Great and glorious game

A. Bartlett Giamatti, a scholar of Renaissance literature, former president of Yale University, and the seventh commissioner of Major League Baseball, left an indelible mark on the sport through his eloquent and profound writings. His collection, A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti, edited by Kenneth S. Robson with a foreword by David Halberstam, is a testament to his deep love for baseball and his ability to elevate it from a mere sport to a powerful metaphor for life, American identity, and the human condition.

Giamatti’s writings blend the rigor of a classicist with the passion of a lifelong fan. His most famous essay, “The Green Fields of the Mind,” published in the Yale Alumni Magazine in November 1977, opens with a line that has become iconic: “It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.” This elegiac reflection captures the cyclical nature of baseball, which begins in spring’s renewal, flourishes in summer’s warmth, and abruptly ends with autumn’s chill, leaving fans to face winter’s solitude. Giamatti writes, “You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.” This passage, often quoted, resonates with fans who feel the bittersweet finality of each season’s end. For Giamatti, baseball’s impermanence mirrors life’s fleeting joys, making its rituals all the more precious.

Beyond its emotional pull, Giamatti saw baseball as a microcosm of American values, embodying the tension between individual freedom and collective order. In essays like “Baseball and the American Character” (Harper’s, October 1986), he argues that baseball reflects the nation’s democratic ethos, where personal achievement—hitting a home run, stealing a base—coexists within a framework of rules and teamwork. He writes, “Baseball has the largest library of law and love and custom and ritual, and therefore, in a nation that fundamentally believes it is a nation under law, well, baseball is America’s most privileged version of the level field.” This perspective, rooted in his academic background, elevates baseball beyond a pastime to a cultural institution that balances liberty and discipline, a theme he revisits in his defense of the game’s integrity.

Giamatti’s tenure as commissioner, though tragically brief (April 1 to September 1, 1989), was marked by his unwavering commitment to baseball’s moral core. His most significant act was negotiating the agreement that led to Pete Rose’s voluntary withdrawal from the sport due to gambling allegations, effectively a lifetime ban. In his public statement, included in A Great and Glorious Game, Giamatti declared, “No individual is superior to the game itself, just as no individual is superior to our democracy.” This decision, though controversial, underscored his belief that baseball’s integrity must be preserved above personal fame. Some, like author Richard Peterson, speculate that the stress of this ordeal contributed to Giamatti’s fatal heart attack at age 51, suggesting that baseball, in its heartbreak, claimed its most ardent defender.

Giamatti’s romanticism is tempered by a medieval appreciation for baseball’s geometry and numerology—fours (bases, balls) and threes (strikes, outs, innings). In A Great and Glorious Game, he marvels at the “symmetries” of the diamond, where circles (the ball, the field’s arc) and squares (the infield) create a harmonious structure. He writes, “Baseball is about going home,” a journey fraught with peril and longing, from the “far island of second” to the “friendly face” of home plate. This metaphor of homecoming, drawn from the Greek concept of nostos (yearning for return), resonates with America’s rootlessness, offering a narrative of belonging in a nation of wanderers.

Critics and fans alike praise Giamatti’s work for its erudition and accessibility. Reviews describe the collection as “a love poem to the purity of a game that symbolizes much about the American experience,” with some calling it “likely the best writing about baseball ever composed.” Yet, some note its occasional pedantry, as Giamatti’s scholarly voice can feel dense. Still, the brevity of the essays—nine in total, including “Tom Seaver’s Farewell” and his admonition to fans to “clean up their act”—makes them digestible, inviting readers to savor his insights slowly.

In Take Time for Paradise, Giamatti likens baseball to a prelapsarian Eden, a fleeting glimpse of paradise lost. His writings remind us that baseball, for all its heartbreak, is a “great and glorious game” because it reflects our struggles, aspirations, and enduring need for home. Through his words, Giamatti invites us to cherish the game’s timeless beauty and to find meaning in its rhythms, a legacy that continues to enrich America’s pastime.