Church of Baseball: The Sacred and the Profane (Part 1)

I had been there once before, in another lifetime, but even time could not erase the memories of that trip. It's almost cliche to call it a cathedral, but that's what it is, something sacred to our hearts and our identities as Americans, even those who don't know it, those who try to tear down sacred things, be it mentally or physically or with cliches and overkill, or those who reconstruct history so that the things we hold dear don't matter anymore.

They do. They do matter more than ever as we lose our identities in the soulless system we have constructed for our lives, one devoid of meaning, one that sneers at "sacred" and "tradition" and seeks always for new new new and buy buy buy and change for the sake of change only, our sad society of marketing and isolation.

Even the names of the streets surrounding Fenway Park are sacred. Ipswich. Landsdowne. Yawkey.

Of course we know the racist legacy of Tom Yawkey. From a Globe columnist:

That the Red Sox are so central to the city’s psyche makes it even more urgent for Boston to act now to banish this legacy of racism.

The Red Sox were the last team to integrate, this we know. Jackie Robinson and two other black players had a tryout for the Sox in 1945 but were not signed. This we also know.

But the Red Sox would not even be there were it not for Tom Yawkey. To call it Yawkey Way is not to overlook his glaring flaws. To pretend it never happened? That is to forget history, and to forget history is to repeat it.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Wait...I just can't. Just rename the damn street and let's move on. This isn't change for the sake of change or new new new. This is taking the profanity out of the sacred. The guy was an active racist at a time when our moral values as a society were changing for the better. As the Civil Rights Movement raged on, Yawkey continued to defy progress.

How about Ted Williams Way?

Fenway Park. Home of the Boston Red Sox. These are magical words to a baseball fan. This is a cathedral. This is sacred. You can roll your eyes at the use of "cathedral" or "sacred," but that just makes something wrong with you. The language of baseball is full of cliches, yes, but no other game has had more effect on our language than baseball. The cliches are cliches because media personalities are not as skilled in the art of language as they once were. Think about it. What distinguishes a Vin Scully or a Marty Brennaman from a Bob Carpenter or a Thom Brennaman is a mastery of the English language. Some creative chap came up with the terms "can of corn," "bush leaguer," and "hot corner." Have any good terms entered the baseball lexicon in the last ten years? We can't even come up with good nicknames anymore. (A-Rod, K-Rod, etc.)

Fenway Park is not a cliche.

Playing the Indians is just a coincidence

We tore our country down and put up corporate chains and strip malls and housing developments to isolate ourselves from each other. They tried to tear down this ballpark but the people said no. The people. Because when does it stop?

There's a reason populism reared its ugly head in this election cycle. People think Sanders or Trump are going to give them back what they think politicians took from them. But politicians didn't take from them. Corporations did. And the people let them. Fenway is one of the few relics left from a time when our communities and cities had an identity, before there was a Starbucks on every corner and people got excited when a Five Guys came into their neighborhood. You don't think it matters, but it does. There is a soullessness to Americans today, an emptiness, excused away by "chemical imbalances" like depression or ADHD, but these are really a result of a crisis of identity. Hence the reason people cling so desperately to tribalism and ideology and whatever is trendy and how they fall so easily for marketing and propaganda. They feel an intense need to belong to something, to identify with something, anything, to fill the hole where meaning should be.

Fenway means something to people. Ballparks and baseball mean something to people. Having something stand for so long makes it a part of a culture and gives a society identity. The Red Sox cap might as well be a City of Boston uniform. The team is as much a part of Boston as Guinness and cah pahks. Frankly, I'm jealous. Riverfront Stadium wasn't the prettiest park, but it was a part of my childhood and part of my identity. I'm also jealous of the kids who are growing up with GABp and the Banks area. What a great job they've done around the ballpark. I hope those kids don't suffer the sight of their ballpark being torn down. Maybe we'll regain some sense by the time they reach that age. Hope springs eternal.

The first World Series

The butterflies-in-stomach feeling that I get when I go to most ballparks (Nats Park, Citi Field, and Target Field are notable exceptions) was more pronounced when I went to Fenway in May. We took a tour on a Saturday morning before a game started at 4pm. We were going to the game the next day. It was fun to climb around the ballpark without any people in the stands. Here are some pics from the tour: