The Constants

Change is the only constant in life.

—Heraclitus¹

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.

—James Earl Jones as Terence Mann in Field of Dreams²

Introduction

Wisdom has many fathers. Ancient Greek philosophy is an important source of wisdom that is the foundation for much of Western civilization. One of those Greek philosophers was Heraclitus. He argued that all of life is constantly in flux and therefore that change is the only true constant. Over 2000 years later in the 1989 film Field of Dreams, James Earl Jones says that in spite of the enormous changes that have taken place in America over the past 150 years, that baseball has been the constant that has tied generations and the country together. The purpose of this essay is to examine these two contradictory ideas through the life of a sixty-one-year-old, lifelong baseball fan. And although the details of my life and my baseball experiences will be different from anyone else’s, I believe that the theme of baseball being a constant through the changes in a person’s life will resonate with all baseball fans. This is not to say that the game itself hasn’t changed over the last 50 years. It has, dramatically. But it is a constant, often comforting, presence in our lives.

Brooklyn and the miracle mets

My mother was as far from being a sports fan as it is possible to be. But she came of age in Brooklyn during the 1950s, and she had an older brother who was an enormous Dodgers fan. Given these two influences, she could not help but absorb some of the Dodgers’ culture that permeated Brooklyn in that era. And forty years later she could still recite the names of players on those Dodgers teams: Snider, Hodges, Robinson, Reese, Furillo, and Campanella. The fact that she, a complete non-sports fan, remembered these players says a lot about the hold that baseball can have on a person, even one with little apparent interest in the sport.

Like many New Yorkers of the time, she married and moved out to Long Island to raise her family there. Because of that, I and my three siblings grew up in suburban New York, and over the course of time became Mets fans. My first baseball memory, as a ten-year-old, is of the 1969 World Series. Unlike the moon landing, which I do remember watching on TV (because I got to stay up late into the night while the rest of the family went to bed, an unusual treat), I don’t remember watching the World Series on TV, but I do remember that we got to listen to the games on the radio, during class at school! That we were allowed to do this so astounded me that I have remembered it all my life. I also recall being very upset with my father four years later when, during the 1973 World Series between the Mets and the A’s, he forced me to help him chop firewood rather than watching one of the games. In hindsight, I realize that this was simply an indication of the priority that baseball had for the two of us.

Braving atlanta and service in san diego

While we are children and teenagers, it seems like being under your parent’s thumb will go on forever. But in due time, in the first big change of my life, I went off to college at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. This move required a tremendous adjustment on my part. I was alone in a new city, with a different culture and more freedom than I’d ever had before. Baseball helped me make a successful transition. My roommate had a small black and white portable TV, and we bonded over Braves games. Although the Braves of the late 1970s were a poor team, it was a pleasure to watch Dale Murphy, Bob Horner, and Phil Niekro ply their trade. It seemed like the whole city of Atlanta was pulling for the Braves when they started the 1982 season 10–0...