OPINION

REX NELSON: Our national pastime

In 1984, Tom Boswell of the Washington Post came out with a collection of essays on baseball that had the alluring title "Why Time Begins on Opening Day."

"The crowd and its team had finally understood that in games, as in many things, the ending, the final score, is only part of what matters," Boswell wrote in one piece. "The process, the pleasure, the grain of the game count, too."

For big-league players, baseball season began on Thursday. It might not be the beginning of time, but that's when I feel as if spring has truly arrived. My first game to attend will come on Thursday when the Arkansas Travelers open another season at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock.

Football has long been the country's most popular sport. It's my favorite sport. My weekends in the fall are consumed with hosting a high school football scoreboard show each Friday night for a statewide radio network, calling the play by play on radio for Ouachita Baptist University on Saturdays, and preparing my weekly Little Rock Touchdown Club presentation on Sundays.

But baseball still enchants me. Its slower pace is perfectly suited for summer evenings. The obsession with numbers and history appeal to me in an intellectual sense. And then there are the hot dogs and popcorn. All of those things will have me in my usual seat behind home plate at Dickey-Stephens on a regular basis from now through August.

"Baseball has traditionally possessed a wonderful lack of seriousness," Boswell wrote. "The game's best player, Babe Ruth, was a Rabelaisian fat man, and its most loved manager, Casey Stengel, spoke gibberish. In this lazy sport, only the pitcher pours sweat. Then he takes three days off."

Baseball still deserves the moniker "national pastime" even though it's not the country's favorite sport. In response to a 2013 New York Times essay headlined "Is the Game Over?", author George B. Kirsch wrote, "The game remains the national pastime because it resonates more deeply in the country's soul than any other sport."

Writer and movie critic Jeffrey Lyons responded this way: "Saying baseball is no longer our national pastime ignores important facts. Football teams play once a week, often in cold weather, obviating competing outdoor diversions, yet baseball attracts fans to stadiums daily for six months. Football enjoys free minor leagues (otherwise known as college); baseball subsidizes dozens of professional minor-league teams. People constantly play baseball trivia, not football trivia."

I was reminded once again last weekend of how the story of baseball is in some ways the story of this country. Beside me at the Hot Springs Convention Center were three generations of Babe Ruth descendants -- grandson Tom Stevens, who had come to Arkansas along with his wife from their home in Henderson, Nev.; great-grandson Brent Stevens, who had come with his wife and two daughters from Atlanta; and great-great-granddaughter Lexi. I was moderating a Saturday afternoon panel that was part of Baseball Weekend, the brainchild of Visit Hot Springs director Steve Arrison, the master promoter behind the annual St. Patrick's Day parade and other events that have rejuvenated the Spa City in recent years.

Tom Stevens' mother, Julia Ruth Stevens, will be 102 in July. Following the death of his first wife Helen in a house fire, Ruth married actress and model Claire Merritt Hodgson and adopted her daughter Julia. Tom Stevens still hears stories about Ruth (who died before he was born) from his mother. He says: "It was always more how he carved the Thanksgiving turkey or decorated the Christmas tree, the sort of things you would hear in any family. It was more Babe Ruth the father, Babe Ruth the husband."

Still, Stevens is keenly aware of the impact that the Ruth legacy has on the American psyche. The family maintains a website devoted to Ruth and has discussed starting a chain of Babe Ruth Steak Houses. I lobbied hard for Hot Springs as the first location. The Maurice Bathhouse, the last bathhouse still needing a tenant, would be a perfect location. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the new Hot Springs National Park superintendent (current superintendent Josie Fernandez is retiring), Ruth descendants and local investors could make it happen?

One man who makes things happen is Arrison. When he learned that Hot Springs was the birthplace of baseball spring training, he teamed up with baseball historians to create the Hot Springs Baseball Trail, a series of historical markers across the city. Historian Don Duren was raised at Hot Springs and now lives in the Dallas area. Two of the historians, Mike Dugan and Mark Blaeuer, live in Hot Springs. The other two, Bill Jenkinson and Tim Reid, are among the top baseball historians in the country. All five participated in Baseball Weekend.

Reid, who grew up in Brooklyn, operates multiple websites about Ruth, the history of spring training in Hot Springs, and other aspects of baseball history. Jenkinson, who lives in the Philadelphia area, has served as a consultant for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Major League Baseball and ESPN. His 2007 book The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs is considered by some to be the best Ruth book. In 2008, Jenkinson spoke at a special service at New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral that marked the 60th anniversary of Ruth's death.

To have both Jenkinson and Reid state that Hot Springs is one of the most significant cities in baseball history means a lot. It gives the Spa City credibility. They note that Cooperstown in upstate New York might be the home of the Hall of Fame but that Hot Springs is the place where many Hall of Famers actually practiced and played spring games.

Reid says: "Of all ballplayers, pitchers participated and benefited the most from training and healing in Hot Springs. Indeed, nearly 50 percent of all pitchers in the National Baseball Hall of Fame today trained at Hot Springs. . . . Among the many legendary ballplayers who graced the ball fields of Hot Springs was an astonishing 61 percent of all catchers currently in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown."

As another baseball season begins, it's heartening to see Hot Springs capitalize on its legacy as the home of spring training.

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Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Editorial on 04/01/2018

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