Mark Rucker - Boston Red Sox and the Meaning of Life

David Ortiz

More Americans put their caring into baseball than into anything else I can think ofand most of them put at least a little of it there. Baseball can be trusted, as great art can, and bad art cant.

William Saroyan

Thousands of caring fans flooded into Bostons Huntington Avenue Base Ball Grounds on October 1, 1903, to catch their beloved Red Sox take on the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first-ever World Series. The crowd was eventually pushed back to the outer reaches of the outfield, where they stood for hours in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the action through the standing-room crowd. Others sat perched atop the parks outer walls, willing to put up with the discomfort for a chance to see their team battle for the baseball championship.

Baseball is an unalloyed good. Of course, there are passions. But passion is good if it is directed toward a noble end. Theres nothing bad that accrues from baseball.

Commissioner Bart Giamatti

If its possible to be too passionate about baseball, the Red Sox Nation may fall into that category. Releasing the frustrations of a long 86-year drought without a World Series championship, thousands of fans spilled out into the streets of Boston following the Red Soxs victory over St. Louis in the 2007 Fall Classic. The Curse of the Bambino was broken, and Red Sox fans could believe once again that there is good in baseball.

[Baseball] is the best of all games for me. It frequently escapes from the pattern of sport and assumes the form of a virile ballet. The movement is natural and unrehearsed and controlled only by the unexpected flight of the ball.

Jimmy Cannon

Baseball can indeed be like a ballet, as this game of inches produces subtle and lightning-fast reactions, such as an infielder leaping over a careening base runner. Keystone combos who work together for years are able to perfect their balletic moves with harmony and grace, while fulfilling the goal of all this kinesthesis: getting the runners out. In September 2007, rookie second baseman Dustin Pedroia soars gracefully above a sliding Toronto base runner to complete a double play.

To compare baseball with other team games is to say the Hope Diamond is a nice chunk of carbon. The endless variety of physical and mental skills demanded by baseball is both uncomparable and incomparable.

Bill Veeck

Boston third baseman Harry Lord is high in the air to receive a throw as Clevelands Elmer Flick has just dashed underneath to reach the base. The physical and mental skills required to make this play are betrayed by the grace of the leaping Lords midair pose. He had to calculate the timing and height of his jump, get his body and glove in position for the incoming throw, and remain aware of the runner charging in from second baseall at the same time and all without time to reconsider or adjust.

Ninety feet between bases is perhaps as close as man ever comes to perfection.

Red Smith

This photograph helps to illustrate why 90 feet is the perfect distance between the bases. As Washingtons Roy Sievers charges full-tilt down the line, Red Sox catcher Sammy White throws toward a stretching Pete Runnels at first base. Over the years, as athletes have gotten bigger, faster, and stronger, and equipment has been refined and perfected, the 90-foot distance remains the great equalizer, helping to prevent high-scoring games while still giving the batter a chance to reach first safely on a squibber. The bang-bang play at first base remains a staple of the game.

Its played by people, real people, not freaks. Basketball is played by giants. Football is played by corn-fed hulks. The normal-sized man plays baseball and the fellow in the stands can relate to that.

Bill Veeck

David Ortiz and Dustin Pedroia are not freaks by any measure, but the six-foot-four, 230-pound Ortiz and the five-foot-nine, 180-pound Pedroia illustrate that baseball players indeed come in all shapes and sizes. Pedroia makes the most of his size by stealing bases, scoring runs, and swooping up ground balls, while Ortiz uses his bulk to blast home runs over the fences. Together, the two have helped the Red Sox become a dominant team in baseball.

Players in baseball are like the links in a chain, the chain being no stronger than its weakest link. They perform their actions not so much in unison as serially.

Michael Novak, in The Joy of Sports

There was no weak link in Bostons double-play combination of 1946. Here second baseman Bobby Doerr (in midair) has just rifled a throw to Rudy York at first base to complete the double play after receiving the toss from shortstop Johnny Pesky (right). The RedSox turned 163 double plays that season while committing fewer errors than any other team. The chain was strengthened by a dangerous lineup anchored by Ted Williams, which led the majors in hits and runs scored en route to securing the teams first pennant in nearly three decades.

Baseball is continuous, like nothing else among American things, an endless game of repeated summers, joining the long generations of all the fathers and all the sons.

Donald Hall, in Fathers Playing Catch with Sons

Since 1912, generation after generation of fathers and sons has been coming to Fenway Park to watch their beloved Red Sox. While the sport of baseball has a continuity and repetition to it, every game brings a new and different set of circumstances that makes the outcome wholly unpredictable. When you have a good seat in the ballpark, you can view the whole field in motion and observe the chain of events that determines each moment. The devoted fans will come out early to take in the pregame preparations, hoping to glean some new insight or simply to spend a little more time with their heroes.

You can learn little from victory. You can learn everything from defeat.