Traditions
on august 25, 1990, the Cincinnati Reds released a forty-year-old outfielder named Ken Griffey to make room on their roster for a younger player. The Reds were in first place, with a 6½-game lead over both the Giants and Dodgers, and with just over a month left in the season, Cincinnati had its eyes on the playoffs. Griffey had been an important cog in the Big Red Machine, Cincinnati’s World Series championship teams of the 1970s, but he had spent several years playing for the Yankees and the Braves before returning to the Reds in 1988. For Griffey, the opportunity awaiting him more than made up for the disappointment of leaving a contender (the Reds would sweep the Athletics in four games in that fall’s World Series). The previous year, his son, Ken Griffey Jr., had joined the Seattle Mariners, making the Griffeys the first father-son combination to play in the major leagues at the same time. Now, in an arrangement worked out by the Reds and Mariners and approved by the National League, Griffey would sign with Seattle after being released by Cincinnati, making the Griffeys the first father-son combination to play on the same team.
On Friday, August 31, at the Kingdome in Seattle, the Griffeys played their first game together—a night game against the Kansas City Royals. When the game started, father and son took side-by-side positions in the outfield, with Junior in center field and his dad in right. Ken Griffey Sr. batted second in the lineup; his son came up right behind him. In the bottom of the first inning, the older Griffey got the first hit of the game, a single to center field off pitcher Storm Davis. Moments later, Junior cracked a single into right. In their first at-bat of their first game together, the Griffeys became the first father-son teammates to register back-to-back hits. Exactly two weeks later, in a game in Anaheim against the California Angels, the Griffeys became the first father and son combo to hit back-to-back home runs in a major league game.
On one level, the Griffeys’ experience as teammates is a curiosity—an interesting anecdote about two of the many colorful characters who played the game. But on another level, the Griffeys illustrated something more profound: the meaning of the game. While baseball has served as a pillar of nationalism, a tool of assimilation, a battleground of labor and business, and a vehicle of globalization, it has mostly been a source of unity, bringing communities and families together as its lore and traditions are passed from one generation to the next. Parents sometimes grab a mitt and play a game of catch with their children. They take their kids to major and minor league games. Children and their parents have been following major league baseball for decades. Poet Carl Sandburg, recalling his nineteenth-century childhood, wrote in 1953 that he could “from day to day name the leading teams and the tail enders in the National League and the American Association.”
Baseball has served to unite communities, and even the country. For instance, except for areas on the fringe of New England—such as western Connecticut, where the Yankees enjoy a significant following—virtually everyone in the region lives and dies with the Red Sox. In Brooklyn, the Dodgers broke down ethnic and even class lines. In The Boys of Summer, former sportswriter Roger Kahn recalled an incident that took place when he was seven: His father, a well-respected high school history teacher, took him to a Dodgers game at Ebbets Field, where, to the younger Kahn’s amazement, Gordon Kahn became engaged in conversation about the Dodgers with a jacketless fan in suspenders and a straw hat who lacked a front tooth. Baseball not only united fans who followed the same team, but it also provided common ground for fans of rival teams. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her memoir Wait Till Next Year, described how, as a young Brooklyn Dodgers fan in suburban Rockville Centre, on Long Island, she enjoyed the frequent give-and-take with a pair of Giants fans who ran the local butcher shop. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City, President George W. Bush threw out the first pitch in the World Series at Yankee Stadium. The act—undertaken at the national pastime—symbolized the determination of the country to survive terrorism, the unity of the country at that time, and the strength of American culture.
Baseball also brings families together, as the tradition of rooting for a particular team is passed from generation to generation. Kahn wrote about the bond he developed with his father over their mutual love for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and in Goodwin’s case, the Dodgers united the whole family. When she was six, her father taught her how to keep score while listening to Dodgers games on the radio. For years afterward, she would spend her afternoons listening to the game on the radio and recording the action in a red scorebook. When her father returned from work, Goodwin recreated the game for him, play by play, not realizing that he could have read an account of the game in the afternoon newspaper.
Keeping score is one of the many rituals associated with attending a ball game. Although modern electronic scoreboards trace players’ performances throughout the game, the demand for scorecards is still high enough that ballpark vendors sell them. Scorekeeping is a skill passed from generation to generation, and some fans have adopted elaborate systems to track the game. The attraction of keeping score remains strong today because baseball is a statistics-driven game. Every run, hit, and error is added up at the end of the game. Every at-bat is counted toward a player’s average. Batting above or below .300 is the difference between a superior player and an average one, while winning twenty games is the mark of a pitcher who is having an excellent season. Is it any wonder that some fans became disillusioned when baseball records appeared tainted?
Baseball has developed its own set of rituals, many of which revolve around the first day of the season. The Opening Day ceremony is repeated annually in almost every major and minor league ballpark. Red, white, and blue bunting decorates the stadium. A local dignitary—often a mayor or governor, and sometimes the president—throws out the first pitch. As a military band performs the national anthem, fighter jets fly over the field. Other traditions are maintained throughout the season. The seventh-inning stretch, during which fans stand up and sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” interrupts every game.
Even the consumption of certain foods has become a part of baseball’s tradition. Hot dogs and beer, consumed at ball games since the nineteenth century, as well as peanuts and Cracker Jack, mentioned in the lyrics of the century-old “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” have long been considered baseball cuisine. Many stadiums also offer their own specialty—traditional local favorites not available in many other parks—including cheesesteak sandwiches in Philadelphia, bratwurst in Milwaukee, fish tacos in San Diego, and Rocky Mountain oysters (deep-fried bull testicles) in Denver. Several ballparks even serve kosher hot dogs.
Ballplayers have developed their own traditions, many based on superstitions. When a pitcher is working on a no-hitter, the other players, not wanting to break his concentration, avoid him in the dugout. And, because it might jinx the effort, under no circumstances should players, or anyone else employed by the team, including radio and television broadcasters, mention that a no-hitter is underway. Many players avoid stepping on the foul lines while walking on the field. Some players on a hot streak attempt to repeat their daily routine without any changes until the streak is over. Red Sox third baseman Wade Boggs, known for his many superstitions, ate a chicken dinner before every game.
Fans of individual teams have developed their own traditions that are passed down from generation to generation. On Opening Day in Cincinnati, where the first professional baseball team took the field in 1869, schools are closed and a parade is held for the Reds. Despite the almost universal excitement of catching a home run ball, fans at Chicago’s Wrigley Field throw the ball back if the home run was hit by a member of the visiting team, a practice that can get fans ejected in most other ballparks. Between innings, some ballparks stage mascot races. In Washington, DC, mascots wearing large masks of presidents run around the base paths. In some places, mascot races are tied to food. The Milwaukee Brewers stage a “sausage race” during each game, in which the contestants are dressed as a hot dog, a bratwurst, a kielbasa, a chorizo, and an Italian sausage, while the Pittsburgh Pirates hold a pierogi race.
Music has also become identified with some baseball teams. In the early twentieth century, a group of intransigent Red Sox fans—including Boston mayor John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, the grandfather of President John F. Kennedy—established a fan club called the Royal Rooters. The Royal Rooters adopted the Broadway song “Tessie” as their own. Today, Red Sox fans have embraced the Neil Diamond song “Sweet Caroline” (a song Diamond later claimed was inspired by a photo of President Kennedy’s daughter), which the Fenway faithful sing in the middle of the eighth inning. At the conclusion of every game in Yankee Stadium, the public address system plays a recording of the “Theme from New York, New York”—the Frank Sinatra version if the team wins and the Liza Minnelli version if the team loses. At Chicago’s Wrigley Field, following a tradition started by the late broadcaster Harry Caray, a celebrity leads the crowd in singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Unlike the Yankees, however, the Cubs have adopted a simpler way to inform the neighborhood of the result of the game, raising a flag with a “W” when they win and a flag with an “L” when they lose.
Support for individual teams has fueled the sale of baseball caps, jerseys, and pennants. Kahn reported that as a kid, he was given a child’s Dizzy Dean uniform, a gift he rejected because Dean played on the Cardinals rather than on his beloved Dodgers. Goodwin admitted to owning a Brooklyn Dodgers cap when she was a teenager in the fifties. Baseball clubs have encouraged the collection of team merchandise by scheduling promotions in which caps, T-shirts, and even bobblehead dolls are given away.
Collecting baseball cards has been a pastime of young fans since the nineteenth century, when tobacco companies produced such cards. A 1909 card depicting Pirates shortstop Honus Wagner is now worth more than $2 million because Wagner, who objected to tobacco use, ordered the American Tobacco Company to cease production after only forty were issued. Since the 1950s, baseball cards have been big business.
Tabletop baseball games, some based on simple pinball machines, have been around since the nineteenth century. In 1961 a Bucknell University math student introduced a statistics-based game called Strat-O-Matic, in which fantasy games are played based on players’ actual statistics. With the publication of Glen Waggoner’s Rotisserie League Baseball in 1984, which demonstrated how to organize an imaginary pennant race utilizing players’ current statistics, fantasy leagues formed in many offices across the country.
Perhaps the epitome of a tapping into a fan’s imagination, however, was the introduction of fantasy camps in the 1980s. At these camps, fans—mostly middle-aged men—pay thousands of dollars to play baseball with their retired heroes at spring training facilities in the weeks before the current major leaguers report.
Baseball’s reach into American culture extends well beyond the grasp of the major or minor leagues. In 1937 a man named Carl Stotz formed a youth league in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Today the organization formed by Stotz, Little League Baseball, operates in all fifty states and in eighty countries. In 1947 a tournament of all-star teams from every member league was established, culminating in an annual Little League World Series played in Williamsport. Many future major lea-guers, including Boog Powell of the Orioles, Gary Sheffield of the Marlins, and Jason Varitek of the Red Sox, have participated in the Little League World Series. Other Little League players have also made history. Thirteen-year-old Mo’ne Davis, representing a team from Philadelphia, pitched a two-hit shutout against a team from Nashville in the 2014 Little League World Series. Fresh off her victory, Sports Illustrated ran her photo on the magazine cover, making her the first Little League player to earn that honor.
Adults play the game, too. For decades, millions of grown men and women have spent their summer evenings participating in a less demanding version of the sport called slow-pitch softball. Other adults play by standard baseball rules. In the first half of the twentieth century, amateur and semiprofessional teams flourished in almost every town in America. Some of them, called company teams, were sponsored by major employers like the Great Western Sugar Company, Southern Bell Telephone, and Baldwin Piano. Every summer from 1915 until 1947, ten teams not affiliated with Major League Baseball—including amateur, semipro, and even Negro league teams—were invited to Denver to participate in the Denver Post Tournament.
In 1994, during the reorganization of exhibits, workers at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown discovered an old photograph of a baseball player hidden under one of the display cases. On the back of the photo, someone had written, “You were never too tired to play catch. On your days off, you helped build the Little League field. You always came to watch me play. You were a Hall of Fame Dad. I wish you could share this moment with me.” The curator of the museum passed the photo along to Sports Illustrated, which published a story about it. A journalist for a small-town newspaper in upstate New York recognized that the baseball uniform belonged to a defunct company team representing Wellsville Sinclair Oil, and he eventually discovered it to be a photo of Joe O’Donnell, a former player on the team who died in 1966. The photo had been hidden in the Hall of Fame in 1988 by O’Donnell’s son, Pat, who believed that players on company teams also should be honored by the Hall. Hall of Fame officials agreed, and hid the photo once again, near where it was first discovered. The hidden photo honors the thousands of invisible men and women who played for company teams—but it also shows a son’s love for his father, illustrating the bond formed between generations of baseball fans.