Living in a Pastime Paradise

It’s that sweet time of the year.

Spring has sprung, but for more than a century, this time of year has been a time when we dream of warmer days. A time when we trade in our winter mittens and the puffs of our frigid breaths in the air of cold nights for the smell of leather and the sounds of a baseball cracking off a bat in a neighborhood park.

We dream of simpler times when we don’t rush into warm buildings filled with manufactured heat to get out of the cold and for some, we welcome any respite from that hunk of plastic we glance at with more regularity than past generations used to look at their watches. In some places we spring forward, but in all places American we participate in that annual ritual that involves taking a collective sigh of relief and imagine the better days that are ahead.

When what we would call “baseball,” was first played in 1846, it was a way to pass the time in Hoboken, NJ, but later grew into a formal pastime with the formation of the National Association in 1871 just a few short years after the Civil War. The war raged from 1860 to 1865, and as a young nation, not even 100 years old, it was a time when we could put down weapons of war as well as our implements of work for the first time and just kick back and relax.

For the first time this new nation replaced the overall need to march in double-time, meet battlefield objectives or even serve a master with some personal time. Following almost constant spate of military skirmishes from our founding, Americans were allowed to settle down, create a homestead, build a family, build a nation and create the dynamic of leisure time.

So, what to do?

Competing against our tendency to fight or work wasn’t going to be easy, but as the arts blossomed, theater was more for the wealthy class, leaving the masses to turn its gaze to sport.

Wrestling is thought to be our species’ oldest athletic pursuit. One that dates back thousands of years, but this one-on-one sport only gave two people the opportunity to participate, and its draw was never like what we see today with thousands having enough time and money to watch a wide selection of sports.

These were simpler times, and an audience was still being cultivated.

In Europe, royalty and nobility could enjoy things like badminton and pretty much anything leisurely they could dream of or demand, but there was not a lot for the average person. European Football would not come until the 1880’s and we wanted something now.

In the New World, or America, this new space for leisure allowed for team sports.

Modeled on a mash up of Rounders and Cricket, Baseball would become our national pastime. It required almost 20 participants and later an audience of folks or a crowd. This ability to do nothing without a clock was a luxury and something we take for granted now but imagine how magical it must have been for those early athletes and fans.

It must have been like paradise; like an unimaginable nirvana.

Hours were carved out outdoors without having to answer to a clock, a boss, a king or worse.

It’s all right there in the 1908 Tin Pan Alley song “Take Me out to the Ball Game,” where they long to be taken out to the game and the park, buying a cheap snack to enjoy without a care of going back to reality.

Baseball’s whimsical birth and its being played at the beginning of Spring, as winter melts away, would marry to define a generations’ approach to sports and leisure and in doing so gave us the coming Boys of Summer and a run of about 100-years of being the most important sport in America, if not the world.

Flannel and woolen uniforms of war, turned into colorful uniforms of play and helmets, meant to protect against bullets and shrapnel, became colorful woolen caps only meant to shield you from the sun rays and rain drops.

The whole nation, once united and segmented into 50 states, obsessively watched the entire 162 game season, who won the pennant, who had the highest batting average, the most home runs, the best pitcher and of course who won its championship – arrogantly called – the World Series!

From the dead ball era to the Roaring 20’s, through the Great Depression and two World Wars, baseball set aside this time of year, from approximately April to October, to revel in the sweet minutia of leisure, and embraced by the masses.

Grand ball parks were constructed as the new marvels or our time – Ebbets Field, Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Crosby Field – all became houses of leisurely worship for the common American. They were a place they could go to and enjoy each other and of course the wonderful game of baseball.

For a heavily industrialized nation, carving out a little “me-time” was imperative, and no sport does leisurely better than baseball.

There is no time clock. The game stretches over nine innings that are only governed by whoever makes three outs and if tied, the old game could stretch into infinite “extra innings.” 

Oh, joy! More leisure!

I don’t care if I ever get back!

Yes, games occur almost every day, but that daily run of sport gives the context of its relevance along with our 24-hour march of time. Do you really need to count every minute of the day?

Do you really need to count how long it takes you to shower?

I guess you do when you must worry about getting to work on time and punching the clock, but not by baseball’s standards, which revolves around going to a park of all things.

You could get there at the beginning of the game, but even then, you get food and snacks and find your seat. The game and its construct almost screams for you to take it easy and slow down - you’re at the park, for goodness sake.

You can keep score and make a memory official or just enjoy the day or even a good beer at the ball game. You can crack open your peanuts and just drop them on the floor, no one cares, especially in the summertime, when the living is easy.

Only as perfect as us imperfect humans could make it, baseball had to exist through all the darkness. Days when the many people of all colors could not attend games together or even fight or play together.

However, despite the darkness of the injustices we waged against one another, everyone still wanted to play the great game, the first one, and play they did.

Baseball is persevering and an irresistible force throughout our existence. With games every day, it becomes one of those important constants that defines the warm weather months, like a sunrise.

Nothing characterized baseball’s inevitability more than the rise and run of the Negro Leagues. It’s easy to overlook the importance of leisure and sport is to a people who are defined as workers and who, due to the cruel fate of history, were allowed to do little else when that first ball game is played in the 1840’s.

From the very beginning our country has forced African-Americans to toil, often as slaves and later as sharecroppers since they were first brought to colonies to work. Oppressed and with little free time even the nation’s most oppressed group found it important to carve out time to play ball.

Black players played baseball for various pro, semi-pro, amateur and college clubs all across the country, dating all the way back to Moses Fleetwood Walker in 1884, who played with a mixed race team in the defunct American League Association’s Toledo Blue Stockings.

The Negro Leagues were formed in or around 1920 as an answer to Major League Baseball, which was segregated and exclusive to white players. Although Black players and white players had a tradition of barnstorming together, MLB’s first league Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis ended the decades old practice. He also joined major league teams with their minor league operations, which limited who minor league franchises could play and finally ignored a petition from Black sports writers who called for integration.

By leaving the professional league segregated, Landis allowed owners to uphold their old agreement that continued to keep the racially segregated.

The established Negro League flourished in cities like Kansas City, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Newark, Detroit, Birmingham and Paterson, bringing the game to audiences thirsty for a good times and chance to play America’s Pastime.

Only six such historic, extent stadiums still exist from the Negro League era, with at least three being restored to host professional ballgames Rickwood Field, in Birmingham, Ala., and Hinchcliffe Stadium in Paterson, NJ. Opened in 1932, Hinchcliffe was the home of the New York Black Yankees, New York Cubans and Newark Eagles during the Negro League era. It has most recently served as the home of the New Jersey Jackals of the MLB-partner Frontier League. 

Sited in the middle of the Great Falls national park, this scenic relic stands as a restored portal to the past, as well as a monument to the pastime. There are few places that can transport you to a different place, in your escape from the day-to-day grind.

Recent changes to the game, ushered in after the Covid-19 pandemic have sought to speed up the game and cut down on its sweet embrace of nothingness.

The pitch Clock, free runners, rules against using too many relief pitchers, instant replay and automated umpires, all have been implemented to increase interest, but for me it’s anti-thetical.

Can you believe we have instant replay … in baseball???

There’s even a popular podcast – named “Baseball is Dead!”

Yep. I saw it while watching the Major League Baseball Channel on my satellite dish.

Boulder dash!

Despite these obstacles to unmitigated leisure and an endless day at the ballpark, I think we would gain more from a relaxed day in the bleachers and learn more about ourselves from a box of peanuts and crack jack.