Astral Facts, October 2013
More Than a Glass Bead Game
Astral: (Theosophy) Consisting of, belonging to, or designating, a kind of supersensible substance alleged to be next above the tangible world in refinement; as, astral spirits; astral bodies of persons; astral current.
More Than a Glass Bead Game
I recently received a mailing with a “call for papers” and an invitation to attend a spring conference “Soccer as the Beautiful Game: Football's Artistry, Identity & Politics” at Hofstra University. It appears to be an interesting and enlightening program, which I would love to attend, but I doubt any funding would be available since my recent request for funding to attend a conference in San Antonio specifically focused on composition and the challenges for students and teachers in the English 101 classes was only eligible for 20% funding due to the heavy demand on the limited budget account. Unfortunately, the flow of the revenue stream can send such requests down the rabbit hole in favor of the measured flow coming through the turnstiles.
Around the same time, my attention was drawn to the recent radio report I heard about salaries for public employees. I was not surprised to hear that the governor is not the highest paid public employee. It doesn’t take a very wild guess to suggest that honor goes to the Steve Sarkisian, the head football coach at the UW, at about 2.7 million annually. So it only makes sense that #2 is Mike Leach, football coach at WSU, and #3 is Lorenzo Romar, UW basketball coach. Revenue stream is where it’s at.
I found this an interesting topic to muse upon recently in between games in the World Series. From a Humanities Science perspective, in a society where wealth is considered the primary measure of value, the role of athletics in any culture seems like an engrossing issue. (Obviously, the conference organizers at Hofstra must share similar senses of academic curiosity and inquiry.) Does this represent the brutality of Man (and perhaps the Female) dating back to the days of the Roman Empire and the Christians vs. Lions events? I know when I was teaching in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan people were complaining that the Afghan national sport, buzkashi, had been “watered down” by not allowing participants to use knives. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UB3eA8B4qI
On the topic of soccer (or football as they call it in Europe), George Orwell has commented,
"I loathed the game, and since I could see no pleasure or usefulness in it, it was very difficult for me to show courage at it. Football, it seemed to me, is not really played for the pleasure of kicking a ball about, but is a species of fighting."
Yet, here in the humanities the grace and artistry can be perceived, as Albert Spalding, the person who first established the certified rules of baseball, has observed:
"Love has its sonnets galore. War has its epics in heroic verse. Tragedy its sombre story in measured lines. Baseball has Casey at the Bat." - Albert Spalding
Note how the folks at E-verse have reacted to this:
The heroic, religious, and mythological elements we uncover in the Humanities are present as well in reverence and adoration expressed to the sport and its rituals.
“Now one of the halves or hemispheres used to make the baseball can represent Yang, and the other Yin, and their union around the spirit or core creates a life within Life, a force within Forces, the tao within the Tao, imbued with the possibilities of expression in terms of the fundamental laws of Yin and Yang. And like all of creation, no two baseballs are alike, both in their form and in their history, pitchers will discard some because of their feel, others they will scuff to modify their function; some will be historic and occupy Cooperstown, others will be delegated as practice balls; some will be autographed souvenirs, some will be in use at this moment. Baseballs are not capable of awareness, although in a very strange way they are alive since we have created them. They are extensions of ourselves and of our world uniquely held together in the Tao of man against man in the game we call baseball.” --Go (Gordon Bell), The TAO of Baseball
In the field of more modern American literature, Ernest Hemingway drew upon the spiritual nature of the game in writings. A primary example is the classic The Old Man and the Sea, set in Cuba, as noted by James Plath of Illinois Wesleyan University in discussing how the novel “begins and ends with baseball. In the opening scene, after the boy’s unofficial apprenticeship and the subject of luck have been introduced, Santiago sagely tells the boy to “Go and play baseball” rather than locate sardines for bait (12), as if to convey the importance of the former, as if to establish priorities, to suggest (as coaches will) that the lessons a sport can teach about life are truly important. At the novel’s end, Santiago gives the boy the spear from the big marlin, which had been described as being “long as a baseball bat” (62). [“Santiago at the Plate: Baseball in The Old Man and the Sea, 69]
“True, there are differences between baseball and religion, no way around it. Religions have at least one god. Baseball only has demigods. Religions know the Truth. Baseball only has statistics. Still, nit-picking aside ... they’re about the same. Baseball is religion without the mischief.” Thomas Boswell, How Life Imitates the World Series,
On the other hand, it’s just a game. Still, maybe I will don my ceremonial garb, paint my face in appropriate team colors, and join the frenzied throngs. Go team!
Walter Lowe
Astral Facts is a somewhat regular presentation of Humanities Science, produced in the bowels of the Humanities Science offices during the academic year.
Astral Facts is a somewhat regular presentation of Humanities Science, produced in the bowels of the Humanities Science offices during the academic year.
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