Sexton John Edward - Baseball as a road to God : seeing beyond the game

T his book has been a true collaboration. It linked the president of New York University and the creator of its popular course, Baseball as a Road to God, with a writer and frequent guest in the course, and with another writer who has assisted in the teaching of it after being its first enrolled student a decade ago. Building on the course and the insights and stories that form its core, we spent scores of hours discussing concepts, topics, and details in-depth together. We researched together. We discussed some more together. We wrote together. We revised together. And we rewrote together.

Along the way we have incurred huge debts. Above all, we thank two close friends, each of whom has joined John in teaching the course at various times over the years: Michael Murray and James Traub. They added immeasurably to its content and meaning. And we thank the dozens of NYU students who have given the course life.

We are also indebted to those who gave time and effort to provide us with essential guidance, criticism, and assistance, including professors Jules Coleman and Arthur Miller, Paige Gilliam, Deborah Grosvenor (our literary representative), and Patrick Mulligan (our editor at Gotham Books). And Johns assistant, Dan Evans, who coordinated it all.

And we are grateful to those gentle critics who helped curb our tendencies toward verbosity and fuzziness, above all Alan and Arlene Schwartz, Susan Spencer, and Dr. Joan Witkin.

For detailed baseball information, our principal source was the multi-editioned Baseball Encyclopedia, going elsewhere only when necessary. All this help, however, does not absolve us of total responsibility for any errors contained in these pages.

John Sexton, Thomas Oliphant, and Peter J. Schwartz

Want to continue traveling along baseballs road? Check out some of these works that have been assigned over the years in my NYU seminar.

BOOKS

The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach

Brooklyns Dodgers, Carl E. Prince

Calico Joe, John Grisham

The Celebrant, Eric Rolfe Greenberg

The Chosen, Chaim Potok

Cosmos and History, Mircea Eliade

The Era, 19471957, Roger Kahn

Fair Ball: A Fans Case for Baseball, Bob Costas

The Further Adventures of Slugger McBatt, W. P. Kinsella

Go the Distance, W. P. Kinsella

God in Search of Man, Abraham Joshua Heschel

A Great and Glorious Game, A. Bartlett Giamatti

Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga

Honest to God, John A. T. Robinson

If Wishes Were Horses, W. P. Kinsella

The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, W. P. Kinsella

The Joy of Sports, Michael Novak

Magic Time, W. P. Kinsella

The Natural, Bernard Malamud

The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

Past Time: Baseball as History, Jules Tygiel

Praying for Gil Hodges, Thomas Oliphant

The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade

Shoeless Joe, W. P. Kinsella

Snow in August, Pete Hamill

Summer of 49, David Halberstam

Take Me Out, Richard Greenberg

Ultimate Concern, Paul Tillich

The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. Robert Coover

The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James

Wait Till Next Year, Doris Kearns Goodwin

Why Time Begins on Opening Day, Thomas Boswell

Articles and Excerpts

Baseball: A Spiritual Reminiscence, Tex Sample

Baseball and the Meaning of Life: Are We Destined to Grasp Neither? Donald Hall

Baseball as Civil Religion: The Genesis of an American Creation Story, Christopher Evans

Believing in Baseball: The Religious Power of Our National Pastime, Thomas Dailey

Brain Droppings (Baseball and Football), George Carlin

Civil Religion in America, Robert Bellah

The Coming of Elijah: Baseball as Metaphor, William R. Herzog II

Flight of the Wild Gander (Secularization of the Sacred), Joseph Campbell

Gods Country and Mine, Jacques Barzun

Japanese Baseball (The Indestructible Hadrian Wilks), W. P. Kinsella

The Kingdom of Baseball in America: The Chronicle of an American Theology, Christopher Evans

Louisville Slugger Sure Sign of a Higher Power, George Will

McDuff on the Mound, Robert Coover

The Meaning of Sports (Baseball: The Remembrance of Things Past), Michael Mandelbaum

The Odds of That, The New York Times Magazine, August 11, 2002

On Jackie Robinson, Red Barber

Selected Stories (The Pitcher), Andre Dubus

The Silent Season of a Hero, Gay Talese

Summer Dreams, Leonard Kriegel

Tao in the Yankee Stadium Bleachers, John Updike

Underworld (prologue), Don DeLillo

With Red Sox, Glass Is Always Half-Empty, The New York Times, September 3, 2004

Film

Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush (HBO)

Tippy, the maven who sometimes is wrong but never in doubt, offers the following trivia tidbits. As he does, he says: You can take these to the bank. I suggest a fact-check, however, before you bet your home on their accuracy. Still, these pieces of baseball lore do reveal some of the games wonder.

Certain unbreakable records, perennials on most fans lists, are not included because Tippy takes them as part of every true fans landscape. For example, Cy Youngs 511 career wins, 316 career losses, and 749 career complete games; Jack Chesbros 41 wins in a season (most since 1900); Hack Wilsons 191 RBIs in a season; or Joe DiMaggios 56-game hitting streak.

Human Baseball Encyclopedia: Anthony (Tippy) Mannino, outside the friendly confines of his town car

Twenty Absolutely Unbreakable Records

1. The Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds played an entire nine-inning game (June 29, 1916) using only one baseball.

2. The Cleveland Indians played an entire game against the New York Yankees (July 5, 1945) without an infield assist.

3. Brooklyn (1920) holds the record for most innings played by a team over a three-game stretch: fifty-eight.

4. The New York Yankees played 308 consecutive games (August 3, 1931 to August 2, 1933) without being shut out.