It’s Opening Day for Major League Baseball, one of my favorite days of the year. Baseball fans around the country, no matter their favorite team—from the lowly Athletics to the mighty Dodgers—today are optimistic about their team’s chances. In spite of football’s greater popularity these days, baseball remains America’s pastime, and more importantly, baseball is the sport that best teaches the lessons of life. I’d even go so far as to say it is a quintessentially Catholic sport.
The beauty and uniqueness of baseball has been recognized by many writers over the years. Why is baseball the most poetic of all sports? There’s something of the infinite in baseball that speaks to our own final destination. Unlike most sports, baseball has no game clock (yes, baseball now has a pitch clock, but that simply moves the game along and does not determine when a game ends.) Even down by 10 runs in the bottom of the ninth, your team still has a chance, albeit small, of winning—the opposing team can’t simply run out the clock.
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That lack of a game clock is seen as a negative in today’s attention-deficit culture. We’re used to scrolling through 30-second sports highlights on our smartphones—not sitting through a leisurely 3-4 hour game. Yet baseball reminds us of our true ultimate destination, our ultimate goal. We are made to rest in peaceful bliss for all eternity, and for the baseball fan, being at the ballpark on a Sunday afternoon can seem like a little slice of heaven.
Baseball also has, in a certain sense, an infinite field. Yes, ballfields have fences to designate home runs, but one of the great joys in baseball is watching a powerful hitter blast a ball far over that fence, seemingly into eternity. When and where will it land? The only limit is physics. Those seconds when we’re waiting for the ball to land in the stands are a momentary blissful pause in the hecticness of life.
When I was young, most youth baseball fields did not have fences, which made the unlimited nature of a field more apparent. One year my older brother was playing right field in a game against Ken Griffey, Jr. The future hall-of-famer came up to bat and launched one far over my brother’s head. Since there was no fence, he had to spin around and chase the ball down. By the time he finally picked up the ball and turned to throw it in, Griffey had already circled the bases and stood celebrating at home plate with his teammates. My brother was fully aware at that moment of the infinite nature of baseball fields.
My son and several of my daughters also played youth baseball and softball. While youth sports have gotten out of control today, we were fortunate to be in leagues that were respectful of family life (no games on Sundays, for example). As a parent, I found that playing baseball was a school of virtue for my children.
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One of the sport’s most distinct features is the frequency of failure: even the best hitters in the world fail to record a hit almost 7 out of every 10 times at the plate. Especially in our era of helicopter parents and snowflake children, teaching kids how to fail is one of life’s most important lessons. Whenever we fail, we must learn to get back up, whether that’s after striking out with the bases loaded or after succumbing to a persistent sin. The failure rate of baseball teaches young people persistence and, most importantly, humility—two virtues essential for the spiritual life.
Even among families that participate in youth sports, many are wary of professional sports, and there’s good reason to be. While sports are healthy endeavors, our culture’s overemphasis on them is decidedly unhealthy—our sports stars quickly become idols. Making matters worse, many sports leagues have gone woke in recent years. Gambling has become more and more entwined with professional sports leagues. And of course many players aren’t exactly Catholic role models.
