CPL310 11/5/2004 Religion and baseball in American culture: Hallowed ground: ball field is set apart for the best of athletes -- Ballpark photos by Bill Goth -- idea of the park belonging to the players is a big theme in the Celebrant (a term from religion; the priest celebrates the mass); in the Celebrant the narrator is a jeweler who celebrates the works of Christie Matthewson a ballplayer from the early 1900s (who becomes a Christ figure) "SABR convention convenes where baseball is a religion" -- Society of American Baseball Research -- newpaper headline playing on relationship between baseball and religion Dr Petreman has been to the Field of Dreams in Iowa The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant By Douglass Wallop -- made into the play "Damn Yankees" -- middle-aged Washington Senators fan makes a deal with the devil to become a great player to beat the Yankees The Celebrant by Eric Rolfe Greenberg The Brothers K by David James Duncan -- novel about a family in Washington State whose father was a pro-ball player who lost his thumb in an industrial accident and tries to come back with a plastic thumb -- they're also Seventh Day Adventists -- takes places during Vietnam -- title is a takeoff on Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and on the symbol K which stands for strikeout in baseball WP Kinsella 1935- -- writes fiction about Native American culture; two collections of short stories: -- The Fencepost Chronicles -- The Moccasin Telegraph -- he was in an automobile accident, has diabetes and is rather ill now -- Black Elk Speaks was a book that inspired him -- there's a character called Drifting Away in the Kinsella's book The Iowa Baseball Confederacy (3 religions: baseball, a local Christian sect, and a Native American religion) -- also writes of course fictiona bout baseball and American culture, including: -- The Thrill of the Grass (short stories; the term comes from Shoeless Joe's references to grass) -- The Further Adventures of Slugger McBatt (another collection of short stories) Shoesless Joe Form and structure: -- Love story: "I count the loves in my life: Annie, Karin, Iowa, Baseball. The Great god Baseball" (6) -- Fantasy: voices (3) and visions (7); fluid time and space; vague spiritual backdrop; dreams; magic -- Chapter I, origin of novel as short story; introduces all main themes -- magical realism, inspired by Garcia Marquez -- quest, for: -- Shoeless Joe: "If you build it, he will come" (3) -- J.D. Salinger: "Ease his pain" (31) -- Moonlight Graham: "Go the distance" (100) (in baseball going the distance is a pitcher who plays the whole game without a relief pitcher) -- Father; family reconciliation; the first three things help with this one -- Figures of speech: -- similes: "The left-field grass... like a prize animal... cool as mint, soft as moss... like a cashmere... like green angora, soft as a baby's cheek" (8f.) -- "to translate this sitaution into reality would be like trying to stuff a cloud into a suitcase" (29) -- "like puppies on the angel soft grass" (41) -- "our voices rise like doves on the warm Iowa wind" (229) -- lots of sensory images; "open your senses" -- Melodrama: -- "My brother-in-law has always looked to me like the villain from a nineteenth-century melodrama...wine-colored oustache that turns up wickedly at each corner" (72) -- "I can see Mark twirling his moustache... with Bluestein in the background rubbing his hands together and cackling" (191) -- "Bluestein is carrying an ax...wearing a wide-shouldered corduroy suit that makes hi look like a gangster" (240f); Bluestein's name is suggestive of Bluebeard but also of two historical figures -- Cf. Arnold Rothstein (a notorious gambler who was the main one behind fixing the World Series) & Meyer Wolfsheim ((figure in The Great Gatsby who fixed the World Series) -- Father and family: -- "My father": WWI, Chicago, White Sox, loved underdogs, Shoesless Joe (6f) -- "Played some baseball" (8ff) -- "I know a catcher" (19) -- "The catcher... Johnny Kinsella... My dream has been fulfilled" (196ff) -- "The catcher... Richard... want to talk to the catcher... love, family life" (254f) [Dr Petreman's father was a minor league pitcher in the Cubs organization] -- Baseball is... -- "Baseball can soothe even those pains [cf. "ease his pain"], for it is stable and permanent, steady as a grandfather dozing in a wicker chair on a verandah" (84f) -- "...is the most perfect of games, solid, true, pure and precious as diamonds" (92) -- "The word is baseball...the loving word of baseball...spirit and it is life...the living word of baseball") 227) -- "...the one constant through all the years" (252) -- Jacque Barzan in the 1950s said if you really want to understand America you have to learn about baseball first -- "Name me a more perfect game! Name me a game with more possibilities for magic, wizardy, vodoo, hoodoo, enchantment, obsession, possession" (Iowa Baseball Confederacy 44) Dreams: -- "The process is all so slow, as dreams are slow, as dreams suspend time like a balloon hung in midair" (25) -- "Talk to me about...dreams an reality.... What was it like to see your deram flutter away" (145f) -- "We sleep...and wait...and dream. Oh, how we dream" (221) -- "I've had a dream... I know how things are going to turn out (251) -- "'I dream of things that never were," says Jerry'" (253), cf. novel's epigraph: "Some men see things as they are, and say why; I dream of things that never were, and say why not." -- Bobby Kennedy Clips from Field of Dreams </plaintext><br /></body></html>