Baseball Still the Perfect Game, Even in These Troubled Times

Most people who have an inkling of baseball history think Albert Goodwill Spalding, the old New York Knickerbockers, and Branch Rickey must be rolling in their graves right now.

In the midst of an 1870s betting scandal, Henry Chadwick, one of baseball's great founding fathers, wrote that "baseball has fallen."

That was in the 1870s. It is now 2009. Baseball is still here.

I'm not sure anyone can accurately predict what the final legacy of steroids will be, but I am sure that baseball will survive.

I should preface by saying that my greatest love in sports has always been the Pittsburgh Steelers. 

It might surprise you that a die-hard football fan would still consider baseball not only the national pastime, but also the most perfect game every devised and by far the best game to watch.

Baseball is all of those things. Of all four major sports (with hockey or auto racing occupying the fourth spot, depending on your likes and dislikes), baseball has the richest history. 

It has everything you'd want. It's an utterly American game from top to bottom.  

One can reasonably argue that every sport is purely American in nature, but baseball has a special distinction. More than any other sport baseball has grown up, and evolved along with the nation.

Football grew up quickly from rugby and other close derivations. Hockey started on the frozen ice of Canada and then slowly migrated south. Basketball, the only sport truly invented in America, also grew up quickly.

But baseball, like the outfield wall at Fenway Park, has slowly, haphazardly meandered from point to point. 

When baseball was in its infancy, during the 1840s, America was still finding its way after having orphaned itself from mother England. The Civil War that reunified a divided nation also spread the virtue of baseball to places outside of New York, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn.

As America's entrepreneurial consciousness evolved, so did baseball. Baseball went from a backyard, city street, open field game between amateurs to a business where the gate receipts drove the clubs.

As the frontier was pushed back to the Pacific, baseball spread to the newly settled areas. Everywhere America went, it took baseball along for the ride.

As the new century dawned, baseball was fully recognized as America's national game.  Origin myths, just like those that gave Christopher Columbus the bulk of historical credit for finding America and romanticized the early relationship between Native Americans and the Plymouth settlers, were devised to protect these origins. 

Instead of Christopher Columbus and his Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria, baseball invented Abner Doubleday and Cooperstown, New York.

What America did, baseball did with also.

When Americans became gamblers and purveyors of alcohol, baseball allowed beer sales at games and dealt with the issues of gambling in the stands.

When America went to war, so did baseball.  Whether it was Christy Mathewson and Ty Cobb immortalized in uniform in grainy black and white, or the endless war bond drives and public appearances, baseball was there.

Baseball hit a wall in 1919, but when the 1920s started roaring, baseball roared right along as Ruth and the home run revolutionized the game.

When America was depressed, so was baseball. Teams were forced to get creative in their business ventures so that they didn't have to fold.

When America went back to war, baseball went again. Just as women went to the factories to replace men off in the thick of the fighting, women took to the baseball diamonds.

Baseball has had everything: war, peace, more war, more peace, still more war, scandal, corruption, czars, great patriots, heroes, the strong, the weak, all of it.

But baseball, especially when it was developing alongside the country, was something else too. It was the very embodiment of the American Dream that we hold so dear.

Baseball was the great leveler. The sons of wealthy magnates had just as good a chance of success in the bigs as the sons of poor coal miners. Baseball was a chance to strike out on one's own and live the American Dream. 

Honus Wagner lived it. His greatest motivation for success before was getting out of the mines and become a barber. He took to baseball and became one of the game's most endearing heroes.

Even now, as baseball tries to weather yet another set of storms, it is still indelibly tied to America. 

In fact, it's not just tied. Baseball is America.