Baseball, Buddhism & Life

I love baseball and, as a long-suffering Cleveland Indians fan (now Cleveland Guardians), it probably means another year of oh-so-close-but-not-quite.

But there's always next year ;) …

When April comes and the season starts, it's another of the many reasons I rejoice in the return of spring. Of course, I love the new green, the warming temperatures, the daffodils, and the bulging buds of new leaves on the trees, but the return of baseball makes everything even MORE exciting.

As Al Gallagher, a baseball player in the 1970's said, “There are three things in life which I really love: God, my family, and baseball. The only problem—once baseball season starts, I change the order around a bit.”

Now, baseball doesn't possess me, like some people, but I watch or listen to a game a few days a week. I rarely miss a Cleveland Indians game. As a Cleveland fan, as anyone who follows baseball already knows, gives the season a little extra edge, a lot more drama, and invariably a lot of disappointment.

But for me, watching baseball is meditative. When you're watching a baseball game there's a lot of time to reflect. The season itself is long, from April to October, and the games can be verrrrrrry long. In a good pitcher's duel there can be a long time between an offensive play and the roar of the crowd. You can fall asleep watching a game in the 4th inning and wake up in the 7th without missing a hit or a score. Baseball gives you a lot of time to reflect and, well, just loaf, which most of us don't do nearly enough of.

Bill Veeck, a former Cleveland Indians' owner and the one credited for integrating the American League when he signed Larry Doby in 1947, said of baseball that it “is a game to be savored, not gulped.”

Like life, it's so much better when you're not thinking about getting somewhere or achieving something, but letting life itself lead you, responding to things as they are, not as you planned them or would like them to be.

One of the most important lessons baseball teaches is the spirituality of imperfection. In the book by that name, The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning, by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham, the authors write “baseball, alone in sport, considers errors to be part of the game, part of its rigorous truth.” In baseball, errors are tallied and publicized and flashed on the screen for every team and every player. Errors are accepted as part of the game.

Baseball expects mistakes from its players. And, it's most coveted accomplishment: the so-called “perfect game” can only be achieved if the pitcher is perfect AND his teammates also play perfectly, with no errors.

Jodo and Shin Buddhism teaches us that we are, by nature, bombu or foolish beings. It is our nature to make mistakes. We are NOT perfect players. We make errors. But it's OK. That is who we are. And, as David Brazier Sensei says, I'm not OK and you're not OK, and that is perfectly OK!

From this Shin Buddhist perspective, when we  become aware of and acknowledge our limits and our fundamental foolishness it is the we can realize a limitless flow of compassion.

But, thankfully, unlike in Baseball, our errors aren't counted and published in the morning news every day.

But there's more to baseball that models the Dharma very closely. I'll use the three marks of existence, as the three bases, that as Buddhists, we try to come to an understanding and acceptance of: The three marks are impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and lack of a discrete self or an “I.” These three marks characterize the interconnectedness / interdependence, impermanence, and change that we accept in the Dharma.

First base is lack of a discrete self. As a team sport, baseball is not just about the pitcher. Even when the pitcher is throwing strikes, if the ball gets away from the catcher, or the centerfielder can't find the ball in the sun, there will be an error and the hitter will get a base or two.

The interdependence of baseball is awesome and it sometimes seems nearly impossible that all the players, and contributing causes and conditions can come together positively to score runs and have a dominating offensive win or to rule defensively in a no-hitter or one-hitter.

No matter how much we try and wish to, it is unlikely that we can become a Buddha by ourselves alone. In fact, in truth, we cannot do much of anything by ourselves alone. Self-power only gets us so far. Other power is needed to round the bases and slide into home safely.

Second base is unsatisfactoriness. Baseball can break your heart and in a long season, lasting from Spring to Fall, with more than 160 regular season games, players and fans alike can go through many, many ups and downs, 11th inning walk-off home runs for a victory, and crazy-making, gut-wrenching losses.

As a Cleveland fan, I can testify that every spring when the Indians charge to the lead in the Central Division, I'm dreaming of exciting post-season games, and a World Series maybe. Then they hit a period where they lose 8 games in a row and I see this year is going to be just like last year, and I get disappointed and don't want to watch another game.

But I do. I have hope. I keep going.

And then there are those games that you are sure your team is going to win ... going into the ninth inning, up 4 runs ... and then the opposing team takes the game from you with a last inning, seven-run hitting display.

But as Tommy Lasorda said, “no matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are, you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference.”

Life is like that. Some days you think that this day just couldn't get any better and maybe, just maybe, you're in for a great week … or month … or year. But, just as quickly, in the next few days, something happens to remind you that life is not perfect and you just have to keep playing anyway. There will be days where everything will flow and days where nothing works. But we keep playing through the season.

Third base is impermanence. Like a good pitcher, life is constantly changing. It throws you curveballs, sinkers, change-ups, sliders, fastballs. But we have one job to do: to keep hitting until the right pitch comes. We keep fouling them off until we can get a hit. We keep trying and, if we get a hit, we have to commit to run the bases. If we strike out, we have another chance at bat.

In the long season of baseball and life, we have to prepare to play through a lot of different weather. Snow at the beginning and end of the season, rain delays and rain-outs, blinding sun where outfielders lose the ball, and 100+ degree temperatures draining your energy. Weather disrupts our plans, brings trees down on our cars and houses, floods our houses, and can take our lives. But we keep playing through the changes nature throws at us.

And sometimes you get traded and you're no longer a Cleveland Guardian, but a designated hitter for the New York Yankees. And in life, we rarely stay in the same job, with the same company, or live in the same house, the same city, or even the same state or country. We make the best of it, though, and even thrive in the change.

Sometimes we're on deck, expectant to hit against the pitcher we've had great success against, and the opposing team's coach replaces that pitcher for a lefty-lefty match up … and our current record against left-handed pitchers is abysmal.

Sometimes we steal base and get caught, retiring the side with three outs. And sometimes we get away with it. In our lives, we have all done or said things we shouldn't have, or aren't proud of. Sometimes others are aware and call us on them, sometimes only we know what we've done. And sometimes we are punished by a system: our parents or the legal system.

Yet, caught, punished, or not, we have faith in the transcendent order of life. Of karmic action. Whatever we do, we know that our actions cause other actions and we must be prepared to face the consequences of those actions.

The sports writer, Paul Gallico, wrote that “no other game in the world is as tidy and dramatically neat as baseball, with cause and effect, crime and punishment...”

And back to Bill Veeck again, he says that baseball is an “orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can't get you off.”

We've covered three, so now home plate. And home plate is this: no matter what life throws at us, the best we can do is to “keep going.”

I grew up with three brothers and a father who loved baseball. I suspect it is what incited my love of the game. It stirs a deep emotional response of safety, comfort, contentment, and summer.

The low-grade hum of baseball crowds on the radio or TV, the rhythm of the play-by-play and color announcers, punctuated by whistles and cheers, is like crickets on a warm summer night, the soothing sound of a gentle rain, or the hum of a Buddhist chant.

And while fingering my 108-bead mala, I think of what I learned about the baseball itself—that there are 108 stitches on a baseball—did anyone know that!?

I'll close by echoing the words of the poet, Sharon Olds, when she says, “Baseball is reassuring. It makes me feel as if the world is not going to blow up.”

Sometimes we take ourselves too seriously … take the world too seriously… and we take our spirituality too seriously. Sometimes the only way to invite our soul is to loaf, observe a blade of grass, or to play ball! My apologies to Walt Whitman for the adjusted reference.