Comparison of religion to baseball

Which is more important, religion…or baseball? Or is baseball the ultimate religion? It’s a tough call. I grew up as a Jew (but not as a Red Sox fan) in the leafy East Midwood section of Brooklyn. Until the first time my father took me to Ebbets Field I’d only seen the Dodgers on the grainy TV in our living room. In black and white. I gasped for breath in astonishment when I saw the real thing. The vastness of the perfectly mown green outfield grass, the brown of the base paths, the sparkling white uniforms of the Dodgers, all a foretaste of heaven, I thought.

When the god-like players poured out of their dugout and ran to their positions, Hodges to First, Gilliam at Second, Pee-Wee at Short and Robinson at Third, the deep uncompromising ebony of Jackie’s skin made me feel proud to be a Brooklynite because, even then, I knew that we’d been the first to allow black people to play. We did that wonderful thing and changed the world. In the back of my mind I assumed that all the players were Jewish. I still do.

That the greedy unspeakable son of Satan, Walter O’Malley, would bring the team to Los Angeles was one thing (what could you expect from such a bottom line bottom feeder) but that my heroes would actually go was jaw dropping, bone shaking, stomach wrenching. We were betrayed; the joy of our lives was stolen. One hero remained pure though. Jackie. When he was traded to the hated NY Giants at the end of the ’57 season, he refused to go; instead he retired from baseball, pure as pure could be.

In later life I became a Red Sox rooter by choice, but in fact it wasn’t much of a switch at all. Ebbets Field and Fenway Park are very similar; the Yankees are still the archenemy. Like the Dodgers, the Sox have only reached the Promised Land of World Series victory once in my lifetime, in both cases having to defeat the Yankees to do it; like the Dodgers the Sox have heroes of the past, godlike figures who walked the earth (Smokey Joe Wood, Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski); we both have our traitors (Harry Frazee, Walter O’Malley) but only Boston had an official curse (of the Bambino). The Red Sox religion has uniforms (hats and jerseys); we have our priests (managers and coaches); we have our songs (Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” and the risqué “Dirty Waters” whenever we win at home); we have our epic stories, of Buckner’s bumble in ’86, of Fiske’s home run in ’75, of leaving Pedro in for just too long in 2003; we have our sacred space, Fenway Park, hallowed be its halls.

My other religion is a form of Judaism possibly unique to me. I attend synagogue, but don’t generally pray. I wear the uniform (tallit, tephellin and kippah); I sing songs in half understood Hebrew. I maintain a kosher diet, more or less, mostly more; I behave in what I hope is an ethical manner. I believe that God created the world and man, except when I believe that chemical forces interacted and KABOOM! there was the earth. Either way, it doesn’t particularly matter.

As I sing the songs in a language I only half understand I am in communion with my ancestors of a hundred or more generations, and, I hope, with my descendants for an equal amount of time; as I think about the half understood forces of nature being slowly unraveled by struggling human science I continue to wonder if the Almighty is the originator of the Big Bang. God only knows, but He’s not talking. Of this, though, I am certain: The whole thing is designed so that if we use our minds, not depend on revelation, we’ll figure out His physics. I read the bible. It has some powerful stories and some interesting perspectives on life and love as does Shakespeare, both being divinely inspired, and I go on with my life.

I wonder if those who insist that America is a Christian nation (in Kentucky the governor is demanding that textbooks refer to BC and AD, not to BCE and CE) intend to keep us non-Christians around once they’ve transformed our country into their theocracy. Religion ought to be like being a Red Sox fan. It should be uplifting; it can be community building. Only better. No one gets excommunicated; no one’s ever burned at the stake.

Go Sox! (=Amen).

Responding to criticism of May 26 piece

Have you read Yehuda Lev’s piece? Not yet? It’s just opposite this column, there, on page 4. Go read it now. I’ll wait for you. Tum, de, dum dum, pooh, pooh tra la la la la. OK? Finished so soon? Nice of him to give those who missed my column last issue the opportunity to read selections from it this time. Thanks Yehuda.

Where to begin, he asks. What if the boy is 14 and the girl 13? Is there an epidemic of 13-year-old girls out there getting knocked up? Should we establish social policy for all America based on the aberrant behavior of stupid lovesick puppies? Is it not possible that 13-year-old girls would get pregnant less often if they knew that abortion was not an option? I don’t know, and I imagine Yehuda doesn’t either.

I am inconsistent on the morality of women raped having an abortion. I knew it when I wrote that, and I acknowledge it still. It’s a tough call. On the one hand the baby is not guilty of any crime and deserves to live. On the other the mother has been traumatized and could feel that her body is being violated yet again. Do I have to be consistent? Is life black and white, Yehuda? OK, if you insist. Here’s a solution. Castrate the rapist and offer psychological counseling the mother. When the baby is born, she can choose to keep her child or she can choose to give it up for adoption.

Yehuda claims to find a group more defenseless than human beings developing in the wombs of their mothers. While it is hard to penetrate his impassioned prose, I think he means babies not provided with loving families, brought into this world by uncaring pro-life fanatics who (here Yehuda starts rambling a bit, or maybe this part will be edited out before you read it) choose war over feeding and educating its population, catering to the wealthy. Huh? I know there are problems in the world Yehuda, and I know there is poverty, and I know that Bush is still president. But it’s not the fault of a child conceived in the womb of a recent MBA who doesn’t want to go onto the mommy-track.

Finally Yehuda gets to the core of my argument. And then misses the mark completely. Yes, I have a problem with “Clergy for Choice” but I don’t think the group has a guilty conscience. The ones who should have a guilty conscience, he argues, are those who support governments that are anti-child, anti-poor and anti-women. If there are such clergymen in America I think they should be defrocked immediately!

My argument was with clergy who pretend that the Hebrew bible supports individual choice according to one’s own conscience and religious beliefs. This argument is comparable to that of ante-bellum southerners who thumped their bibles and quoted its passages in favor of the abomination that was slavery. Was slavery immoral? They argued it was not, that it was at least morally neutral or, some had it, a moral good, a moral necessity. I know what passages they quoted; I can’t think what the clergy for choice found in Hebrew Scriptures to leave it up to the woman to decide on her own conscience whether to have an abortion or not. I believe that the clerical spokesperson for this organization will have his say in this issue as well, so I will look for the citations with baited breath.

To me “Clergy for Choice” is in the same category as “Compassionate Conservative.” Both are disingenuous oxymorons in full gallop. Arguing the morality of abortion on demand is an example of the banality of expediency. Slave owners were moral and doing what they though best; World War II Germans were moral and doing what they thought best; suicide bombers think themselves moral and do what they think best. But saying it doesn’t make it so. Not in the ante-bellum south, not in 1940’s Europe, not now.

Should we criminalize abortion again? That genie is long ago out of the bottle and the bottle is broken. It’s a promise made by conservative politicians intent on duping the gullible while raking in the profits. Abortion is a moral issue now, no longer a legal one. Let’s look around us as Yehuda suggests and see the moral abyss we are in when we pretend that the willful destruction of the innocents is excusable.