BONUS: Baseball's Unique Place in American Culture

Liam Heffernan: 00:00:36

Hello, and welcome to this extra bonus episode for America, a history podcast we recently published, how did baseball become an american pastime? And you can listen to that now after you've listened to this. And I'm joined by Ben Routon to discuss this a little bit more.

Ben, thank you for sticking around.

Ben Railton: 00:00:54

I'm very happy to be here. I could talk about these things forever, at the very least, for the length of a modern baseball game, which folks probably know is very long.

Liam Heffernan: 00:01:03

Well, do enlighten us. You know, most of our listeners are not based in the US and probably don't know an awful lot about the rules of baseball.

So how long does a game last?

Ben Railton: 00:01:12

So the official length is around this idea of innings, which I know is, again, also a term that crosses over into sports like cricket, at least a little bit. There are nine innings in a baseball game with a top half and a bottom half.

And I actually structure my podcast around the same structure for folks who get to check it out. There are nine episodes that are innings, and there's a top and a bottom of each inning.

So each team gets a chance to be at the plate to bat in one of those halves across the nine innings total. And there are three outs in each half. So the game can take as long as it takes to get those outs. There's no clock. There's no time limit.

I think the ideal for baseball is something in the range of two, two and a half hours, two to two and a half hours. The modern game, for various reasons that people have bemoaned and tried to deal with for a long time, is more like three and a half hours, at least.

And that's not usually because of great play. It's just other things that have sort of blossomed and made the game longer.

But at its heart, it is, as we talked about in the full episode, it is a slower game.

It is a more pastoral game than sports like football or basketball or hockey, the other major sports in the US, or soccer or football, depending on where you are. So it is slower by nature, but that slow play can still happen in a way that is a little more contained than has become the case.

And I think that is partly why it has lost some of its appeal with younger sports fans in particular, that it has sort of mushroomed into something that is not really the. The idyllic version of it.

Liam Heffernan: 00:02:46

Yeah, I think, you know, american football has kind of made a bit of a spectacle out of american sport. You know, I think as an outsider looking in, you, you just come to expect the big shows and, you know, all the, all the pizzazz.

But maybe, maybe that's a problem with our expectations of it. But yeah, it's kind of nice that baseball hasn't sort of succumbed to that yet fully.

Ben Railton: 00:03:10

And I think there certainly is a complementary nature there. There's a really wonderful bit by the comedian George Carlin back when he was alive and doing stand up comedy.

He has a bit about football versus baseball, where he compares the two sports and talks about how baseball is all of the sort of pastoral, and football is the martial is the kind of military and all the imagery sort of from each, and the spectacle around each. And my sons and I watch a lot of football, complicated as it is as a sport, to be a fan of american football, and I think there's a place for that.

But I do think, as we talk about in the main episode of this, the way baseball captures stories and history and memory is not as possible in the really fast moving, kind of spectacular sports.

So there certainly is at least a place for a sport that allows for a little more of that pastoral speed and that ability to kind of remember and think about those kinds of stories.

Liam Heffernan: 00:04:05

Yeah. I mean, you said you're an american football fan, but are you a big sports fan otherwise?

Ben Railton: 00:04:11

Yeah, I have been my whole life. But having two teenage sons really goes a long way toward making that something that can be shared together, that can be experienced together.

And I do think one of the reasons I come back to sports a lot, even when I recognize their limits or their flaws or their problems, is the ability to share it, to bring people together.

When I talk in this podcast about the last game for the Celestials, trying to think about, like, who was in the audience at that game in San Francisco, and that experience is not just about the players, it's not just about the sport. It's also about the experience of being in that crowd as part of those spectators.

And again, baseball has done that for almost 200 years now, created those opportunities for people to come together in that way.

Liam Heffernan: 00:04:56

Yeah.

And kind of the limited experience I have of american sport, of sort of being an american sporting event, is when I went to a minor league baseball game, as I mentioned on the main podcast, and I have to admit, in England, you go to a sports match like football or soccer, and it's very much about you versus the other team, and that extends to the supporters as well. I don't get that sense as much, and I didn't. When I went to a baseball game, it felt like everyone was just there to have a good day.

Ben Railton: 00:05:32

Yeah, I hope so. That's been my experience. And, for example, I lived in Philadelphia for a time. And Philadelphia sports fans are notoriously angry, let's say.

And I went to multiple Philadelphia Phillies baseball games, rooting for the Atlanta Braves, which was the team that I grew up watching and loving as a kid in the south, in the United States. And I never had any pushback or negative experiences. It was something that we were there to share together.

I'm sure there are pockets of drunken rage that might pop up in any sport and any community. But I do think there is a broader sense that you are sort of experiencing this thing together.

And again, when I think about the celestials last game, that becomes even more potent, because that was in a city, San Francisco, that was the center of the anti chinese movement in a lot of ways. Had had a massacre a few years before, was still the center of the speeches.

And yet you get this game between a white team and a chinese american team on this diamond in San Francisco. And maybe it connects to the worst, but it also might connect again to that idea of the shared experience, the shared game, the shared moment.

So I think it's worth trying to remember that side. Even when we do recognize the more divisive aspects of sports as well.

Liam Heffernan: 00:06:48

Yeah, definitely. And that's one of the things that really came out of our conversation in the main episode, was just how.

How diverse and how inclusive baseball was in those early days. And that was quite amazing to me.

But who do you think are the most passionate sports fans if you had to give that trophy to someone who are above and beyond commitment?

Ben Railton: 00:07:14

Well, and I would say that, again, that passion can be defined as either, if not the worst, at least a lessen desirable one to me, and a more inspiring one. So I do think, in my somewhat limited experience, that international football or soccer can bring out some of the worst, right?

Those riots, those hooligan sort of moments and behavior. You know, those stadiums where the fans have to be, like, separated far enough that they won't attack each other as the game goes along.

I do think that fan base around the world can sometimes really bring out the most tribal kind of aspects, the most divisive aspects of sports. But I would say baseball.

To circle back to the idea of the history and the memory, the folks who are super passionate about baseball, which I was when I was younger, and I certainly know lots of people who still are. For them, that passion, again, opens up things like memory and stories, like their stories with their parents or their family or their community.

The stories of the way that that team or that game can cut across.

When the Boston Red Sox finally won the World Series after 86 years, there were countless stories of people going to the graves of their parents or grandparents to sort of celebrate that victory with people who were no longer with them, but who they had shared that team with. So I think there's a passion in baseball fans that is about kind of the legacy and the memory, which I find really beautiful and inspiring.

And that's a different version, maybe, than the passion that is about attacking opponents. So I think there's different ways it can get defined.

But I love the baseball passion that can be more about, again, sort of the things that bring us together, maybe.

Liam Heffernan: 00:08:55

It'S interesting that you mentioned about the Red Sox, because I have a really vague childhood memory of being in Orlando. We were in Disney World and having the whole sort of tourist holiday.

And I remember one day, every single American on the buses that we were getting on was saying, oh, the Red Sox beat the Yankees. The Red Sox beat the Yankees. It was like the news of the week.

And maybe that was it, maybe that was the moment, and I was ignorantly in the middle of it as a Brit who had no idea what was going on. Have you ever played baseball?

Ben Railton: 00:09:27

I tried when I was young. It was not the sport for me. I was better at others.

I think the hand eye coordination thing and reflexes as well, which are pretty important, certainly, to hitting in baseball in particular, were not my strong suit enough.

But what that meant was that I could really lean into being a spectator, and it was the sport when I was growing up, all through college, that I was the most dedicated spectator of, and thus consumer also of, like the stories. So there's just so many great books and films as we've talked about, and other layers, and all sports have that possibility.

But I do think baseball really does lend itself to being both a spectator and, again, sort of a storyteller. And for me, that was what it really meant.

Liam Heffernan: 00:10:16

Yeah, well, I share your lack of hand eye coordination. I'm far better at talking about sport than playing it. Ben, thank you so much for joining me for this and for the main podcast as well.

And anyone listening, if you haven't already, go listen to the full episode right now. Wherever you get your podcasts, Ben, hopefully we can get you back on the podcast sometime. But thank you so much for joining me.

Ben Railton: 00:10:37

It's been my pleasure. And yes, I'd love to always keep talking about any of these different contexts and anything and everything else.

American studies on one of the great american studies podcasts, for sure.

Liam Heffernan: 00:10:48

Oh, thank you. You're too kind. And for anyone listening. Until next time, thank you and goodbye.