On baseball,
America, and the Civil War.
Far more
knowledgeable baseball historians than I have long debated
the sport’s origins, and specifically the role that famous “inventor”
Abner Doubleday did or did not play in creating our national pasttime (or
even whether said national pasttime was in fact invented
in a different nation, one from which we had recently declared independence
no less!). It’s an interesting debate, one that touches on not only 19th
century history, the development of mythological narratives in communities and
nations, and how culture moves and changes across international borders, but
also on the ongoing role that sports plays in our collective consciousness and
imaginations. But to my mind, it’s also deeply meaningful that the invention of
baseball has long been tied to Doubleday, a man otherwise most famous as a
decorated Union officer during the Civil War.
Doubleday’s
supposed and contested invention of the sport took place well before the war, in Cooperstown (NY) in 1839. But
I would argue that many of our collective narratives of baseball’s earliest days
are closely tied to the Civil War, to images of soldiers playing sandlot games
during the downtime between battles and campaigns. In part remembering the war
in that way offers a peaceful alternative to the war’s most dominant images, a
way to imagine and contemplate Civil War soldiers that doesn’t focus solely on
the conflict and violence and loss that so defined the war years. But on the
other hand, the images of Civil War baseball games could be read as a direct
(if of course bloodless) complement to the war’s battles—in which, similarly, “teams”
that might well have been friendly or even related off of the diamond became
bitter adversaries once they stepped onto that field, one from which only one
side could emerge victorious (there are no ties in
baseball, as the saying famously goes).
Both sides to
baseball and the Civil War are captured in the best historical novel about that
subject (and one of the best baseball novels period), Thomas Dyja’s Play for a Kingdom (1998). Dyja’s novel
imagines a chance 1864 encounter between Union and Confederate soldiers engaged
in the bloody battle of Spotsylvania, an encounter that turns into a series of
baseball games contested alongside (and, gradually, intertwined with) the
battle itself. Dyja nicely illustrates how the games serve not only as a
distraction from the battle, but also and just as crucially as a parallel to
it, one in which shifting relationships and allegiances, as well as the soldier’s
individual personalities and perspectives, cannot ultimately lessen the harder
and more absolute truths of war. Whatever its other starting points, baseball—like
America—was created anew during the Civil War, and Dyja’s novel helps us
contemplate those complex and vital points of origin.
Next baseball
story tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other baseball stories you’d highlight?
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