Is Baseball A Religion?

As October nears, George Will answers the question this way:

Part of the beauty of baseball, and sport generally, is that it doesn’t mean a damn thing. It’s valued for itself. Now, it can be the pursuit of excellence. It is competition tamed and made civil by rules. It is aggression channeled in a wholesome direction. These are all virtues. They tiptoe up to the point and stop well short of giving baseball meaning. It’s a game. It’s a very pretty, demanding, and dangerous game.

I do think that baseball satisfies a longing in people, particularly urban people. There is a vestigial tribal impulse in all of us. For instance, when you get on the L and the cars begin to fill up with people wearing their Cub blue and you’re all going to the same place for the same reason, for about three hours a little community exists. It disperses after three hours, but it will come back tomorrow.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan talked about what he called the “liberal expectancy.” He said that with the coming of modernity the two drivers of history, religion and ethnicity, would lose their saliency. Sport caters to this and entertains this desire for group identification. But there’s nothing transcendent about baseball.

Update from a reader:

George Freaking Will and baseball? Seriously? Any post about Will and baseball should be accompanied by this SNL skit.

(Photo from 2012 Giants-Padres game by Joel Henner)