When first yellows creep across wooded scenes,
Backdrop to flying white spheres with red seams.
When leaves dance to whooshes of full count swings,
And choruses cheer as metal bat sings.
Then you will know the joy this season brings.
Fall baseball!
. . . Or so I believed.
As my eight-year-old was warming up for a fall ball game recently, the air was filled not with the idyllic sounds of the season punctuated by children laughing and satisfying pops of gloves sticking baseballs. Rather, everyone’s ears were filled with the obnoxiously loud music being played by the opposing team. In my experience, wannabe DJs have become more common in little league. Usually, I try to ignore the self-appointed noise polluters. But this time was different. All of a sudden the following lyrics rang out:
And I’m on this foolish track, so I spit my foolish flow
My hands go up and down, like strippers’ booties go
I made a beeline for the parents near the giant speaker. “Excuse me!” I yelled, not out of anger so much as to be heard over the cacophonous track. “It doesn’t seem appropriate to play music talking about strippers around eight- and nine-year-olds! I would respectfully request something more age appropriate!”
The parents and coach gawked at me. I must have seemed to them as that guy—the old fuddy-duddy. But their appearance to the world was perhaps even more shocking, since the cross of our Lord was prominently emblazoned on the sleeves of their jerseys. One of them muttered something that sounded like “Okay,” as I turned to return to help coach my team. That seemed to be that. But, not a week later, I was sitting as a spectator for my eleven-year-old son’s game. My son was on the mound getting ready to face the first batter of the inning when the opposing team’s speaker bellowed, “Now, baby, get butt-booty naked, take off all your clothes.”
Again? This was not what little league fall baseball was supposed to sound like. Indeed, I had never even heard such filth in a major-league ballpark. “Excuse me,” I asked the woman with the speaker, “Why do you think it is appropriate to play music about women taking off all their clothes for eleven-year-olds?” Again, the silent gawk—but this time, an older woman behind her retorted, “How dare you walk up to a woman and question her?” That took me aback. So apparently this fake feminist’s argument was that it was good and right to play modern musical masterpieces in which women are instrumentalized as objects of male sexual conquest—and it was sexist for a man to question it. I quickly realized, though, that these women likely felt pangs of shame, but instead of apologize or even attempt to defend the indefensible, they attacked me personally. I removed myself and simply reported the incident to the commissioner (who, thankfully, took measures to put a stop to it).
The outpouring of grace and forgiveness fits the wayfarer with a clean slate to begin anew, symbolized by each time one steps up to the plate.
While my story is just one anecdote, it is notable that there have been recent incidents that have gone viral over inappropriate walk-up music in youth baseball. Last spring, a conscientious coach asked for inappropriate walk-up music to stop, and when the umpire did nothing, he chose to forfeit the game instead. In another piece of evidence spotlighting the decline of moral standards among little league parents, a New York Times report on the restaurant chain Hooters noted examples of coaches and parents taking youth baseball teams there for postgame celebrations.
While it arguably does not have the pride of place it once did in American culture, it cannot be denied that baseball is historically America’s pastime. It is a game, as Ken Burns noted, that follows the seasons: “beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime, and ending with the hard facts of autumn.” As Burns’s singular documentary points out, as a leisurely pastoral game played with lightning speed in American cities, it is a metaphor for many tensions or contradictions held together by the American idea. As a uniquely American game that Americans have played for over two hundred years, it binds the generations. And as a game in which the best hitters fail two-thirds of the time, and the very best teams lose a third of their games, it is a game in which the young learn the meaning of failure and success, sorrow and hope. Indeed, some theologians have argued that baseball is something of a metaphor for the journey of the Christian soul. The soul “goes out” (exitus) from the Creator, and its destiny is to return (reditus) home. Yet, postlapsarian man’s journey is riddled with more failures than successes. Still, the outpouring of grace and forgiveness fits the wayfarer with a clean slate to begin anew, symbolized by each time one steps up to the plate. And the idea of the “sacrifice” (a sac-fly or sac-bunt), is a metaphor for gift-love, of laying one’s life down for one’s friends.
Much more could be said along these lines, but suffice it to say that baseball is more than just another game. It has a heritage that parents and coaches are stewards of and which they pass down to their children and players. Christian parents in particular coach and support this game not merely as a fun break from the duties of school and work, but as an aspect of their God-given duty to raise their sons to become men of virtue. Is it not obvious, therefore, that Christian parents and coaches bear a grave responsibility in how they manage their little leagues? Not only do they owe something to their ancestors who devised and passed down such a brilliant game, but they owe it to their players—and the opposing team’s players—to facilitate all the virtues baseball can teach them.
Lewd walk-up music of the sort discussed above undermines all of this. Instead of the basic equal human dignity that is the legacy of the stories of greats like Jackie Robinson, it treats women like second-class citizens, like mere objects of sexual gratification. Instead of the calming, leisurely, cerebral, and almost liturgical rhythms of pitch, ball, strike, out, and inning—which appeal to and cultivate the soul’s higher faculties—its agitated beats and vulgar lyrics basely appeal to sexual desire, conquest, and gratification. Whereas the game of baseball teaches young men that they ought to use their strength for the good of others (the team), such noisy excrement instructs them to pursue their selfish desires. Instead of honoring the dignity of the team in which sex is properly placed (the institution of marriage), it cheapens and commercializes this most sacred of God’s gifts to man.
A few days ago, I sat spectating with a jacket on, the chilled air portending autumn’s end as orange leaves blew around my feet. The field had been pulsating with the beats of strikes to the catcher’s mitt. My eleven-year-old had just finished pitching two shutout innings before I arrived. It was that same team he played a few weeks ago. But it seemed quiet as I sat down. Were those angry eyes I could feel staring across the diamond because not one of their kids could manage a hit? Or was it because the fuddy-duddy dad who had complained about their loutish behavior had just arrived? I didn’t much care either way. Then they fired up their new in-between inning music. “Baby shark, doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo . . . ”
I leaned back in my rocker chair and chuckled. Well, at least it’s not strippers. Then, as the hook repeated, I sighed. Perhaps this is what the late fall ball blues is supposed to sound like. I suppose I’m ready for the hard facts of autumn to become the cold truth of winter.