During this autumn season, when the very idea of America is again being tested in an election, baseball’s balm is back.
For decades, pro ball helped carry the nation through wars and economic downturns and 9/11. It has felt increasingly forgotten lately – its measured pace out of sync with the swagger and sprint of a socially wired age. Yet past and present are poised to rhyme.
For the first time since the first year of the Reagan administration, the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers are in the World Series. Back then, too, Americans worried about inflation, immigration, and war. And then, as now, they found solace in what the actor Kevin Costner has described as “the primal battle between a man with a stick and a man with a rock.”
Baseball “has long been a cornerstone of national identity, transcending cultural and generational divides through its universal appeal,” wrote Patrick Gordon, executive editor of Philadelphia Baseball Review, last month. It is “a symbol of American perseverance … of resilience and unity.”
This year’s teams have met in the World Series 11 times before, more than any other two. (For seven of those 11 series, the Dodgers were in Brooklyn, New York.) The players come from 29 states, and many emigrated from Japan, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and the Bahamas. They include some of the best athletes the game has ever seen, including Shohei Ohtani, the Dodger from Japan who in September became the only player to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a single season.
When these two historic rivals take the field, they won’t be foreigners or political activists. Just ballplayers on teams testing their mettle against each other.
Baseball’s appeal lies in its unhurried storytelling. A noble battle with inherent failure unfolds in a narrative in which all that happens on the diamond finds meaning in all the moments of joy and greatness that happened there before. “Watching baseball, sitting in the sun, eating popcorn, reading Ezra Pound,” wrote the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
For a nation on the cusp of political change, this series offers a pause of shared delights in the gallantry and grace of a timeless sport.