Weekday Wonderings: Baseball and Religion
A few years ago one of my colleagues told me about the sermon she was preaching on baseball. As a devoted Blue Jays fan, she brought insight to her discussion of the connection between the two. My own childhood experiences of baseball (attending long and seemingly incomprehensible Jays games, and being a last pick in gym class, with good reason) means that baseball is not my personal sport of choice.
However, baseball might be the most written about sport in its connection to religion – from comparing themes and values in baseball to the Christian faith to describing baseball as a religion in its own right, there are both superficial and complex analyses of their links. If you’re interested in the topic, you might already know that there are multiple books written about this – Crossing Home: The Spiritual Lessons of Baseball by James Penrice (1993), And God Said, “Play Ball!”: Amusing and Thought-Provoking Parallels Between the Bible and Baseball by Gary Graf (2005) and most recently Baseball As a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game by John Sexton (2014). You can also buy books of baseball devotions, such as Steal Away: Devotions for Baseball Fans by Hugh Poland (2006), and Playing with Purpose: Baseball Devotions by Paul Kent (2015). I can’t tell you whether any of these books are worth reading, but the number of books alone suggests anything I might write only scratches the surface. I will leave you with a few insights though:
Janet Hagberg takes a personal perspective, writing, “So what do I consider spiritual about baseball? First, the goal of the whole game is different from most other sports where there is a net, a hole or a hoop to put the ball in or through. In baseball the object is to hit the ball, but the goal is for the batter to come home, to get back to home plate. Somehow helping your teammates get back home holds more meaning for me, maybe because of my own longing to find my true home in my work, my faith and my relationships.”
John Sexton considers the meditative aspect of the game, suggesting, “If given sensitive attention, baseball can awaken us to a contemplative dimension of life that is often missing in our increasingly peripatetic existence. We can learn, through baseball, to experience life more deeply. When we embrace its ineffable joys, baseball can be a guide to viewing religion and the spiritual life differently, to living differently, to being in the world in a different way and seeing more in it.”
As I was looking at the writings on baseball and religion, I was thinking about the way baseball is claimed as a part of American culture and identity. Many people enjoy baseball in Canada – and I often enjoy seeing a game in progress at the diamond in Trace Manes Park while waiting for a bus home during the week – but baseball is often identified as The American Pastime. Do we view baseball differently in Canada? If so, why is that the case? If not, would we draw the same connections between religion and baseball that are drawn in these American writings? What happens when a sport that is closely identified with national identity becomes elevated to a religious status?
We’ll get to explore these ideas about sports and spirituality further in my next weekday wonderings (looking ahead to the winter with hockey), but for now I’ll leave you with one of 10 ways that rethinkchurch.org suggests baseball is like church:
At some point, we all get to stand and sing.
Rev. Emily Gordon
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