The World Is Doomed, Let's Play Ball!

Americans are more pessimistic about their futures than ever. Can baseball save us from the downward spiral?

It’s 9am on a Monday morning, and I’m standing in line outside the Bright House Field in Clearwater, Florida, waiting to see some baseball. Today’s game is between the Yankees and Phillies. I’m so giddy that I don’t even care that I’ve spent the last twenty minutes listening to a guy from Long Island talk about his bobblehead collection.

“The Mets actually have the nerve to give out a bobblehead on the last day of spring training,” Eric Marinbach tells me. “I had to rearrange my whole rental car schedule, my whole flight schedule. But it’s a Daniel Murphy bobblehead, so what can I do?”

Marinbach estimates that he has over 900 bobbleheads, most of them on display in his bedroom. He sometimes wakes up to “1800 eyes staring at me,” he admits, which I find terrifying but also a little endearing. A grown man doesn’t collect hundreds of bulbous-headed doll versions of his favorite players without being really enthusiastic about baseball.

Marinbach isn’t the only crazy-obsessive fan here in Clearwater. Although the game doesn’t officially start for another four hours, and the stadium doesn’t even open its doors till 10:30am, there are already a few hundred fans waiting outside. They’re dressed in the colors (and sometimes the full uniforms) of their favorite teams, and most are staring at the front gate like greyhounds waiting to burst out of their cage.

Tony Bacon, a 72-year-old New Jersey native who now lives in Florida, tells me about his staggering collection of baseball memorabilia, which takes up most of the third floor in his home and includes a vintage schedule for the Philadelphia Quakers from 1887. He thinks the sport has lost its way. He tells me about Leon “Goose” Goslin, one of baseball’s legends who played “only for love of the game” and died penniless, his friends forced to take donations just to bury him.

“It’s just sad,” he says. “It’s all about the money these days, and it’s taking the fun out of baseball.”

The gates swing open and the crowd shoves their way inside. When we cross the threshold into baseball territory, the smiles get noticeably larger, and all the grumbling about overpaid athletes disappears. It’s time to get down to business, making a mad dash to the dugouts for autographs or the nearest concession stand for a morning beer.

Americans don’t have much reason to smile these days, at least according to them. A recent Gallup poll found that 63 percent of U.S. citizens think the economy is getting worse, and the same number think inflation is ruining our lives. Six in ten Americans are pessimistic about the future, the highest level of national negativity since 2018. A Wall Street Journal-NORC poll found that 44 percent of Americans think their finances are in the toilet (I'm paraphrasing) and 78 percent think their children's futures are pretty much fucked.

Back in the 1930s, when the U.S. economy was fodder for John Steinbeck novels, baseball essentially became our national panacea. Players like Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio became icons, even among people who wouldn’t go to a ballgame on a dare. The world may’ve seemed hopeless and scary, but baseball offered the huddled masses a chance to escape and lose themselves in the exploits of larger-than-life sports heroes.

Could our national pastime once again become the diversion a rattled and inflation-weary country needs? I came to spring training in Florida to find out.

If there’s a better antidote for the “the world is fucked” blues than a baseball game on a warm day, I don’t know what it is. The air seems cleaner in here, the field almost unreasonably green. I can feel my shoulders start to relax and my worries drift away. Walking into a baseball stadium reminds me of what I’ve read about heroin. It’s a burst of euphoria that you wish would never stop. I want to start singing that Paul Simon song about baseball and cougars. “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Whoo-whoo-whoo!”

But then again, it’s easy to feel joy when you’ve got a belly full of beer and it’s a 70-degree day in March.

*    *    *

I’ve only been in the Phillies locker-room for ten minutes and I’ve already made a rookie mistake. Baseball players are accustomed to answering questions about batting averages and game predictions and statistical minutiae. They’re not quite as comfortable answering philosophical questions about baseball’s role as a calming distraction during difficult times. Asking an athlete whether their sport “still has the potential to inspire” is the equivalent of asking a hedge-fund trader to write a poem about sunsets.

Most of the players look at me with wide eyes, somewhere between panic and bafflement. Their answers run the gamut from “Oh man, I got nothing” to “Can I get a day or two to think about it?”

I consider refining my questions. What Depression-era baseball icon will they be emulating this season? Will they be like Babe Ruth, a lovable drunk who promises home runs to sick children and then bangs their mothers later? Or like Lou Gehrig, coming down with an incurable disease and then giving a heart-wrenching farewell speech? But that might be… too on the nose.

Babe Ruth distracts a kid from remembering that his parents are broke.

One mustachioed player in a towel tells me about his mother, who was diagnosed with breast cancer when he was just a teenager. “She told me that one of the things that got her through her cancer was coming to watch me play games,” he says. “I’ve always thought that if a woman with cancer who’s fighting for her life can get help from baseball, then somebody fighting for a paycheck should be able to do the same.”

The day before, I went to a “Legends of Baseball” game at Bright House. The lineup included Jim Kaat, Bert Blyleven, Doug Creek and a bunch of other guys I’d never heard of. (Apparently in baseball, “legend” is loosely defined as “not dead yet.”) I ended up talking to a player who looked exactly like Wilford Brimley.

“We think if people come out to the ballpark, they’ll have a great time and we hope that does it for them,” Wilford told me. “We got a long ways to go to an economic recovery, don’t we? It’s gonna take a few extra innings to get this thing right.”

I have no idea what any of that means, but if my house went into foreclosure and my life savings disappeared and some old dude in a baseball cap told me “It’s gonna take a few extra innings to get this thing right,” I would punch him right in the throat.

The “Legends” game itself was more illuminating. Just before the first pitch, a helicopter landed on the field and a group of six soldiers dressed in camouflage jumped out to hand-deliver a ball. The crowd erupted in cheers, seemingly emboldened by this pointless display of military might.

The game itself wasn’t nearly as exciting. Bats were swung like housewives trying to protect themselves from intruders, and foul balls rained from the sky like hail. They fell into the stands, the walkways, sometimes even ricocheting off the bathroom doors. “Heads up,” people yelled, which I guess was code for, “Run towards that projectile as fast as you can!” Adults and children alike lunged towards the balls, willingly throwing themselves in harm’s way for the chance at a free souvenir. Somebody actually body-checked me to get in the path of a foul ball, which bounced off his chest with a thud and, given his stunned expression, momentarily stopped his heart.

In the span of just a few hours, I witnessed a pretty accurate portrait of our national identity in the 21st century. We might not be able to throw or hit a ball with any accuracy, but we’ll have it transported to the stadium at great expense, in the biggest goddamn chopper you’ve ever seen.

You hear that thorax-rattling roar? That means America’s in town, and it’s time to play some motherfucking baseball!

*    *    *

The rain starts coming down just an hour before first pitch, and that’s when the Bright House Field disc jockey starts blaring “It’s Raining Men” over the stadium’s loudspeakers. It was basically a way to shout back at the weather, “You some kind of queer?” Because nature is easily intimidated by frat boy hazing, the clouds soon part and the players take the field.

The game is low scoring, which isn’t a shocker. Nothing that happens during spring training actually counts. They might as well be playing frisbee golf, for all it matters. There are a few hits and the crowd is appreciative, howling like they think the players care either way. Spring training is perfect for people who want their baseball without any drama or importance or stress. If your team does well, hooray! If they make fools of themselves, meh, whatever. Where’s the hot dog guy?

At some point, the Philly’s first baseman tries to catch a ball while keeping a foot on the base, and his body contorts into a position that’s reminiscent of a Downward-Facing Dog yoga pose. The crowd cheers, even though he didn’t technically get the runner out. I suppose that means they’re applauding him for a good effort, or for stretching.

The people who say there are no more heroes in baseball are wrong. Today’s “stars” may not have the scrappy determination of a Pepper Martin, or the prophetic powers of a Dizzy Dean, or the non-steroid-induced body mass of a Hank Greenberg. They may never have a candy bar or neuromuscular disease named after them, or have their baseball skills described, as Babe Ruth once was by a biographer, as “surging erectile power.” But that doesn’t mean they aren’t heroes in their own unconventional way.

A gaggle of fans are gathered near the Phillies dugout, shouting at the players on the field to try and get their attention. When their requests for autographs go unanswered—mostly because the players are trying to concentrate on the game—a teenage kid grows impatient and throws a ball into the dugout. And then, to make his intentions even more obvious, he throws a sharpie pen, which nearly clocks a player in the head.

Every generation gets the heroes it deserves. The 1930s needed Lou Gehrig, with his nobility in the face of great misfortune. In 2024, we apparently just need somebody who’s going to tolerate our obnoxious sense of entitlement, and not wince when we start hollering “Gimme!”

In the bottom of the sixth, a booming voice announces that today’s game is a sellout, with 9,394 fans in attendance. And then, as if God is making some not-so-subtle commentary, it starts to rain again. Hard. Monsoon hard. The playing, which has already been sloppy at best, becomes downright farcical. Players are slipping on the slick grass, and somebody loses his grip on a wet bat, sending it flying towards right field.

Some of the crowd runs towards shelter, but most don’t. There’s a guy standing next to me, dressed from head to toe in Yankees apparel, and although he’s getting soaked —he looks like a wet superhero—he doesn’t move. “What a fucking lousy day for a ballgame,” he says with a snarl, and then he takes a long swig from his beer. He stares out at the field, his eyes unblinking, with an expression of fierce determination.

This is baseball’s true inspirational metaphor, and it has nothing to do with the players. This fan standing in the rain, refusing to leave because he paid for a game and goddammit, he’s gonna get his game—he represents the true American spirit.

It either says something about out stubborn willingness to stand our ground and weather the storm, or that we’re a bunch of spoiled jackasses who don’t know when the party’s over and are too stupid or arrogant to get out of the rain. Maybe it’s a little bit of both?

I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with my fellow Americans, watching our beers rapidly fill with rainwater, muttering to the darkening clouds, “One more inning, one more inning, one more inning…”