No matter how popular the National Football League might be. No matter the growth of the National Basketball Association in the modern era. No matter the prolonged agony of sitting through a three-hour baseball game.
MLB remains America’s pastime. It’s been here for us when times were great. It’s acted as an outlet during the most difficult of times.
Baseball is America. It represents our shared identity as a people. It’s as American as apple pie and the Ford Motor Company.
There was a time not too long ago that baseball, the game, brought people together, changed the destiny of this nation for the good and involved itself in the growing push for progression, both domestically and abroad.
Ken Burns, one of the greatest documentary filmmakers of all-time — a man who put visuals to some of the most noteworthy moments in American history — summed up baseball’s relationship with this nation perfectly.
“Nothing in our daily life offers more of the comfort of continuity, the generational connection of belonging to a vast and complicated American family, the powerful sense of home, the freedom from time’s constraints, and the great gift of accumulated memory than does our National Pastime,” Burns once said.
It’s in this that the story of baseball and its direct impact on our lives as Americans starts.
After his stunning four-sport career at UCLA, and following a racially divisive tenure in the United States Military during World War II, Jackie Robinson made his way to the world of professional baseball.
He joined other all-time great baseball players, some of whom would have dominated MLB, in the Negro Leagues. It was a time of rampant racism and segregation in the United States.
It also represented the very first time that a white man in a power-elite position, following reconstruction, changed the dynamic of race relations in this country.
Branch Rickey, then the Brooklyn Dodgers president and general manager, signed Robinson away from the Negro Leagues with the intention of breaking baseball’s color barrier.
Despite a plethora of opposition from within the game, Rickey’s decision to call Robinson up from the Minors in 1947 changed this nation for the good.
Robinson’s presence and domination on a MLB diamond reverberated throughout the nation, setting into motion a change in the thinking of white America — a sector of society that had in the past been opposed to change and progression from a racial standpoint.
In response to his critics, Rickey had this to say:
“I cannot face my God much longer knowing that his black creatures are held separate and distinct from his white creatures in the game that has given me all that I can call my own.”
This, before Rosa Parks decided to remain seated on the bus or a young preacher in the south made a name for himself as the leader of the civil rights movement.
It came within the context of baseball. That’s a stunning realization to come to.
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A little bit before, America’s men were sent overseas to fight a world war on two different fronts, in Europe and out in the Pacific.
From Ted Williams to Eddie Yost and Warren Spahn, baseball careers were put on hold for the greater good. The fight against Nazism, nationalism and fascism.
It wasn’t just a handful of players who served in World War II instead of staying home to play a game. This had a direct impact on the product we saw on the baseball diamond.
Just as they were asked to take on traditionally male dominated jobs in industry, women were tasked with filling the void that some of Major League Baseball’s top stars left by joining in the greatest war the world has ever seen.
It was in this that the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was formed by Philip Wrigley, then the owner of MLB’s Chicago Cubs.
The tale might have been told on “A League of Their Own,” but it’s a story that has largely fallen under the radar.
From Dottie Hinson and Kit Keller to Doris Murphy, a new movement in the equal rights movement was born.
Women playing a man’s game and doing so quite well. It was foreign to those in an era where gender identification had formed an archaic thought process that included specific roles for women in this nation.
More than anything, it represented a guide for just how much women could do to better a society that had seemed to ground to a halt as it related to the progression towards gender equality.
Since these two direct-action events that shaped American society, baseball itself hasn’t had as big of a part in the broader landscape of this nation.
Rick Monday standing up to Vietnam War protesters attempting to burn the American flag in the outfield of Dodger Stadium. Yes, that was an iconic event.
George W. Bush throwing out the first pitch of the first game in New York City after the horrible events of 9/11. That’s an image that will live in the hearts and minds of Americans for generations to come.
The Tampa Bay Rays playing the Cuban National team in Havana back in 2016. Yes, that will also be an iconic moment on an international stage for decades to come.
It’s times like these that we have to take a step back and realize just how important baseball itself has been to the United States.
It’s formed undeniable bonds within families and friendships among people from every walk of life.
It’s created a dialogue within the broader construct of American society, more so than any other sport in this nation’s history.
America needs MLB as much as it needs America
So, as we look forward to MLB Opening Day, it’s high time to recognize the game’s importance in modern America.
Fathers taking their young children out to the stadium as an outlet to the gun violence we’re seeing in schools today. Mothers and daughters sharing in some fun as a way to at least temporarily avoid how they are being impacted by the divisiveness in America.
People from all walks of life, political ideologies, religious beliefs and ethnicity sharing in the common bond of rooting on the same team.
From Fenway Park in Boston to Chicago Cubs’ Wrigley Stadium and Dodger Stadium in Southern California, baseball will be played in front of millions as the United States forges ahead in these most troubling of times.
A former American President potentially being on criminal trial. More information coming out on the events of January 6, 2021. Division between state rights and what the federal government’s role in our lives. The upcoming election season. Racial division. Economic uncertainty. The other end of a pandemic that has cost the lives of over one million Americans.
This is the reality we’re facing today. But for at least three hours, we can tune all of this out as a way to improve our daily lives. MLB affords us this ability. From racial strife of yesteryear to war time and civic protests, this game has been a part of the broader American experience. We need it to continue more now than ever before.