The Harvard Salient -- 12 March 2007

The Harvard Salient
20 April 2007

Baseball: America’s Conservative Pastime

By Christopher B. Lacaria, Publisher

Since the time of Edmund Burke, conservatives have decried the abstract and utopian visions of liberal schemers. The rationalistic delusions of Enlightenment philosophes, the collectivist fantasies of socialists, as well as the world-government illusions of today’s cosmopolitan elite have all exalted an unhistorical and unrealistic image of man’s nature in attempts to subvert traditional institutions and values. Conservatives, in opposing them, have always had recourse to the strength of custom, the political and social wisdom inherent in daily life and experience.

Often, though, one has heard it said, in reference to post-war American conservatism, that this country can hardly, if at all, claim a truly conservative intellectual tradition. Even in her colonial infancy, the United States had neither a landed and privileged nobility nor a politically-influential episcopate to nurse reactionary sentiment. Nor had she ever been exposed to the threat of radical revolution, from communists or other dissidents, as menaced Europe during the last two centuries, to unify resistance to the encroaching Left. The Founders themselves, although often favorably invoked by self-described conservatives, ordained our government as a conscious repudiation of the status quo while vindicating an abstract conception of natural “rights.”

Yet there still remains a profoundly conservative tradition deeply rooted in American culture, one more powerful than the passing fads and fancies of electoral politics. Indeed, nowhere does the conservative reaction to these modern heresies find fuller and more elegant expression than in America’s national pastime, the great sport of baseball.

Baseball is perhaps America’s oldest and proudest tradition. The supposed political traditions of America—equality of opportunity and economic liberty—have undergone such frequent and often radical reinterpretation that they are little more than slogans for sound-bite campaigns. Baseball, however, has remained essentially the same over its century-long professional existence, and exemplifies many of the virtues valued highly by conservatives.

For one, baseball is an organic institution, intricately interwoven into the fabric of American social life. Among a child’s first milestones, sandwiched typically in between learning to walk and learning to ride a bicycle, is playing his first game of catch. With the cap of his local professional club pulled over his brow, and an oversized, not-yet-broken-in mitt hanging from his hand, the eager preschooler attempting to toss a ball to his patient father standing ten feet opposite him in their backyard or neighborhood park is perhaps the closest modern American version of the bucolic idylls imagined by Hesiod.

As the child grows and graduates from backyard games of catch to tee-ball to Little League, he acquires a loyalty for his favorite team, learns the names of the great players past and present, and little by little comes to understand the complex mass of the sport’s rules and rituals—for the regulations of baseball are far too unwieldy, complicated, and irrational to be gleaned all at once. Eventually, the baseball player attains the level of intimacy with the sport where it has become almost second nature. In no other sport, perhaps, does the importance of instinct rank so high: whether it be that of a batter, pitcher, or fielder.

The contract between the living, dead, and those yet to be born, which as Burke observed holds society together, finds easy expression in the peculiarly American sport of baseball. Baseball is something that every self-respecting, red-blooded American male has played, something his father, and his father before him has played—and in all likelihood will be something that his sons and grandsons will play one day as well.

Baseball, unlike some more popular and glamorized professional sports, does not fall victim to the absurd rationalizations and simplifications that Burke warned against in politics, those schemes which attempt vainly to remove the mystery and complexity—and thus the beauty and richness—from life.

“The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity,” commented Burke, “and, therefore, no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man’s nature or to the quality of his affairs.” Baseball follows this advice dutifully. There are no time limits to the games, nothing crude like the sound of buzzers to give a false impression of beginnings and ends in what is a natural whole. The individual game is subdivided into nine innings, each subsequently subdivided into a top and a bottom with three outs each—and an infinite store of extra innings are available in the event of a tied score. No trace of the symmetry, finiteness, or metric proportions that so engrossed the minds of French revolutionaries can be detected in the sport. Baseball is not the product of rational simplicity, but rather a sublime expression of the cultural diversity, nuance, and depth that truly obtains in a society.

Finally, baseball encourages a sense of local pride and fealty that is often obscured in today’s age of centralization and globalization. Sports like basketball and football have been subsumed into the national entertainment culture, and subsequently erased the contours of teams’ local fan bases in return for a national following. For example, the National Football League’s broadcasting contract sometimes determines that a team’s game will not be televised in its own region. Baseball however does not chafe under such centrally-directed authority. Even some of the least successful teams still command unwavering loyalty from their fans. The Chicago Cubs, who have not won a championship since 1908, can depend on the allegiance of Chicagoans regardless of their national clout or recent success.

When conservatives reflect on America and reasons for her greatness, they should not be misled by an ideological patriotism. America may, in some respects and at some points in history, be the land of opportunity, of freedom, of liberty, or of whatever abstract concept of the good you prefer to name. But more importantly, America reposes fondly in the conservative imagination because of her veneration of the “permanent things.” Enduring traditions, which give our lives meaning and renders existence intelligible and enjoyable, things such as apple pie, family holidays, and Walt Disney movies (the earlier ones, at least) rightfully possess a strong claim to the American conservative’s loyalty and affection. Baseball, too, is one of those enduring traditions, one of those permanent things: it is America’s favorite pastime, and, for manifest reasons, should be conservatives’ as well.