Thursday, April 14, 2005
Baseball and Law: Twin Sons of Different Mothers?
The late Bart Giamatti, a professor of comparative literature, President of Yale University, and Commissioner of Baseball, was a great writer who sometimes wrote about baseball. One of his best baseball essays, Baseball and the American Character, contains an analysis of how baseball and the law share much in common. Since I teach and write about law, and watch and write about baseball, I find this passage particularly interesting. So, here is an excerpt from Giamatti's great essay (oh, by the way,did I mention that Giamatti was a Red Sox fan?):
"Law, defined as a complex of formal rules, agreed-upon boundaries, authoritative arbiters, custom, and a system of symmetrical opportunities and demands, is enshrined in baseball. Indeed, the layout of the field shows baseball's essential passion for and reliance on precise proportions and clearly defined limits, all the better to give shape to energy and an arena for expression. The pitcher's rubber, 24 inches by 6 inches, is on a 15-inch mound in the middle of an 18-foot circle; the rubber is 60 feet 6 inches from home plate; the four base paths are 90 feet long; the distance from first base to third, and home plate to second base, is 127 feet 3 3/8 inches;
the pitcher's rubber is the center of a circle, described by the arc of the grass behind the infield from foul line to foul line, whose radius is 95 feet; from home plate to backstop, and swinging in an arc, is 60 feet. On this square tipped like a diamond containing circles and contained in circles, built on multiples of 3, 9 players play 9 innings, with 3 outs to a side, each out possibly composed of 3 strikes. Four balls, four bases break (or is it underscore?), the game's reliance on 'threes' to distribute an odd equality, all the numerology and symmetry tending to configure a game unbounded by that which bounds most sports, and adjudicates in many, time.
The game comes from an America where the availability of sun defined the time for work or play--nothing else. Virtually all our other sports reflect the time clock, either in their formal structure or their definition of a winner. Baseball views time as if it were an endlessly available resource; it may put a premium on speed, of throw or foot, but it is unhurried. Time, like the water and forests, like the land itself, is supposedly ever available.
The point is, symmetrical surfaces, deep arithmetical patterns, and a vast, stable body of rules designed to ensure competitive balance in the game, show forth a country devoted to equality of treatment and opportunity; a country whose deepest dream is of a divinely proportioned and peopled (the 'threes' come from somewhere) green garden enclosure; above all, a country whose basic assertion is that law, in all its agreed-upon forms and manifestations, shall govern--not nature inexorable, for all she is respected, and not humankind's whims, for all that the game belongs to the people....
[T]he umpire in baseball has unique stature among sport's arbiters. Spectator and fan alike may, perhaps at times must, object to his judgment, his interpretation, his grasp of precedent, procedure, and relevant doctrine. Such dissent is encouraged, is valuable, and rarely, if ever, is successful. As instant replay shows, very rarely should it be. The umpire is untouchable (there is a law protecting his person) and infallible. He is the much maligned, indispensable, faceless figure of Judgment, in touch with all the codes, the lore, with nature's vagaries, for he decides when she has won. He is the Constitution and Court before your eyes, and he may be the most durable figure in the game for he, alone, never sits, never rests. He has no side, save his obligation to dispense justice speedily."
This essay, along with several others, can be found in a great little book called A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti. A great read for the summer which lies just ahead.
"Law, defined as a complex of formal rules, agreed-upon boundaries, authoritative arbiters, custom, and a system of symmetrical opportunities and demands, is enshrined in baseball. Indeed, the layout of the field shows baseball's essential passion for and reliance on precise proportions and clearly defined limits, all the better to give shape to energy and an arena for expression. The pitcher's rubber, 24 inches by 6 inches, is on a 15-inch mound in the middle of an 18-foot circle; the rubber is 60 feet 6 inches from home plate; the four base paths are 90 feet long; the distance from first base to third, and home plate to second base, is 127 feet 3 3/8 inches;
the pitcher's rubber is the center of a circle, described by the arc of the grass behind the infield from foul line to foul line, whose radius is 95 feet; from home plate to backstop, and swinging in an arc, is 60 feet. On this square tipped like a diamond containing circles and contained in circles, built on multiples of 3, 9 players play 9 innings, with 3 outs to a side, each out possibly composed of 3 strikes. Four balls, four bases break (or is it underscore?), the game's reliance on 'threes' to distribute an odd equality, all the numerology and symmetry tending to configure a game unbounded by that which bounds most sports, and adjudicates in many, time.
The game comes from an America where the availability of sun defined the time for work or play--nothing else. Virtually all our other sports reflect the time clock, either in their formal structure or their definition of a winner. Baseball views time as if it were an endlessly available resource; it may put a premium on speed, of throw or foot, but it is unhurried. Time, like the water and forests, like the land itself, is supposedly ever available.
The point is, symmetrical surfaces, deep arithmetical patterns, and a vast, stable body of rules designed to ensure competitive balance in the game, show forth a country devoted to equality of treatment and opportunity; a country whose deepest dream is of a divinely proportioned and peopled (the 'threes' come from somewhere) green garden enclosure; above all, a country whose basic assertion is that law, in all its agreed-upon forms and manifestations, shall govern--not nature inexorable, for all she is respected, and not humankind's whims, for all that the game belongs to the people....
[T]he umpire in baseball has unique stature among sport's arbiters. Spectator and fan alike may, perhaps at times must, object to his judgment, his interpretation, his grasp of precedent, procedure, and relevant doctrine. Such dissent is encouraged, is valuable, and rarely, if ever, is successful. As instant replay shows, very rarely should it be. The umpire is untouchable (there is a law protecting his person) and infallible. He is the much maligned, indispensable, faceless figure of Judgment, in touch with all the codes, the lore, with nature's vagaries, for he decides when she has won. He is the Constitution and Court before your eyes, and he may be the most durable figure in the game for he, alone, never sits, never rests. He has no side, save his obligation to dispense justice speedily."
This essay, along with several others, can be found in a great little book called A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti. A great read for the summer which lies just ahead.
