{"id":35597,"date":"2020-06-12T14:00:29","date_gmt":"2020-06-12T13:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cupblog.bluefusesystems.com\/?p=35597"},"modified":"2020-06-12T13:33:02","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T12:33:02","slug":"the-lonely-game-baseball-kierkegaard-and-the-spiritual-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2020\/06\/12\/the-lonely-game-baseball-kierkegaard-and-the-spiritual-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cLonely Game\u201d: Baseball, Kierkegaard, and the Spiritual Life"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Until 15th July read Christopher B. Barnett’s full article “The \u201cLonely Game\u201d: Baseball, Kierkegaard, and the Spiritual Life”<\/a>\u00a0from Horizons<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0Volume 47, Issue 1<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In August 2010, David Bentley Hart published a short essay entitled \u201cThe Perfect Game: The Metaphysical Meaning of Baseball.\u201d[1] Known for weighty tomes such as The Beauty of the Infinite<\/em> (2003) and Atheist Delusions<\/em> (2010), Hart seemed an unlikely candidate to analyze a sport often referred to as a \u201cpastime.\u201d What is most memorable about the essay is Hart\u2019s claim that baseball is \u201cthe very Platonic ideal of organized sport,\u201d indeed, that it is \u201c\u2018the moving image of eternity\u2019 in athleticis<\/em>.\u201d Hart claimed that baseball would one day be remembered as America\u2019s greatest contribution to human civilization\u2014an \u201cinvention\u201d and, indeed, a \u201cdiscovery\u201d of the \u201ctraces of eternity\u2019s radiance in fugitive splendors\u201d on Earth.<\/p>\n

Hart argues that, insofar as sports such as American football and soccer feature \u201climited and martial tactics\u201d to conquer territory, they \u201cappeal more to the beast within us than to the angel.\u201d In contrast, baseball unites possibility with necessity in surprising ways, taking a meticulously conceived field of grass plus a collection of physical and mental aptitudes and subjecting them to countless probabilities. The upshot is gut-wrenching theater: baseball is not war but \u201cAttic tragedy.\u201d Because the game is divided into innings rather than discrete units of time, it unfolds as a metaphor of the human condition. Thrown into a world of ceaseless flux (Hart cites the Latin proverb omnia mutantur et nos mutamur in illis<\/em>), human beings nevertheless strive in and before the eternal.<\/p>\n

This essay would like to take Hart\u2019s reflections on baseball a step further. It aims to expand upon his analysis, showing that baseball\u2019s time-honored emphases on physical and spiritual discipline follow from its metaphysical imaginary. Moreover, it will show that, in both cases, Christian life and thought are capable of illuminating baseball\u2014and vice versa.<\/p>\n

The argument will proceed as follows: First, both Christianity and baseball frame their worlds in terms of emanation (exitus<\/em>) and return (reditus<\/em>): \u201cplayers\u201d leave home and aim to return home;[2] second, though players belong to a team (ecclesia<\/em>), the task of returning home is ultimately a solitary one; it has to be done by<\/em> the individual player, even if the team, too, benefits from the individual\u2019s undertaking; and third, the spiritual or attitudinal development of the individual is thus crucial: players have to attend to how they approach the game, particularly in terms of their internal comportment. This last point will receive special attention: it will be reasoned that S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard\u2019s spiritual writings, tendered for the existential \u201cupbuilding\u201d (Opbyggelse<\/em>) of \u201cthe single individual\u201d (den Enkelte<\/em>), might likewise offer upbuilding insights for the individuals who play baseball\u2014a sport that John Updike once called \u201can essentially lonely game.\u201d[3]<\/p>\n

———————————————<\/p>\n

[1] This piece was later included in a collection of Hart\u2019s occasional writings: David Bentley Hart, A Splendid Wickedness and Other Essays<\/em> (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), 44\u201351. It is worth adding that \u201cThe Perfect Game\u201d is not Hart\u2019s only foray into baseball writing; also see his recent satirical editorial: \u201cThe New Yankees Are a Moral Abomination,\u201d New York Times<\/em>, July 14, 2018, https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/07\/14\/opinion\/new-york-yankees-evil.html.<\/p>\n

[2] Here it is worth noting that this essay will focus almost exclusively on hitting, rather than on other facets of the game (e.g., pitching, fielding, baserunning, etc.). Perhaps this choice betrays an affinity for the modern version of the game, which, since the time of Babe Ruth, has tended to favor offense and, indeed, home runs. Nevertheless, the primary reason for concentrating on hitting is pragmatic: it would take a much longer work to explore how each aspect of baseball might be understood in theological terms. Secondarily, and as will be seen, it also happens that the role of the hitter best corresponds to the exitus-reditus<\/em> framework explored in this piece, though pitchers, too, might benefit from Kierkegaard\u2019s spiritual insights. After all, pitching requires what H. A. Dorfman calls \u201cgathering,\u201d the process by which one takes \u201ccharge of oneself and one\u2019s circumstance\u201d (H. A. Dorfman, The Mental ABC\u2019s of Pitching: A Handbook for Performance Enhancement<\/em> [Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016], 119).
\nJohn Updike, Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu<\/em> (New York: The Library of America, 2010), 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until 15th July read Christopher B. Barnett’s full article “The \u201cLonely Game\u201d: Baseball, Kierkegaard, and the Spiritual Life”\u00a0from Horizons,\u00a0Volume 47, Issue 1 In August 2010, David Bentley Hart published a short essay entitled \u201cThe Perfect Game: The Metaphysical Meaning of Baseball.\u201d[1] Known for weighty tomes such as The Beauty of the Infinite (2003) and Atheist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":823,"featured_media":35603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[372],"tags":[2495],"coauthors":[7511],"class_list":["post-35597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-religious-studies-humanities","tag-horizons"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/823"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61644,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35597\/revisions\/61644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35597"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=35597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}