The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT Classless Society At the Ball Park By William E. Bohn In just a few weeks, those of us who have taken the trouble to register will toddle along to the polling places. The air is...
...Isn't our devotion of so many hours to all this a silly business, a foolish waste of time...
...1 am behind the catcher watching every pilch and calling the strikes and balls along with the umpire...
...Somehow, the Thirteenth Street patriots have persuaded themselves that the Dodgers represent the working class...
...Instead of listening to the words of Dwight or Adlai, we are fascinated by the deeds of Sal or Mickey or Jackie...
...In some ways...
...A pennant going to either the Bronx or Brooklyn will add to—or subtract from—the happiness of but a small fraction of mankind...
...This, of course, is funny...
...When I showed it to the boys in the New Leader office, they laughed and said: "Look...
...The photographers and other technicians can always be depended on to give their customers a complete show...
...He told about the sense of confidence which was born in him when he realized that here and in England all classes join happily in the same athletic contests...
...The newspapers bulge with the virtues and vices of the candidates...
...While this question was bouncing about my cranium, my eve happened to catch a copy of the Daily Worker among the papers on my table...
...Some of these Dodger-Yankee games have been extraordinarily fascinating...
...Whether the Yankees or the Dodgers get one run more than their opponents cannot be accounted a matter of national or international concern...
...The moment the hall is hit...
...We, who have led rather stodgy lives, imagine ourselves pitching a perfect ball game instead of Don Larsen or knocking home runs over the wall like Mickey Mantle...
...a German economist who had come to America to escape Hitler...
...When a man like Mel Allen is at the microphone, you experience every thrill that inspires him as he looks down on the lightning action of the game...
...The air is filled with politics...
...We are all together...
...Or I participate in the whirlpool of excitement which surges about the point where a foul ball has plopped into the stands...
...A hundred and twenty miles away from the scene of action, I see the flashing spectacle nearly as well as I could in the most expensive seat overlooking the field of battle...
...I am spending this World Series week at my home in Delaware, for that is where I have my television set...
...But here we all sit side by side on the same benches and shout for the same teams...
...How many children do they have...
...Out there in the field, these handsome and agile young chaps, without knowing it, are impersonating us—and we want to know every little thing about them...
...in fact...
...Yet, here am I, the old spouter on politics and morals, with my eyes fixed on the television screen and my attention all tied up in the doings of forty or fifty athletes at Yankee Stadium or Ebbets Field...
...Perhaps 1 have a close-up view of a miraculous catch by Mickey Mantle or Duke Snider...
...Many years ago, I heard a lecture by Dr...
...Alfred Braunthal...
...I see it better...
...The Socialists, the Communists and the Christian churches all had their separate means of recreation...
...So they think they can prove their Americanism in a big way by giving them phrenetic support...
...I appreciate, too, the wealth of information about the players which these men pour out...
...And the announcers are much more than their title implies...
...The speaker thought that the deep-down, unified folk-feeling which is exhibited in this feature of our life is the surest guarantee of the survival of our democracy...
...Probably much of our interest in the performance is due to psychological substitution...
...I am a moderately sober chap...
...I go with it...
...The real American proletarians...
...You feel the tension when a hit starts on its long and, at first, doubtful way to become a home run—going, going, gone!—or when a fielder makes a desperate attempt and then, in the last split second, succeeds or fails to capture a ricocheting ball...
...Public affairs, world affairs, human affairs seem to me the subjects most worthy of attention...
...The perfect no-hit game which within a few hours made Don Larsen a national hero or the long-drawn-out 0-0 tie which Jackie Robinson ended in the tenth inning with a hit off the left-field wall—these are experiences that could well lead to heart failure or, at least, nervous exhaustion...
...The game is a national symbol...
...They are dramatic narrators, creators of comedy and tragedy, high-class dramatists and superb actors...
...Germany, he thought, had fallen to the Nazis partly because its classes were emotionally divided...
...Out there in the bleachers there are no Republicans, no Democrats, no rich and no poor...
...A great headline occupied the top quarter of the front page: "oh...
...But for this one week, from October 3 to October 10, we have declared a moratorium on the campaign...
...Exactly how old is Sal Maglie or Enos Slaughter —or how voung is Tom Sturdivant or Don Larsen...
...The sound of ball on bat drowns out the voice of the politician...
...Youth and age always have a special attraction for the customers...
...those dodgers...
...What are their wives like...
Vol. 39 • October 1956 • No. 43
