World Baseball Catastrophe
In this earlier post, I predicted the apocalypse based on the United States baseball team's poor performance in the WBC. Now, the U.S. was eliminated, in a loss to Mexico. So the U.S. is now # 3 in North America in baseball, having lost both to Canada and Mexico. And now our over-payed, over-indulged, over-muscled superstars can return to spring training. Good work, fellas.
Who cares about baseball anymore? As Bob Dylan might say, It's not me, babe.
posted by Number Three @ 8:08 AM
5 Comments:
It's March Madness, so who really cares about baseball anyway? Besides, George Will's protestations aside, baseball is no longer the sport that defines America. Since WWII we've been more interested in metaphors of force, power and domination, so football has been our past time. Just line everyone up on a level playing field with appropriate safety gear and smash into eachother and may the biggest and most powerful win! Isn't that the way the world should work? Heck, maybe it would even be fair to say that football has already been supplanted by NASCAR. Again, another sport of brute power and speed with far less cunning and strategy than baseball (I'm sure someone will argue with that, but really, how much strategy is involved in whirling a car around an oval?). Yes, you really could make the case that the new metaphor for America is NASCAR -- meaningless repeating circles of force that really take you nowhere.
It's March Madness, so who really cares about baseball anyway? Besides, George Will's protestations aside, baseball is no longer the sport that defines America. Since WWII we've been more interested in metaphors of force, power and domination, so football has been our past time. Just line everyone up on a level playing field with appropriate safety gear and smash into eachother and may the biggest and most powerful win! Isn't that the way the world should work? Heck, maybe it would even be fair to say that football has already been supplanted by NASCAR. Again, another sport of brute power and speed with far less cunning and strategy than baseball (I'm sure someone will argue with that, but really, how much strategy is involved in whirling a car around an oval?). Yes, you really could make the case that the new metaphor for America is NASCAR -- meaningless repeating circles of force that really take you nowhere.
Although I find Paul's metaphors tempting, baseball remains king, at least in my mind.
"America" has never been simply a practical reality, a state like any other, exisiting in conventional space and present time, it has also been an ideal, one that integrates a bucolic past and a democratic future. Baseball still symbolizes that ideal--equal opportunity, fair play, the independence and virtue that come from one's relation to the land (or the "field")--better than any other sport. This is probably why baseball inspires great movies (e.g., Bull Durham, the best romantic comedy of all time) in a way that no other sport does. Can Days of Thunder ever aspire to the same heights? I doubt it.
I agree, that baseball remains a powerful symbol for an idealized past, but I think for now it is semi-irrelevant. American heroism is now defined by brute strength and speed (Achilles) and that's what appeals to larger audiences. Perhaps in the future we will return to cunning and intelligence (Odysseus).
If the ninophile's family is any indication, the future belongs to soccer. A little of Achilles and a little of Odysseus.
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