My oldest child turns 18 (!) in a few weeks, and, for his birthday, we splurged for box seats at Monday night’s Phillies game. It was a little chilly, but not unseasonably so for an April game. We settled into our seats, bought some food (beer for me), and watched a fairly uneventful few innings of baseball. In fact, most of the action happened before we arrived, when the visiting New York Mets put up three runs in the top of the first inning, partly due to a poor defensive showing by Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm—one that led to significant, if also humorous, postgame controversy. After that, it was a peaceful evening for several innings—the hum of the fans, punctuated by vendors’ cries of “Get yer ice cold beer here!”; the peach-colored sunset reflecting off the Philadelphia skyline; the laughter of little kids begging for the Phillie Phanatic’s attention. If my own (mostly older) children hadn’t taken multiple trips to the concession stand, it would’ve been (to borrow an insight from the great baseball film Field of Dreams) “perfect.”
The whole experience, ironically enough, reminded me of a new campaign on MLB.TV. During commercial breaks on Major League Baseball’s streaming service, the following promotion (or one like it) is being used to transition from advertisements to the game itself:
Here we watch (or ponder) Japanese superstar (and 2021 American League MVP) Shohei Ohtani as he focuses on the catcher’s mitt and calmly delivers a strike. The action takes place in slow motion, framed by a baseball diamond, which registers the passing time like an hour glass—a symbol of the relation between eternity and temporality. Additional “Baseball Zen” promos capture a similar dynamic but with a different focal point—a grounds crew laying out a tarp during a summer rain shower, a solitary line field marker leaving a strand of snow-white chalk along a baseline. The idea, it seems, is to “lean in” to the spiritual quality that makes baseball unique. Like other sports, baseball is a contest of skill and strength, but it is also more than that. Baseball is a state of mind, a way of being-in-the-world, a form of religio. For once, it seems, those who market MLB have figured out how to underline the game’s intrinsic beauty and elegance.
Still, I can’t help but wonder if “zen” is the concept best corresponds to baseball’s structure and import. It’s too big of an issue to dig into here, but, as Michael Branningan has argued,1 baseball’s appeal to Asian culture (where it remains exceedingly popular), largely has to do with its similarity to the ideas and practices of the martial arts—what is known in Japan, for example, as Bushidō. Of course, both Japanese Zen and Bushidō have points of overlap—particularly with regard to the need for self-renunciation—but the latter essentially has to do with konjo—a “fighting spirit” that, through “austere and endless training,” seeks to dominate the opponent. At the very least, this would seem to run counter to the message conveyed by the “Baseball Zen” spots. Indeed, it may even be the case that baseball fits more readily with a Neoplatonic/Christian approach to spirituality, as I myself have argued in a recent essay:
Gregory Bassham has written that there is a “Zen of the art of hitting,” arguing that the principles of Zen Buddhism (including patience, relaxation, and self-knowledge) “can be applied to the supremely difficult art of hitting a baseball.” This claim is doubtless true, though, by the same token, the Buddhist worldview would seem less adept at shedding light on the inner drama of baseball. The Buddhist seeks “emptiness” (Śūnyatā), a way of perception by which the presuppositions and stories that render the world comprehensible are bracketed off, thereby detaching the practitioner from meaning, stress, and suffering. Yet baseball, on the other hand, presupposes narrative: the hitter is on a quest, seeking to return home. This quest, moreover, is fraught with peril and affliction. Statistically speaking, hitters fail far more often than they succeed, and thus failure is indivisible from the game itself. In short, baseball is a game rooted in precisely those features excluded by Buddhist Śūnyatā—personal meaning, stress, and suffering.
Yet, such debates, while intriguing, are mostly theoretical. The bottom line is that baseball is the rare game (golf would seem to be other) that not only requires the intensive mental training and spiritual openness of those who play it, but also tenders these components as “goods” to the fans and young players who love the sport. This is precisely what the “Baseball Zen” promos get right, and I hope MLB will continue to develop this way of elevating the sport.
By the way, it’s worth adding that baseball can be really exciting too. That sleepy game on Monday night eventually morphed into a nail-biter, with the Phillies rallying for five runs in the bottom of the eighth to secure a close victory. Zen, finally, gave way to elation.
See his excellent essay in Baseball and Philosophy: Thinking Outside the Batter’s Box (2004), edited by Eric Bronson.