph

single,

8th inning

March 12

Red Sox 10

at Yankees 6

Tampa

Arod’s 1st HR

since

September

‘13

‘78 World Series trophy

March 1

March 12

Red Sox 5 at Pirates 1

Bradenton

HRs in the 3d from Ortiz & Sandoval

March 13

O’s 2 at

BlueJays 5

Dunedin

MLB tv

O’s at

Bucs

March 15

Not the

same

Monday, March 5, 2007

Greetings from sunny Florida!

Venice, FL. It's another lovely day in

baseball paradise, at my friend's home south

of Sarasota (where I'm meeting another

friend at noon for the Reds' game at Ed

Smith Stadium). Made my way here after

yesterday's game at old McKechnie Field in

Bradenton -- Reds whupped the Bucs, but

Spring Training isn't about who wins & loses,

it's about delighting in the atmospherics, the

sun, the possibilities and the hope springing

eternal...

SkeeterTuesday, June 23, 2009. John

Updike's poem "Baseball" evokes

a moment in my life that could

come back to me tinged with mild

humiliation, or at least blushing

humility, but thankfully it just makes

me smile. Recalling the skill and

difficulty involved in the deceptively

simple-seeming act of snagging a

fly ball, Updike wrote:

...circle in the outfield

straining to get a bead

on a small black dot

a city block or more high,

a dark star that could fall

on your head like a leaden meteor.

I had not quite disgraced the player

whose glove I borrowed for the contest:

the one and only "Skeeter" Barnes, a

very good career minor leaguer who

had many cups of coffee in The Show

with Cincinnati, St. Louis, Montreal, and

Detroit. You could look it up.

But you'll have to take my word for what

Skeeter said to me as I returned his

glove to him and hustled back to my

hiding place in the grandstand. "It's not

as easy as it looks, is it?" No, sir. It's

not.

What are we really renewing, we lifelong baseball fanatics, every Spring? I think we’re renewing our capacity for

childlike wonder and, if no longer aspiration - that ship has definitely sailed - then certainly still admiration. It’s not

at all as easy as it looks, but we can recall a time when the difficulty was a taunting challenge and not yet a

smirking rebuff.

It’s why a gray-templed, bald-headed eloquent old scholar will always still address a paunchy, raunchy, barely

schooled, inarticulate former athlete at gatherings like this one with a deferential “Mr.”

And mean it.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Lakeland

Wow! Lakeland is a perfect

baseball venue. I'd never attended

a "real" game there before, just an

informal intrasquad game years

ago at which I recall Sparky

Anderson being vocally managerial.

This time I paid for admission to

Joker Marchant Stadium and opted

for a spot on the left-field "berm,"

the angled hillock just behind the

fences. It was a lovely vantage

from which to see a game (not to

mention batting practice, during

which I came oh-so-close to

snagging a HR ball more than

once).

The Tigers hosted the Braves, into

extra innings ( I confess to leaving

before the resolution of the 4-4 tie,

with concerns about Orlando

gridlock -- not unreasonable

concerns, as it happens.) Detroit

looks good this year, with the

addition of Gary Sheffield. BTW:

Lakeland offers the best selection

of non-Budweiser products of any

place I've been in the Grapefruit

League (or in the majors, come to

think of it). First time I've ever been

able to tell a Brit fan at a baseball

game where he could find some

Boddington's.

Leaving 2007 Spring Training behind, I'm in a reminiscent mood. My 1st-ever

Spring Training was the last time the Cards were reigning champs, '83. I

remember an upstart rookie outfielder named Andy van Slyke pounding a

long home run against Joacquin Andujar, the '82 Series star, in one of those

serendipitously-discovered free intrasquad games at the Cards' old St. Pete

facility.

(Andujar, who once said his favorite word in English is

"youneverknow," responded with a mock finger-wag at

van Slyke).

Pirates: McKechnie Field, Bradenton

1923… Blue Jays: Dunedin Stadium.Phillies: Bright House Field,

Clearwater… Yankees:

Steinbrenner Field, Tampa

Grapefruit League VenuesRed Sox: JetBlue Park at Fenway South,

Fort Myers 2012-. Inside it resembles

Fenway Park, complete with a Green

Monster...enni

Orioles: Ed Smith Stadium, Sarasota

2010 makeover. One of my last phone

conversations w/Mom, 2007.

Pirates: McKechnie Field, Bradenton 1923.

Tigers: Joker Marchant Stadium,

Lakeland 1966,2d-oldest ballpark in the

Grapefruit League. No team has called

one city its Spring Training home as long

as the Tigers, who began going to

Lakeland in 1934

“By the time Walter O’Malley died in 1979, Dodgertown was as it would

be for the next 20 years, a baseball theme park… Like the theme parks

up in Orlando, Dodgertown attracted visitors from across the land. They

all came in search of America as it once was and would never again be.

Except here.” Charles Fountain, Under the March Sun

Al Lang Field, St. Pete. Boston Braves 1922-1937.

New York Yankees 1925-1942, 1946-1950, 1952-1961.

St. Louis Cardinals 1938-1942, 1946-1997. New York

Mets 1962-1987.Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays, 1998-2008.

“In 1921, former mayor Al Lang helped to secure, on

behalf of the city’s park board, a 99-year lease on a piece

of land at the water’s edge at the foot of First Aveue

South. Spring training baseball would be played there for

more than 85 years.” Charles Fountain, Under the March

Sun

McGwire, Lankford, Jupiter 2000...

Ray’s bat...

‘07, return to life after weeks of

serious pulmonary illness...

Youneverknow…

‘83, my first spg training game was an intrasquad

match at the Cards’ St. Pete training facility about

5 miles from Al Lang. I sat in the bleachers directly

behind the backstop. The rookie Van Slyke went

deep on the Series star Andujar, and got a jocular

finger-wagging reprimand for it.

Another very informal St. Pete venue was used by

the Mets. I remember intrasquad games there

between the Gary Carters and the Dwight

Goodens. (Or was it the Strawberrys?)

And here's the sort of thing that can

only happen at a Spring Training

game: on entering McKechnie Field

I was greeted by a retiree renting

seat cushions, who abandoned his

spiel when he noticed my tee-shirt

from "Chocorua, New Hampshire" -

- he not only knew the place well,

he also knew of William James and

the fact that WJ had a summer

home there (the place James loved

because it had so many windows

and doors, "all opening out"). We

talked about James, Chocorua,

philosophy, etc. for several minutes

while his rental business took a

holiday. That has never happened

to me in a big league ballpark.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Delight in Bradenton, Venice

6:50 pm E.T. My last full day of Spring Training, reluctantly concluded (but happily consummated). Pirate City

remains charming and little-known (you can stand in the middle of an array of four diamonds, a few steps

behind each home plate, as b.p., infield practice, and intra-squad games are going on). Phils beat Bucs in

Bradenton, another gorgeous day-game (they announced the weather back in PA: 20 degrees, more snow

expected), Ryan Howard smashed a double off the centerfield wall. Then, another rejuvenating beach walk

(Venice Beach this time).

It'll be hard to leave in the morning, but I need to reach Jacksonville by nightfall -- unfortunately my old friend

near J'ville will be heading out of town in the a.m. But there should be just enough time to spare for a stop at

the Tigers' place in Lakeland -- and I'll try to resist the impulse to stay for the game at 1. It sure was nice --

symmetrically so -- when my Cards avenged 1968 last October (thanks to the incredible lack of throwing-to-1st

prowess on the part of the Tigers' pitching staff) and at the same time softened the blow of 2004 -- and did it

with a team that probably couldn't have bested the '68 Cards once in ten tries. Just goes to show that baseball

is indeed a funny game. As Casey Stengel said, there comes a time in everyone's life, and I've had plenty of

'em...

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Spring Training!

The first "real" spring training games of the season (there's an oxymoron for you, I guess) commence today in

Florida and Arizona. Unless the sky falls between now and Friday, I'm goin'! Spring Break begins Friday

afternoon, and I'm taking the long way to a philosophy conference in South Carolina -- via St. Pete, Bradenton, &

Sarasota. Stay tuned for dispatches from baseball heaven (apologies to "Bull Durham's" Iowa)...

Friday, March 2, 2007. I'm hittin' the road this afternoon, headed eventually to a philosophy gig in

South Carolina... but it's Spring Break, so pleasure precedes business: I'm taking the long way, via

St. Pete, Bradenton, Sarasota, Ft. Myers, Kissimmee...

It's been too long since last I heard

the crack of the bat up close. My best

Spring Training moment ever, by the

way, is not the lone foul ball I ever

caught in my bare hands while

juggling dog & beer (in March '91 at

St. Pete's Al Lang Field, when the

Cards' still played there and not on

Jupiter; it was shanked by Dale

Sveum of the Philadelphia Phillies

[lifetime .236 hitter, future former

Cubs manager], and I plucked it in

the right field grandstand where the

Bay view is rivaled only by San

Francisco's PacBell Park (or

whatever their corporate masters are

making them call it now).

Xavier Avery

● Full Name: Xavier Tyrone Avery

● Born: 1/1/1990 in Atlanta, GA

● Bats/Throws: L/L

● HT: 6'0''

● WT: 190

● Bio >

● Debut: 5/13/2012

● College: N/ATeam: Detroit Tigers

Age / DOB: (25) / 1/1/1990

Ht / Wt: 6'0' / 190

Bats / Throws: Left / Left

Contract: view contract details

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I got to thinking about Ray yesterday when I

ran into my old pal at the bookstore, there to

gather my Spring Break leisure reading, and

he reminded me of another gracious old

ballplayer named Skeeter. Thanks to people

like them, people like Mark McGwire don’t

ruin the game for people like Older Daughter

and me. Thanks to them, we’ll look forward to

Spring Training. Maybe next year.

It was an early summer Sunday, the Nashville

Sounds were hosting an afternoon game at Hershel

Greer Stadium, and I had just settled into my seat to

watch batting and infield practice before the game's

scheduled 2 pm start. (We don't do that very often

anymore, to my regret. I was still a single guy on my

own recognizance back then.) A Sounds staffer

approached with an offer any sensible person of my

general athletic competence would have declined. I

accepted. So that's why, a few minutes before 2, I

found myself in center field as another Sounds

staffer pointed an up-ended pitching machine in my

vicinity and proceeded to launch a succession of

black-dotted baseballs into the high sky above me.

A city block? Might as well have

been a city away. I did manage to

catch one of them, but all of my

attempts were successful from the

team's point of view: they elicited

loud crowd reactions. Howls of

derisive laughter. General

merriment. And in spite of it all, I

had a blast doing it. As Updike says

later in the poem, it is our birthright

as Americans to fail spectacularly.