Originally published at crisis magazine
It’s Opening Day for Major League Baseball, one of my favorite days of the year. Baseball fans around the country, no matter their favorite team—from the lowly Athletics to the mighty Dodgers—today are optimistic about their team’s chances. In spite of football’s greater popularity these days, baseball remains America’s pastime, and more importantly, baseball is the sport that best teaches the lessons of life. I’d even go so far as to say it is a quintessentially Catholic sport.
The beauty and uniqueness of baseball has been recognized by many writers over the years. Why is baseball the most poetic of all sports? There’s something of the infinite in baseball that speaks to our own final destination. Unlike most sports, baseball has no game clock (yes, baseball now has a pitch clock, but that simply moves the game along and does not determine when a game ends.) Even down by 10 runs in the bottom of the ninth, your team still has a chance, albeit small, of winning—the opposing team can’t simply run out the clock.
That lack of a game clock is seen as a negative in today’s attention-deficit culture. We’re used to scrolling through 30-second sports highlights on our
