infield dirt between your toes

If all you’ve ever been to are the overly slick professional productions designed to slide dollars from your wallet with ease while never challenging the status quo, it’s easy to forget that baseball is a game, founded in the mists of time by bored milkmaids¹ (who were then promptly excluded from the narrative of their own game and completely erased in favor of “an American military man whose masculinity was unimpeachable²³ .”) It’s a game, played by children and adults, one made complicated by matters of scale and self-importance.

What is a game? The wording differs slightly between the three august deciders of the English language on the internet - Oxford⁴ and Dictionary.Com⁵ agree on “pastime⁶ ” and “amusement,” while Merriam-Webster⁷ takes the more American definition of “physical or mental competition,” with the more playful definition taking second billing. Baseball is the American Game, except in all of the ways that it isn’t⁸ , and if you, like me, have made your home inside the humming carapace of professional sports, it’s really easy to, like old M-W, lose sight of the diversion of it all. Sandlot doesn’t.

Sandlot covers a broad spectrum of games, from extremely causal affairs in the park to games played at high schools in the early summer air to somewhat famous brighter-light attracting affairs on private property¹⁰ . It’s something everyone knows about, but no one knows exactly what to expect. As someone who has only been to two total games, it’s not really my place to offer some deep-diving insights (yet) but I couldn’t help but think about the wide gulf there’s been between the conceptual soul of the game and the mechanized body we see now.

It’s evocative, and inspirational, and thought-provoking. There’s a mix of talent and experience and a willingness to have fun - the idea that if you’re showing up, that’s what matters. The game is taken exactly as seriously as it needs to be - the grounders are run hard, but the bottle of Topo is always near. For someone who spent a long time writing about the systematic exclusion of women from the game, the casual inclusion of women on every team I’ve seen is refreshing. It’s a game played by adults who understand that there are bigger things in life than winning - but that winning is still sweet.

There’s something about that sentiment, as baseball fans look at the Sacramento A’s and the Chicago White Sox and the roofless Rays; at the legacy of sports betting and corrupt scouting; at the brief moments where we get to see the heart of the game peaking through amidst the codified carefully inoffense¹¹ of it all. There’s some part of me that - even if I were able to go back to the press box and the stopwatch and the radar gun days - will always love this.

The American Dream in so many ways is that you should never do anything unless you’re going to be great at it, unless you can get paid. The Millennial Side-Hustle tells us to never have a hobby you can’t monetize¹² . If it isn’t making you money or gaining you fame, stop doing it.

Sandlot baseball tells you to hang out with your friends, drink your refreshing beverage of choice, and see if you can hit a ball or two. There’s no money, there’s no fame, there’s just the sound of cicadas, the scent of sun-baked dirt, personal honor on the strike calls, and the knowledge that summer has come again.

1  To be fair, they invented “stool ball,” the predecessor of the English game “rounders,” the predecessor of baseball.

2  Ring, Jennifer. Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don’t Play Baseball. University of Illinois Press, 2009.

3  As this is not an academic paper, I can also make a note here to recommend in the highest that you read Stolen Bases as well as to condemn the Doubleday Myth, something I’d like to return to in greater detail with ties to modern baseball’s death but is outside of the scope of this current newsletter.

4  “Search results for ‘game.’” Oxford English Dictionary. https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=game. Accessed 22 November 2024. (Results listed this way because the full definition page is behind a subscription wall.)

5  “Game Definition & Meaning.” Dictionary.Com. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/game. Accessed 22 November 2024.

6  Itself a lexical blend or portmanteau of a casual way to pass the time.

7  “Game Definition & Meaning.” Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/game. Accessed 22 November 2024.

8  It’s not even the game known with the appellation “American” internationally - that glory goes to American Football, to distinguish it from both soccer/football and Aussie Rules.

9  Even in April 2023, when I snuck in a Mariners game in Seattle while on an unrelated work trip, as much as I tried to just let the experience of being at a game wash over me I still found myself trying to remember all the things I once took for granted. (Pitching still comes easy. I’ve lost a lot of what I knew on hitting.)

10  https://www.kut.org/sports/2022-07-19/jack-white-team-warstic-longtime-field-eastern-travis-county

11  to the money

12  guilty as charged, multiple times