I really liked the movie 42. I particularly liked the religious social justice themes advances by Brooklyn Dodgers GM Branch Rickey as portrayed by Harrison Ford.
This clip was one of my favorite moments:
During the spring and early summer months, baseball is almost our family religion. Being part of baseball has taught us a lot about race, class, and gender. In many ways, one of the great values of sports is the way that it can bring us together despite the things which often divide us. This does not mean that sports are immune from those things. It just means that sports provide us another angle to perceive and conceptualize the world. Sports gives us an opportunity to deconstruct our paradigms and assumptions. Of course, sometimes it just reinforces them.
I don’t care if HE likes baseball… I CARE that HE likes me!
Yeah, the clip and the post are really not about baseball.
Not related directly to the clip, but your title made me think of the Kenneth Patchen Poem “The Origin of Baseball”
Someone had been walking in and out
Of the world without coming
To much decision about anything.
The sun seemed too hot most of the time.
There weren’t enough birds around
And the hills had a silly look
When he got on top of one.
The girls in heaven, however, thought
Nothing of asking to see his watch
Like you would want someone to tell
A joke – “Time,” they’d say, “what’s
That mean – Time?”, laughing with the edges
Of their white mouths, like a flutter of paper
In a mad house. And he’d stumble over
General Sherman or Elizabeth B.
Browning, muttering, “Can’t you keep
Your big wings out of the aisle?” But down
Again, there’d be millions of people without
Enough to eat and men with guns just
Standing there shooting each other.
So he wanted to throw something
And he picked up a baseball.
Yes, but he likes Hockey more!
Yeah, hockey went into apostasy when Canadian and New England team started moving to the Southern U.S. 🙂