America’s pastime holds tradition in high esteem and that sentiment even extends to poetry about the game. This tradition exalts such pieces as Franklin P. Adams’ famous tribute to the Cubs’ double play combination, “Tinker to Evers to Chance/A trio of bear cubs fleeter then birds,” Ogden Nash’s “Line-Up For Yesterday,” with its list of formidable (and alphabetical) dead-ball era greats, and probably the single most well-known baseball poem, Ernest Thayer’s rib-tickling 1888 ballad entitled, “Casey at the Bat.”
Sports in general have been accused of being simple diversions for the dreariness of existence. This assumption envisions a poor slub miserable in a 9 to 5, who escapes the monotony of bosses and bad coffee with the physical grace of a double play executed across the country and broadcast on an old TV. Due to baseball’s prestigious history, this die-hard fan looking to forget is hollering in his living room to the boys of summer.
Jung is speaking about how to master a life, but this wisdom applies equally well toward the cultivation of any skill or technique (like hitting, for example).
This deceptively simple proverb comes from the Zen tradition and upon first reading it appears to be a quote about resilience. It does speak to the importance of persevering in light of the various “falls” and failures dished out by life.
Time for another installment of our History of the Game series: In 1744, the word “Base-Ball” first appeared in print! For those unaccustomed to Early Modern English spellings (the “ſ” above is an archaic form of the lower case letter “s”), here’s the verse modernized…
Batting the Ball (or “seker-hemat”) was an Egyptian bat-and-ball game, played by the Egyptian pharaohs (with their priests as catchers)! Significantly, this game had certain physical and thematic similarities to modern American baseball, and in certain ways, might be understood as an ancient precursor to baseball and softball—as Peter A. Piccione, Ph.D. also notes the possibility of professional female ball players in Egypt.
