Baseball Links
Baseball in Literature
In the novel Shoeless Joe, W.P. Kinsella writes of baseball's effect on people:
"They'll walk out to the bleacher and sit in shirtsleeves in theperfect evening, or they'll find they have reserved seats
somewhere in the grandstand or along one of the baselines -
wherever they sat when they were children and cheered their
heroes, in whatever park it was, whatever leaf-shaded town in
Maine, or Ohio, or California. They'll watch the game, and it will
be as if they have knelt in front of a faith healer or dipped
themselves in the magic waters where a saint once rose like a
serpent and cast benedictions to the wind like peach petals... "I don't have to tell you that the one constant through all the years
has been baseball. America has been erased like a blackboard,
only to be rebuilt and then erased again. But baseball has
marked the time with America has rolled by like a procession of
steamrollers. It is the same game that Moonlight Graham played
in 1905. It is a living part of history... It continually reminds us of
what once was..."
In the screen adaptation of Kinsella's book, Field of Dreams, Phil Alden Robinson takes the concept on step further:
"It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again.Oh people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come."
Baseball. Constant and timeless. What is it about baseball that lends itself to myth and legend? Why do so many of us identify with these heroes - fictional and real? There is something magical about it.
Its universal themes permeate literature and popular culture. In good times it is our national pastime. In bad times it is our national distraction. A reminder that no matter how bad things get, no matter how much things change, there is hope. There is always baseball.