One of my life’s great blessings has been to have known and worked with men and women whose books I first studied in college and graduate school. High on that roster of intellectual-mentors-become-friends-and-colleagues stands the late Peter L. Berger, the distinguished sociologist of religion who brought the humanities (including philosophy and theology) into his work as a social scientist, thereby enlivening and illuminating the number-crunching typical of his fellow sociologists. (Andrew Greeley once snarked that “the only numbers in Berger’s books are at the bottom of the page.” More power to Berger, say I.)
One of Peter’s best books, and his smallest, is very much worth reading 55 years after it was written. Its winsome title, A Rumor of Angels, was then explicated in a more stolidly academic subtitle (Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural), which locates the book in recent cultural history.
A few years before Rumor’s publication, the April 8, 1966, issue of Time magazine shocked middle-class America with its stark black cover, on which was emblazoned a blunt question in large red letters: Is God Dead? The mid-1960s were the heyday of “secular theology,” which, to simplify greatly, tried to have Christianity without the supernatural: a school of thought popularized by Harvey Cox in The Secular City: A Celebration of Its Liberties and an Invitation to Its Disciplines. As things turned out, of course, the “liberties” of a world without God — a world tone-deaf to the supernatural — were the polymorphous perversities of lifestyle libertinism, and its “disciplines” were the breakdown of the family, social solidarity and public order.
A Rumor of Angels drove a stake through the desiccated heart of “secular theology” by demonstrating in 97 finely wrought pages that, embedded in empirical reality, were “signals of transcendence:” which Berger defined as “phenomena…found within the domain of our ‘natural’ reality but that appear to point beyond that reality.” The most primal of these phenomena, Peter suggested, was that of a mother comforting a frightened child who “wakes up in the night, perhaps from a bad dream, and finds himself surrounded by darkness, alone, beset by nameless threats.” What will any good mother do? “She will speak or sing to the child and the content of this communication will invariably be the same — ‘Don’t be afraid – everything is in order, everything is all right.’” Reassured, the child will go back to sleep, reassured that “everything” — the order of Being itself — is benign.
The fun and the sheer joy of play is another “signal of transcendence,” in which “it appears as if one were stepping not only from one chronology to another, but from time into eternity” — from this world into a grander reality that englobes and gives meaning to this world. Imagine a game in which you were completely absorbed while playing it — from cerebral chess to brawling rugby to standing at the foul line with the game at stake — and you’ll get the point.
And that brings us to baseball in this opening week of the major league season. For baseball is a “signal of transcendence” — a window into the supernatural — in several ways.
Baseball is played on a field that is theoretically infinite. While the inner diamond is carefully calibrated in precise (some might say, divinely inspired) measurements — 90 ft. between bases, 60 ft./6 in. between pitching rubber and home plate — the foul lines and the outfield could, in principle, be extended forever: a possibility that came closest to realization in the vast center field of New York’s old Polo Grounds (which in turn gave birth to Hadley Arkes’s great historical mnemonic: “I can always remember when St. Augustine was born — it was 1,600 years before Willie Mays robbed Vic Wertz at the Polo Grounds”). Unlike a football gridiron, basketball court or ice hockey rink, baseball is played in an environment that hints at infinity.
Then there is time. Before the advent of Manfred Man — the ghost runner who now mysteriously appears at second base in the 10th inning of a regular-season game — a baseball game was potentially endless: another signal of eternity embedded in empirical reality. Still, even with the aberration of Manfred Man and the new (and, I confess, welcome) pitch clock, the fact that a baseball game unfolds without a temporal countdown, unlike sports played within a fixed period of time, is another of Peter Berger’s rumors of angels: a quotidian experience that lifts us out of the humdrum of the here-and-now into a different, transcendent realm — a realm akin to the timelessness of heaven.
So: Play ball! And be attuned, at the ballpark and elsewhere, to those rumors of angels.
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If you like baseball, fine. If you gaze at it like a crystal ball, hoping for mystic revelations, the best you can hope for is to see nothing. Yes, God can reach us through seemingly random everyday events, but do not make the box scores into your own personal Ouija board.
My grandson has discovered baseball and loves it. Enough said.
Wait until he discovers girls. 😉
Baseball is the greatest game ever played, followed by golf.
No, but baseball is the most overrated game, at least by some Americans. It is to American sports what Vegemite is to Australian cuisine.
It does, however, have EXACTLY the right pace for radio broadcasts. Football is not quite as good for radio broadcasts; basketball is terrible for radio broadcasts. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that the decline of baseball has accompanied the decline of the typical sports fan following games over the radio. Maybe, but probably not.
The nice thing about baseball is that you can get up to get a beer or go to the bathroom and not miss much action. Speeding up the game is necessary.
Maybe speed it up a little, but the relaxed pace is one of its charms. It gives the radio announcers plenty of time to share anecdotes from baseball history that are tangentially related to the ongoing game.
I can read a newspaper during the baseball game while sitting in an MLB ballpark and not look weird; try that in an NFL stadium during a football game.
There was an FSU faculty member reading a book in the stands a few seasons ago, when the Noles were experiencing their worst season since Bobby Bowden became their coach. I’m not sure it was seen as weird; it was just seen as an indication of how bad FSU’s performance was.
This above article about Baseball and angels
and the Supernatural reminds me of the
Classic 1989 Movie
“Field of Dreams” The film had Kevin Costner as a farmer who builds a baseball field in his cornfield that attracts the ghosts of baseball legends, including Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) and the Chicago Black Sox. Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones , very good movie
Also related to “Field of Dreams” is this
https://maditsmadfunny.fandom.com/wiki/Garfield_of_Dreams
I’ve loved baseball ever since I caught my first ground ball playing 2cond base at 9 years old. But as a Catholic I believe the Lord has inspired me to see yet another connection; between Christians and how baseball has been organized. To be expedient I’ll just give Cliffs notes on the comparisons. Like baseball the faith can be divided by levels of experience and God given “talents”. Rookie or A league, AA, AAA, and Majors, with All Stars, and Hall of Fame. Plug the denomination’s where you see fit. I know where I put The TLM!