from the world to the desert

In the last three weeks, I have experienced professional baseball in its extremes of glory.

In late March, my sister and I attended the final game of the 2009 World Baseball Classic, the deciding match between the national teams of Korea and Japan at Dodger Stadium, joining in with a raucous group of 50,000-plus fans from across the world. Yesterday, three friends I attended the first game of the 2009 California League baseball season, the opening match between the Lancaster JetHawks (a Houston Astros affiliate) and High Desert Mavericks (a Seattle Mariners affiliate) at Stater Bros. Field in Adelanto, joining in with a raucous group of 2,000-or-so fans in the middle of the desert. It was a study in contrasts and commonalities, from the lower levels of the minor leagues to an international tournament.

The World Baseball Classic final exceeded my high expectations, as the East Asian powers played a small ball style of the game that saw a tight pitcher's duel that lasted ten innings. Our section was overwhelmingly Korean, and the fans were insane from the moment we entered the stadium. The Korean pitchers walked from the dugout to the bullpen during warm-ups, and the crowd gave them a standing ovation. I can't recall ever seeing that in another ballgame. I cheered along with our section for the Korean team, trying my best to chant along in Korean, but Japan prevailed in the 10th inning off a hit by Ichiro Suzuki. Regardless, it was obvious why these two teams were in the final - I suspect you could probably take just about any guy on either team and put him in the majors, and he'd have a respectable, if not outstanding, career.

Yesterday's game in the desert did not provide the same compelling style of play, but was almost as much fun. One of our group was a girl from Alberta who knows next to nothing about baseball; the other three of us were two committed Astros fans and a committed Cubs fan, so we did our best to educate her in the ways of the sport. One of the principal lessons came in the seventh inning, when she was surprised that everyone in the stadium knew the words to the song that was played. All the elements of minor league eccentricities were well in vogue: the booster club wearing shirts that read "BEER WE GO JETHAWKS," kids running across the field for in-between-innings entertainment, the family sitting right by home plate with K cards to keep track of the strikeouts, coupons for free doughnuts being given to anyone who caught a foul ball, and so on. I've never been a minors game, but it was a great experience; my JetHawks lost, but I did get to see the Astros' #1 prospect, catcher Jason Castro, in action. I think he could easily be playing at a higher level, and expect he'll move up pretty quickly. Hopefully he's the real deal - the Astros need the help!


I'm fascinated by baseball fandom. Maybe that's simply because I'm a fan myself and I get surprised at how emotionally invested I become and how significant my devotion to the Astros is for my daily lifestyle. For the Korean and Japanese fans at the WBC, I'm sure the game provided a chance for community watching their own favorite players and style of the game while cheering with their fellow fans in their heart language - it wasn't just a game, it was a taste of home. For the Mavericks and JetHawks fans, I suspect that minor league baseball provides a refuge of the game away from the extra drama of the big league stage, where steroids and big salaries and franchise players leaving via free agency aren't part of the equation. For me, rooting for the Astros connects me to my family and my hometown - it's much bigger than just cheering for a bunch of men I don't personally know who happen to wear stars on their hats.

For this reason, I have made baseball the focus of a project I am doing this quarter at Fuller. I am taking a class called "Understanding Human Spirituality and Culture," and for our class project we have to identify a local spiritual context, visit it, make so connections with the devotees, and study how people in that context pursue a spiritual context through their rites and rituals. We could choose an established religious venue like a temple, church or mosque, or we could pick something unrelated to organized religion instead.

The choice for me was fairly obvious: I'll be going to minor league baseball games.

The closest team is the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, so I'll be heading to several of their games and looking for how the seemingly secular act of coming together to watch young men play a boy's game reflects spiritual desires and cultural assumptions. I've already done some preliminary research, and a wealth of writing has been done on baseball as American civil religion, baseball superstitions as magic ritual, baseball stadiums as sacred spaces, and so on. I've wanted to look into this topic for a while, and this provides the perfect opportunity.

I'll be sure to let y'all know what I discover about the followers of Quakes baseball. I'm sure I'll discover quite a bit about myself in the process.