Written by Mark N. McCann:
Baseball isn’t a financial institution created to fleece the rubes, separating them from their hard-earned compensation.
Baseball was once a game. A game played by small-town men on humid summer afternoons after a full day spent in the fields guiding tons of animal flesh along corridors of cultivated products destined for others–their bellies, their backs, or their mills–and those who labored in airless factories re-framing those same cultivated products into new treasures distinctly unlike the original. Men who saw this game as a distraction from the hard nature of their lives and the drudgery required to provide their loved ones with their necessities.
Baseball, for these men, was a chance to stand apart from their contemporaries, a place to display some God-given talent, or over-arching desire… a talent, a desire that set an individual apart from the rest. A chance to shine above the others. A chance to share, with others of similar abilities, a joy in that peculiar ability, born to few men but desired by many. A chance to revel in some grace in a graceless world.
“I can do that… better than you can. Lend us a couple of hours in that pursuit, and share a word between us after the act. To compare our talents, skills, and the luck of competition. Something without death, conquest, or the loss of friendship. A game. Baseball.”