Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.
Day One Hundred Twenty-Eight: Jason Varitek, Boston Red Sox
I’ve heard a lot of noise in recent days about who should be allowed to worship in what portion of New York City. I’ve also noticed that some very loud individuals have claimed the 47th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement’s March on Washington to put forth their own vision for America.
These voices sound a lot more insular than inclusive, and it was my impression that acceptance and equality were important ideals in this country. So maybe it was my anger at all of this noise that produced my own dream this afternoon as I snatched a rare mid-afternoon nap in the hammock. I did have a dream and, my brothers and sisters, I think I will share it with you.
As so many great dreams do, this one took place in Montclair, N.J. It involved baseball (what a shock!), and a legendary old man. The Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center, located on the campus of Montclair State University, currently has an exhibit devoted to New York Yankees captain Derek Jeter. But in my dream, the Jeter exhibit had drawn to a close, and the legendary Yankee for whom this museum is named stood before a podium and announced that he was opening a new exhibit. This one, he said, would be devoted to players in the modern day who had excelled at his position, catcher. And, Yogi said, there would be an entire wall in the exhibit dedicated to Boston Red Sox catcher and captain Jason Varitek.
The response to this announcement was, in a word, bedlam. Yankees fans protested loudly outside the museum, outside Yankee Stadium, and outside the team’s Spring Training base in Tampa, Fla. “This is giving our enemies justification for their existence!” one fan blogged. ““Yogi: It’s Over!” another tweeted. The evening news trucks found a fan who compared this exhibit to opening a Fenway Franks hot dog stand two blocks from Yankee Stadium. Even Newt Gingrich got into the act, speaking about the “historic ignorance of baseball elites.”
But, in my dream, Yogi said he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. “It’s déjà vu all over again,” Yogi said. “Every time we’re afraid of something, we reject it with so much hatred that we lose our ideals. We’ve been doing it since Salem, Massachusetts, more than 300 years ago. Why can’t we honor a Red Sox player in New York? All it does it bring people together. Plus, that guy Varitek seems like a pretty good man to me.”
So Yogi didn’t back down. And, in my dream, his exhibit ended up being more popular than any in the history of the museum. Once everyone had settled down, it actually became a gathering place for Red Sox and Yankees fans who wanted to talk about baseball without any of those elevated animosities that have plagued the rivalry over the past decade. The exhibit even attracted national attention, and led to plans for a new exhibit at the St. Louis Cardinals Museum honoring Ernie Banks of the Cubs. Exhibits honoring rivals of the past sprang up in museums, schools, churches, temples, mosques, skyscrapers and stadiums across America. A new movement for peace, love and understanding had begun, and Yogi watched with a smile the whole time.
Forty-seven years ago today, Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream of his own, and he shared it with America. “I have a dream,” he said, “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’ ” Americans heard Dr. King’s words very clearly that day, and many of us have studied these words over the years. But we haven’t always followed the vision inherent in them as closely as we might like.
“The future ain’t what it used to be,” Yogi Berra once said. For the past nine years, a lot of Americans have felt the same. If we’re going to make that future brighter than our worst nightmares envision it to be, we have to take the bold leap of reaching out to all of our brothers and sisters in the name of peace, even when fear and anger stand in the way. That’s my dream, anyway. You might think there was something delusional in that hammock outside, but I’d rather think of it as a very real, and possible, vision.
Showing posts with label Martin Luther King Jr.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Martin Luther King Jr.. Show all posts
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
The Promise (One Sixty-Two: Day 73)
Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.
Day Seventy-Three: Chipper Jones, Atlanta Braves
On this day, Americans gather to celebrate the most famous press release in the history of the world. When it was signed on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence announced to the colonists, the mother country, and the rest of the world that America was going to become its own nation, no matter how much bloodshed this required.
In drafting this announcement, the Founding Fathers elaborated on the kind of country they wished to create. It would be a nation based on the principles of liberty and equality, they told us. When writing the words “all men are created equal,” the Philadelphia patriots chose to make this Declaration more than just a pronouncement. They chose to make it a promise.
Throughout the past 234 years, Americans have harkened back to the Declaration whenever they’ve found our country failing to deliver on that sacred promise. The boldness and beauty of “all men are created equal” has stood watch over the decisions we’ve made as a nation. After decades of slavery, Abraham Lincoln cited the Declaration as the country moved to turn things right. After nearly a century and a half of women lacking the right to vote, the Seneca Falls Convention used the Declaration to show us where America had fallen short. After nearly 200 years of discrimination and segregation toward African-Americans, Martin Luther King quoted from the Declaration in his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in the summer of 1963.
The United States of America was founded on the highest standards of freedom and acceptance. And in reaching for those standards, we the people have often taken two steps forward, followed by one step backward. From race to gender to class to disability, our nation has expanded its guarantees of equality in many ways over the years. But at the same time, we find individuals across our nation reminding us of the many ways in which we’ve denied equality. In recent years, for instance, we’ve heard from immigration activists in Arizona, from gay-rights activists across the country, from advocates for the poor in our inner cities, and from Arab Americans facing discrimination across the country.
We are a complex people, with a complex history. Take today’s Atlanta Braves home game in Turner Field, for instance. When the Braves host the Marlins today, they will do so in an integrated Southern city, where any visitor can pay a visit to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. The Braves will field a team featuring white, Latino, African-American and Asian players. The team’s makeup features everything Thomas Jefferson might have hoped America could become.
And yet, at the same time, the Braves will play today’s game in a state that just nine years ago chose to remove the Confederate Battle Flag from part of its own state flag. What’s more, when the Braves take the field they will wear an image of a tomahawk on their jerseys – a weapon of choice for the Native Americans who had their own freedom and humanity stripped from them in the early years of this republic. Finally, if the Braves start a rally during their game today, and star third baseman Chipper Jones steps to the plate, the fans will no doubt begin their famous “Tomahawk Chop.” With this chop, the fans will move their right arms downward like tomahawks, to depict the scalping that they hope their Braves will inflict on those Marlins. This, in spite of the fact that vast numbers of Native Americans still live on isolated reservations, in a constant struggle with poverty and substance abuse.
It’s a complex nation, all right. We have a hard time delivering consistently on that promise of 234 years ago. There are times each day when we see ourselves and others falling far short of the expectations inside that press release. And yet the promise remains. It always has, ever inching us forward.
In our best moments as Americans, we look for ways to work together in hopes of taking that next step. In those moments, we march together in the direction of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our unalienable rights. The promise of a nation. It is there, in Turner Field and every field. From sea to shining sea. Beckoning us onward, where liberty stands ready to shine.
Day Seventy-Three: Chipper Jones, Atlanta Braves
On this day, Americans gather to celebrate the most famous press release in the history of the world. When it was signed on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence announced to the colonists, the mother country, and the rest of the world that America was going to become its own nation, no matter how much bloodshed this required.
In drafting this announcement, the Founding Fathers elaborated on the kind of country they wished to create. It would be a nation based on the principles of liberty and equality, they told us. When writing the words “all men are created equal,” the Philadelphia patriots chose to make this Declaration more than just a pronouncement. They chose to make it a promise.
Throughout the past 234 years, Americans have harkened back to the Declaration whenever they’ve found our country failing to deliver on that sacred promise. The boldness and beauty of “all men are created equal” has stood watch over the decisions we’ve made as a nation. After decades of slavery, Abraham Lincoln cited the Declaration as the country moved to turn things right. After nearly a century and a half of women lacking the right to vote, the Seneca Falls Convention used the Declaration to show us where America had fallen short. After nearly 200 years of discrimination and segregation toward African-Americans, Martin Luther King quoted from the Declaration in his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in the summer of 1963.
The United States of America was founded on the highest standards of freedom and acceptance. And in reaching for those standards, we the people have often taken two steps forward, followed by one step backward. From race to gender to class to disability, our nation has expanded its guarantees of equality in many ways over the years. But at the same time, we find individuals across our nation reminding us of the many ways in which we’ve denied equality. In recent years, for instance, we’ve heard from immigration activists in Arizona, from gay-rights activists across the country, from advocates for the poor in our inner cities, and from Arab Americans facing discrimination across the country.
We are a complex people, with a complex history. Take today’s Atlanta Braves home game in Turner Field, for instance. When the Braves host the Marlins today, they will do so in an integrated Southern city, where any visitor can pay a visit to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. The Braves will field a team featuring white, Latino, African-American and Asian players. The team’s makeup features everything Thomas Jefferson might have hoped America could become.
And yet, at the same time, the Braves will play today’s game in a state that just nine years ago chose to remove the Confederate Battle Flag from part of its own state flag. What’s more, when the Braves take the field they will wear an image of a tomahawk on their jerseys – a weapon of choice for the Native Americans who had their own freedom and humanity stripped from them in the early years of this republic. Finally, if the Braves start a rally during their game today, and star third baseman Chipper Jones steps to the plate, the fans will no doubt begin their famous “Tomahawk Chop.” With this chop, the fans will move their right arms downward like tomahawks, to depict the scalping that they hope their Braves will inflict on those Marlins. This, in spite of the fact that vast numbers of Native Americans still live on isolated reservations, in a constant struggle with poverty and substance abuse.
It’s a complex nation, all right. We have a hard time delivering consistently on that promise of 234 years ago. There are times each day when we see ourselves and others falling far short of the expectations inside that press release. And yet the promise remains. It always has, ever inching us forward.
In our best moments as Americans, we look for ways to work together in hopes of taking that next step. In those moments, we march together in the direction of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our unalienable rights. The promise of a nation. It is there, in Turner Field and every field. From sea to shining sea. Beckoning us onward, where liberty stands ready to shine.
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