As baseball’s best teams play for this year’s World Series championship, I thought that it was timely to compare America’s pastime with America’s culture.
The James Earl Jones “People will Come” speech in the movie “Field of Dreams” introduces a lesson for us. When played right, which means with respect for the game, baseball is a metaphor for the American character.
“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again. Oh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.”
Ryne Sandberg, the Phillies and Cubs infielder, emphasized what I consider to be the American metaphor when he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005. I use excerpts from his speech here because they remind me of how I was raised. They describe some of the American ideals that we have lost. They represent the ethics that we need to claw back.
“The reason I am here, they tell me, is that I played the game a certain way, that I played the game the way it was supposed to be played. I don’t know about that, but I do know this: I had too much respect for the game to play it any other way. And if there is a single reason I am here today, it is because of one word: ‘Respect.’”
If you played the game the right way, played the game for the team, good things would happen. That’s what I loved most about the game, how a ground out to second with a man on second and nobody out was a great thing.
I was taught you never, ever disrespect your opponent or your teammates or your organization or your manager and never, ever your uniform. Make a great play — act like you’ve done it before. Get a big hit — look for the third base coach and get ready to run the bases. Hit a home run — put your head down, drop the bat, run around the bases, because the name on the front is more — a lot more important than the name on the back.
Harry Carey… used to say how nice it is that a guy who can hit 40 homers or steal 50 bases or drive in 100 runs is the best bunter on the team. Nice? That was my job. When did it become okay for someone to hit home runs and forget how to play the rest of the game?
These guys sitting up here (previously inducted Hall of Fame players) did not pave the way for the rest of us so that players could swing for the fences every time up and forget how to move a runner over to third. It’s disrespectful to them, to you, and to the game of baseball that we all played growing up.
Respect for the game of baseball. When we all played it, it was mandatory. It’s something I hope we will one day see again.”
I hope that we will one day see universal respect for American ideals, too. Let’s choke up on the bat and put the ball in play. Good things will happen.
— Chuck Wieland,
Madera