A Reminder of Our Past and of All That’s Good and That Can Be Good Again

They strode out of a corn field in the heartland of America on a warm August night. The New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox players were about to play a baseball game just a fly ball away from the movie set where “Field of Dreams” was shot 30 years earlier in Dyersville, Iowa.

Throughout the game, in which the first place White Sox prevailed, clips from the movie were interspersed. Who can forget the voice of James Earl Jones proclaiming, “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.”

I still have a front page from the Herald Tribune dating back more than 75 years. The headlines sound the alarm, “Hitler advances across Europe.” Yet, despite the dire news, the same front page contained the scores from the previous day’s World Series game. “The one constant…,” indeed.

Today we live in equally challenging times, faced with new existential threats and polarized by politics and ideology, so much so that we debate the wisdom of lifesaving vaccines, even as people lie dying in hospitals from COVID-19, and the need to bring global warming to a halt before it’s too late.

“This game,” Jones reminds us in the movie, “this field is a reminder of our past and of all that’s good and that can be good again.” If only we could collectively remember, regardless of our differences, “…all that’s good and that can be good again.”

It would be an oversimplification to suggest the answer to the current social malaise that ails us is baseball. And yet of all the major sports, baseball requires something we seem to be sorely lacking in the digital age: p-a-t-i-e-n-c-e. Swing the bat too soon and you’re way out in front of the pitch. Swing too late and the result isn’t any better.

As a kid I used to wait for my father to get home from work. I’d waylay him before he could set foot in the house, baseball gloves and ball in hand. After a long day, he’d take one of the gloves and we’d have a catch, neither of us speaking because the sound and feel of the ball as it smacked into the leather glove transcended a need to talk.

There is something important that is shared in the simple act of having a catch or in kicking a soccer ball, tossing a football or hitting tennis balls. Baseball may not be “the one constant,” but it’s what baseball represents.

There are certain connectors, often the simplest of things, that help potentiate our humanness. Without them, we sometimes lose our way and close the door to basic truths about who we are and what matters most.

Baseball isn’t the only constant and there are many paths. If only we’re patient and take the time to remember “…all that’s good and that can be good again.”