Column: On baseball, our great game of beauty and myth

BY MICHAEL KENNEDY

VIRGINIA BEACH — Baseball is the best game ever invented, although the man widely credited with inventing it, Abner Doubleday, had very little to do with its creation.

Were he alive, he would likely wonder how he received the honor of inventing America’s pastime.  

After Doubleday passed away, a special commission in 1907 determined that the sport of baseball was indeed a 19th Century American creation of Doubleday, according to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

This announcement was based on an account from a mining engineer who said Doubleday “invented baseball in 1839 in Cooperstown,” the New York community now known for the Hall of Fame. Of course, in the hall’s account, this is “myth.”

But back to the game I love. Neither of my parents were die-hard baseball fans. My great grandmother, however, was a huge Brooklyn Dodgers fan and apparently had autographed baseballs to prove it.  

Of course, no one knows whatever happened to them. She died before I had the opportunity to meet her. I would have loved to listen to her stories about the Dodgers before they bailed on the Big Apple and moved to Los Angeles in 1958. I’m sure she probably was beside herself at the time.

The Mets, of course, were the “replacement” National League team for both the Dodgers and the Giants, who moved to California in 1958 as well. The Mets played their first season in 1962 and promptly lost 120 games. I discovered baseball through the Mets when they unexpectedly won the 1969 World Series. Over that year and beyond, I watched every game I could on TV, memorized rosters, cried or celebrated.

That first year of 1969, when they won it all, got me hooked on the game. Of course, winning the World Series right away spoiled me. I thought they’d win it every year.

They didn’t again, of course, until 1986, and there were far more years of losing than winning, but I stuck with the Mets and the game of baseball itself.

To some, baseball is too slow with only quick bursts of excitement now and again such as a home run. To those of us who love and embrace it, it is much more than that. It’s a microcosm of life itself. 

We too, win and lose. We hit a home run when we achieve a particular success, and we strike out when we have failed at something or another. We score when we get a good deal at the store, and we make an error when we drop the Thanksgiving turkey on the floor.  Sometimes, the runs – or successes – are hard to come by, while other times we seem to overachieve and score early and often on the path to personal victory. 

And, sometimes, life seems to go into a rain delay when we take a moment to take a day off for vacation or down time.

Many of life’s lessons have been learned through baseball. Even now, I still get excited when I – or the Mets – win. I still feel a little sad when we lose. But as they say, we always look to “get ’em tomorrow” when the next game comes around. 

October is World Series time, the culmination of a season of twists and turns, wins and losses for a game that has its great stories, even a few myths, that believers in this game’s beauty retell. My Mets may be out of it, but a new season awaits.

The author recently retired after 44 years with Regal Cinemas and is pursuing a new career in business coaching and consulting. He remains active in community service projects and enjoys time with his wife, Kim, and daughter, Kara.

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