Daniel Ochefu
Baseball, Justice and the American Dream
Final Paper
Due: 5/1/2015

I ‘Like’ Baseball Before taking this course baseball was one of my least favorite things to do in any way simply because I did not know about the sport and the impact it has on many people’s lives to respect the time that the players spend preparing to perform. I was always critical of the amount of work that was put in physically for baseball compared to other sports like basketball, football, hockey and others. I always thought it was not that much because there are almost no physical collisions in games and that was all I really needed to know after I was told that on average games are three plus hours. From everything I have learnt about baseball in this course, there is a respect that I now have for it that I definitely did not have for it before. Being America’s pastime, baseball has been the one constant in America because of its deep history that it promotes and the pride that the fans exhibit. Even during unfortunate events that shake the whole country, baseball finds a way to bring the country together. The most recent one that stood out to me being how the Boston Red Sox brought together a whole city after the terrible Boston Marathon Bombings of 2013 by winning the World Series and using that to help strengthen a city that had been hurt badly by a terrible event. The World Series celebration is normally extravagant and well televised but this one brought all Americans together because it was meaningful to Boston during a time period where they were trying to recover and get back on their feet. French philosopher Jacques Barzun “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better know baseball,” is still confusing to me even after I have taken this course. I still am unable to grasp exactly why people agree with the notion that baseball has a direct relationship to this country’s history. The only reason I personally see why baseball is America’s pastime is because it originated here and also because of the heavy number of Americans that have dominated the sport since it came into existence. I understand why there is so much pride taken in the history of the sport and the records as with other sports but baseball differentiates itself by being a timeless sport where its fans can go to and enjoy the sport. The myth of baseball and the American dream is one that I will never fully understand. Baseball like the American dream is depreciating in its number of fans and the value they see in the sport. We want to believe that the American dream is not dead as much as we want to believe that baseball still matters as much as it used to. From when baseball was a reflection of the old west when there was extensive drinking and the involvement of notorious hustlers to when Babe Ruth hit the scene and created a response to a major athlete as big as that in any other sport. When the country went to war, the players joined the fight as well and after the war they went back to playing in a period where America experienced great prosperity. When blacks were fighting for equality, baseball followed suit as well. In the 90s, during the tech boom and an economic jump in the country, baseball salaries rose as well.
Baseball has been slowly following the timeline of the American dream through its ups and downs and now in the countries current economic struggle, you see with the dominance of drug scandals and other things that take away from the sport are negatively affecting attendance rates and TV viewings. The American dream in this sense feels threatened and it is a direct reflection on the current state of the sport which is why there are so many proposals concerning the rules of the game in order to find a way to spark the flame in its fans. Americans wants all of this history and reflection on what type of nation we are to mean something. Both the game and our country glorifies itself based solely on the past without looking at what really faces it in the future. The search to justify the American dream and baseball is thought about broadly when a true understanding can be found in the little details, the things that make it special. For baseball it’s a sacrifice bunt, running out a double into a triple, a double steal or a collision at home place to save a score. For Americans it’s a family moving into their first home, walking at graduation, the relationships built in places like work, a place of worship and school. These details are not the product of some big business or things handed down by the government. It is the little things that the American people do that bring these small accomplishments that builds up the American dream. Just like how the American dream is based on the people, baseball is molded by the small details in the game that build it up into the great sport many have come to love.
For me, I believe that baseball has earned my respect. The day we went to the Orioles game is really what did it for me. I hate standing and walking around a lot and I thought that alone would not allow me to enjoy the experience. Going on a tour of Camden Yards and getting on the field before and seeing the players warm up and also getting a little bit of the history and other stuff involved in baseball was ve3ry meaningful for me because it allowed me to start seeing baseball as another sport. I was always skeptical to talk in this class because I knew my bias against baseball would be evident and after a couple weeks in the course when I developed a respect for the sport I did not want to seem like I was hard headed and did not listen to any of the valid reasons as to why baseball is just like every other sport and has a deeper meaning when it comes to America as a country. I’m glad that this course gave me a new “like” for baseball because it showed me how the elimination of time from something can improve the quality of it. I thought of it like if basketball had no time and it was the first team to get to 100 if I would still enjoy it as much and I may actually enjoy it more. Now that I understand what baseball really and what it means to America as a whole, I can really appreciate the game.
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