OF THE THEOLOGY AND THE RED SOX
DOBRUSIN, ROBERT
OF THE THEOLOGY AND THE RED SOX From Mt. Sinai to Fenway Park A RABBI'S TRIBUTE TO BART GIAMATTI ROBERT DOBRUSIN It is usually difficult to write a memorial for a person that you really didn't...
...The lines are there to guide us but, unlike the parallel sidelines on the football field, the space between the lines widens to inspire new worlds to conquer...
...The lines of Torah also serve to unify us as a people...
...I ' have never felt so honored...
...I knew immediately that it was about the Boston Red Sox...
...This creativ...
...It is the fate of Red Sox fans to be philosophical about the team, and Bart Giamatti was a devout Red Sox fan...
...The symmetry and the order that baseball inspires represent the ideal to which all humans aspire...
...he returned it autographed...
...The beauty in life is sometimes to be found in its lack of perfection...
...The article began with these words: "It breaks your heart...
...ity lets us respond to things ? that "never happened be-| fore" in our search to adapt g to changing realities...
...We can learn so much from them...
...That letter kept me going through rabbinical school...
...Giamatti used two words in his baseball treatise that define for us two of the most elusive terms in Jewish thought, words that emphasize the tenuous balance between creativity and structure...
...One of Giamatti's most moving statements on baseball concerns a word that, he says, is untranslatable into any other language: home...
...Giamatti's article, I wrote to him and told him how much I appreciated his determination to write about baseball and how I hoped to sit with him in the bleachers one day...
...Sinai to Fenway Park A RABBI'S TRIBUTE TO BART GIAMATTI ROBERT DOBRUSIN It is usually difficult to write a memorial for a person that you really didn't know...
...Giamatti's death that afternoon...
...Each tried but each failed...
...To be a Red Sox fan means to search for a way to understand how Fenway Park, with its green grass, close seats, hand-operated scoreboard and all of its history, cannot be allowed, just once, to fly a World Series championship banner...
...Giamatti was to become president of the National League, I wrote, telling him of the influence he had on my career...
...I showed him my framed copy of his letter...
...But each of us is en-tided to a dream...
...It is my belief that his words, although not so intended, also reflect eternal truths about our faith and purpose as Jews...
...His letter made me believe that it was and is possible...
...After I read Dr...
...Could a rabbi use analogies about baseball and other personal interests without being laughed off the pulpit...
...I should explain the theological element to being a Red Sox fan...
...I met Dr...
...One day, the diamond fell and was scratched...
...Giamatti for two minutes in 1989, when he spoke at the University of Michigan...
...Passion and precision, kavanah and kevah: these are the two constant elements of Jewish observance...
...Two dear friends were in my office on September 1, 1989...
...Were life perfect, there would be peace on earth, the Boston Red Sox would have won at least one World Series in the last 72 years and stories about people living out their dreams wouldn't have tragic endings...
...Thus, Giamatti wrote of baseball as "ordering its energies," forcing meaning through its structure...
...his thoughts about baseball can teach us all...
...I don't know if Bart Giamatti had the chance, in his final moments, to know the feeling of going home...
...This creativity is demonstrated by baseball's continual uniqueness, as events that "never happened before" happen daily within the order and structure of the game and its constants...
...He said, quite convincingly, that he remembered it...
...We are unified as a people not because we behave exactly alike, but because we trace the roots of our behavior to the same place and the same moment when we all stood and heard God's voice at Sinai...
...As Jews, we must continue to work to find the proper balance between kavanah and kevah, between ideas and actions and between open spaces and fixed lines...
...The runner longed to return home: to the place where "one first learned to be separate and [that] remains in the mind as the place where reunion, if it ever were to occur, would happen...
...The passion of the inspiration to serve God (kavanah) is balanced against the objective specifics of Jewish law (kevah...
...We all know that the Red Sox were placed on earth to test our faith in redemption...
...I sent it to him...
...The story goes back almost 12 years, to my first year at rabbinical school...
...The championship would make Fenway Park perfect...
...We had a picture taken...
...I concluded, "I hope I can return the favor by wishing you much success and much enjoyment from your position...
...Giamatti spoke of a runner running the bases by going "the long way around...
...The two must live side by side...
...I think about the man I met that day...
...If it is any comfort to those who mourn this man most directly, his words influenced many, his thoughts continue to inspire and he has kept us hoping for the day when our dreams finally will be fulfilled and we will all be standing at home plate together...
...The king called on every jeweler he knew to try to erase the scratch...
...As Jews, our tradition started at Mount Sinai, giving structure to our lives by placing limits...
...If we find ourselves lost in the world, which can be as empty as the outfield in a ballpark, we can always get our bearings by turning home again, to the point of revelation when we stood together at Mount Sinai...
...Who knows, we may indeed meet someday at Fenway...
...That same year, on Simchat Torah night, the Sox came within one strike of winning their first championship in 68 years before collapsing...
...I told them the story...
...There is a story in Jewish tradition about a king who owned a beautiful diamond (isn't that ironic...
...God took us through the desert "the long way around" and when we dream of complete redemption, we speak of tikkun olam: repairing the world and bringing it as a completed paradise back to God...
...Could it be true...
...In Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games (Summit, 1989), a posthumously published collection of essays, Giamatti states his thesis—that baseball's rhythms and patterns reflect basic principles of life and priorities of the American consciousness...
...He wrote: "Symmetrical demands in a symmetrical setting encourage both passion and precision...
...The kevah of the law cannot sustain itself without passion...
...I remember, in particular, one image Bart Giamatti presented on the day we met...
...A friend had sent me an article entitled "The Day Summer Died" written by the president-designate of Yale, A. Bartlett Giamatti...
...The giving of the Torah immediately after the exodus from servitude in Egypt shows the enhancing and compounding effect that a willing consent to order can have on our lives...
...I received a brief typewritten reply thanking me for my letter...
...We clearly see things the same way...
...Kavanah is beautiful but has no oudet without the precision the law provides...
...The greatest comeback in the team's history, in the fifth game of the 1986 American League Championship Series, happened during Kol Nidre...
...The following words were written in longhand at the bottom: "I shall treasure your encouragement...
...The Red Sox have a wonderful sense of timing...
...To regain that unity, we can always turn again toward home...
...Our faith was tested by stretching to the limit the commandment to be happy on our festivals...
...I know that, in reality, our encounter meant more to me than it could ever have meant to him...
...If all Red Sox fans suffer, an additional element of suffering comes from the perspective of the Jewish calendar...
...We returned home and I learned of Dr...
...I hope you can continue to infuse baseball with the much-needed inspiration that comes from a true understanding and appreciation of the game...
...I know it didn't...
...Baseball also epitomizes the perfection Americans seek to develop within our society...
...Since 1918, however, that dream has gone unfulfilled...
...I hope this tribute will justify my continued belief in the power of metaphors taken from daily life...
...Baseball, to Giamatti, is a game of symmetry, of threes and fours, squares and circles...
...We count the omer, the days between Pesach—the celebration of our freedom—and Shavuot—the commemoration of our receiving the Law—to express this connection and to celebrate that we are free enough to allow ourselves to be guided by the tradition of halachah (Jewish religious law...
...The foul lines on the baseball diamond, according to Giamatti, "constrain the sudden eruptions of energy," allowing creativity within certain acceptable limits...
...He wrote back, "You know that I share your views on baseball, and I, too, hope that my new job does not prevent me from writing more on a subject which is so close to me...
...Giamatti wrote, "Our national plot is to be free enough to consent to an order that will enhance and compound—as it constrains—our freedom...
...Baseball represents the drive that we all have to leave home and to return, to travel away from our starting point and then to come back to it...
...But, in this case, I write about a person I did come to know closely...
...I knew him like thousands of other people knew him, through a brief encounter that, I like to believe, affected him as much as it affected me...
...HIS THOUGHTS ABOUT BASEBALL CAN TEACH US ALL...
...When I heard that Dr...
...While the story of our brief relationship is precious to me, it is his inspiration to take baseball seriously that leads me to dedicate these words to him...
...Finally, a craftsman looked at the diamond and carved the scratch into a stem and above the scratch, a beautiful flower...
...He described the home run hitter, triumphantly rounding second and turning toward home as a victorious hunter who had faced the dangers of the world at the outer fringes and who now was returning home with his head held high...
...As we walk further through the world, enlivening the space between the widening lines by using our creative energy, we try to bring ourselves and our world back to our creative source and return home...
...But the world is not perfect...
...He seemed tired and worn, yet had a twinkle in his eye and took obvious joy in discussing the game he loved...
...They asked me about the picture on the wall...
...They allow us constantly to find new areas in which to develop ourselves and use our creativity...
...I do know that it won't keep me out of the bleachers...
...Could a person continue to be a baseball fan in the rabbinate...
...These limits, like the space between the foul lines radiating from home plate, ever widen...
Vol. 16 • April 1991 • No. 2
