By Eric E. Clingan
Arizona Daily Wildcat
March 4, 1998

Baseball and America

Minutes after the first holler to, "Play ball!" will come the echo, "Kill the ump!" and the spirit of America will be renewed once again.

Baseball, the national pastime, conjures up within even the slightest fan a sense of community, newness and appreciation for the way of life here in the home of the brave. If American societies develop around commonalties and shared values, the baseball field has been its backyard, complete with the requisite fence. Surely, Little League has unarguably united more neighborhoods than any ice rink or basketball court could ever be witness to. Innumerable families will light up their barbecues for this summer's series of meetings at the local park. Once there, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters will all cheer themselves and each other.

For now it is spring and so, outside the friendly confines of any field of play, children dash about their homes in search of last year's well-worn leather glove which more than likely will be found resting gently in some shining corner upon the leaning heel of an upright bat.

Fathers and sons are about to train. They will assume the roles of mentor and friend, teacher and pupil. The luckiest of boys will be taught the control and delicacy with which only the purest of curveballs can be thrown; the luckiest of dads will be on the receiving end of such a gift. In a child's wild eyes from perhaps forty feet away, his every pitch will seem to be perfect. Still, as his child's first coach and (most importantly) his biggest fan, a father must keep his budding project steady, encouraged by, yet fully aware of impending errors. This is the essence of catcher and pitcher, umpire and hitter, father and son.

Eventually, kids get distracted from such pursuits and soon the maturation process becomes like one unending spring, giving birth to new ideas, beliefs, goals and values within the hearts of growing children who are stretching their limbs while stretching their limits. It is during this disquieting season where more fathers than sons seek out the mitts and bats only to be disappointed upon their gleeful rediscovery with a dispatching phrase: "Not right now, Dad. I'm busy/hanging out with the guys/going out with a girl." We've all filled in that blank, leaving Dad with the unintended feeling which accompanies any starting pitcher's demotion to the bullpen.

In America, some boys become men and some leave their gloves and bats behind with their father's car, all in significantly worse shape than how they found them. Others, however, struggle honorably with a breaking curve well into careers that span decades.

Whether we cheer or jeer or boo the ump or the strikeout king, both desperately walk the thinnest of lines drawn between chaos and control. It is as disarming as a pop fly to remember that these men are merely doing a job not altogether different from our own daily grind. Those differences, however, are not too slight. Imagine doing your job with 50,000 screaming people dissecting your every decision. Now, imagine that fully one-quarter of those people want to be just like you when they grow up.

For a more relaxing thought, imagine your head in a vice. This perspective makes our daily grinds look more like a base on balls. Baseball can only begin to remind us we are all human. The rest is up to humanity.

Other sports in this country have recently bowed to nonsensical political experiments such as pro basketball substituting gender-based affirmative action in place of good judgment as the ultimate arbiter in the selection of its referees. Even worse, was the gender-dictated decision last week at the University of Connecticut to literally give away a women's college basketball record to an lame athlete. Meanwhile, the pro golfer's tour is hamstrung by a judge's ruling that could one day allow those in wheelchairs to challenge par as discriminatory under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Baseball, though, holds traditional American values closer to its heart than these other sports which seem to be saying that rules are something to be compromised based on political pressure and public opinion polls.

Baseball and America will live forever with dignity and pride well in tact as its heart and soul while other sports and nations are desperately in need of a transfusion of the same.

Eric E. Clingan is a senior majoring in political science. His column appears every Wednesday