Highbrow Hyperbole

Garrison Keillor reviewed Bernard-Henri Lévy’s recent book for the New York Times last weekend, which I bring up for the following passage:

“He blows a radiator writing about baseball - "this sport that contributes to establishing people's identities and that has truly become part of their civic and patriotic religion, which is baseball" - and when, visiting Cooperstown ("this new Nazareth"), he finds out that Commissioner Bud Selig once laid a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington, where Abner Doubleday is also buried, Lévy goes out of his mind. An event important only to Selig and his immediate family becomes, to Lévy, an official proclamation "before the eyes of America and the world" of Abner as "the pope of the national religion . . . that day not just the town but the entire United States joined in a celebration that had the twofold merit of associating the national pastime with the traditional rural values that Fenimore Cooper's town embodies and also with the patriotic grandeur that the name Doubleday bears." Uh, actually not. Negatory on "pope" and "national" and "entire" and "most" and "embodies" and "Doubleday."”

Really, the whole review is funny and insightful in Keillor’s unique style, authoritative without pandering or nagging. It raises an interesting point, though, when Keillor suggests the event was important only to Selig and his family, and I’m sure he’s right that Selig did not have larger showmanship in mind. So, the questions that remain, then, involve celebrity and the public sphere, and our own knack to project significance onto things. Or, if not our knack, at least it’s Lévy’s knack, and that might say something too inasmuch as it’s a book meditating on travels across America.



After all, Lévy is dead wrong about the entire US joining that celebration, because I for one had no idea it was going on. The other question, then, is why Lévy thinks so many of us might have cared to this extent. Maybe it’s just him writing in that way of his, but maybe there’s a little twinge more.



You might recall – and by “you” I’m referring to the 6 people who actually read through the whole thing, because it was not great reading by any means – that I cited some of an essay from Lévy’s series for the Atlantic Monthly, the notes for which became the outline for Lévy’s book. What now strikes me from the passage of Lévy’s I cited back then was this:

[...] “To revere a counterfeit as if it were real. To prefer in a museum, even when one has a choice, recent artifacts over relics. To rewrite the history of an age-old pastime as if it were a national sport. What is at stake in each case is a relationship to time, and in particular to the past—as if, with this nation so eminently oriented toward its present and, especially, its future, regret for the past occurs only on condition that the past can be reappropriated with well-calculated words and deeds. As if with all one's strength—including the strength and power of myth and forgery—one had to reassert the power of the present over the past. Or the opposite, which comes down to the same thing: as if the pain was having not enough past rather than too much. So people fall back on the theme of "Since we weren't there for the child's baptism, let's at least be there when the man's last words are spoken." The self-generation of a culture that wants to be descended from its own handiwork and, accordingly, rewrites its great and small genealogies. An American neurosis?"”

I’m thinking that if Keillor is right, that Lévy is taking a private moment and projecting hyperbolic symbolism onto it, then Lévy is doing something akin to what he supposes that Americans do. The issue is whether that is a criticism only of him or also of us.



There is no doubt that Lévy is onto something if we look at it in very broad strokes: Americans of our generations are entangled in a paradoxical relationship with time. The next big thing is passé as quickly as we race to celebrate it, while at the same time we wax nostalgic for eras when times were better and more genuine. In baseball, we’re ready to declare a season over at the end of April, but we’re also ready to see teams like the 2004 Red Sox and 2005 White Sox as instantly primal in History with a capital “H.” Or, we want our ballparks to be new but feel old, or even timeless.



I can remember sitting outside a Cathedral in Aachen, Germany, up in the northwest corner near Belgium and the Netherlands. My sister was living in Cologne at the time, and we were in Aachen for the day. The Cathedral was built by Charlemagne around 800 A.D., and I remember hearing other American tourists observe that this Cathedral in which we were walking was built almost 700 years before Columbus sailed, whereas it’s only been about 500 years since. To many Americans – and not only Americans, but still – 50 years is a long time, let alone 500. After all, it was only 50 years ago in 1956 when Mickey Mantle hit for the Triple Crown, posting .353 / 52 / 130. 50 years ago feels like a bygone era I’ll never know and which exists for me only as a hazy dream-memory resembling The Sandlot.



And then there’s how people seem to be remembering just last year. For example, attention is already long past Derrek Lee, and his remarkable season. Most people are about a thousand times more likely to ask whether he can do it again rather than look back and smile. OK, yeah, so the season was disappointing, but it wasn’t entirely bad. There were gorgeous afternoons and good wins, and the best season ever posted by a Cub first baseman. It could have been a lot worse... I mean, remember 2002? They lost 95 games that year... and it was only 4 seasons ago.



Maybe I’m way off, and maybe it’s just a function of timing, meaning that it’s natural for fans in January to be more concerned with the upcoming season, and if we look to the past season at this time of year it’s to make sure we learn from mistakes. Maybe in 20 years people will say to me, “Remember that season by Lee in ‘05?” After all, the 1985 Bears aren’t going away any time soon. (Hopefully, for Lee, they add, “That was the one that really started his reign as the best first baseman...”)



But maybe that’s the problem – maybe the ballast is swung too far, largely owing to the patterns of people reacting just as Lévy did, and of those expecting analysts to serve that sort of interpretation. The Bears are remembered because they won it all, and they deserve it, and I will not suggest otherwise. The problem, as I see it, is that teams – like moments -- that are good but not great are forgotten too quickly. This is why someone like Lévy sees a good moment and tries to color it great: otherwise we will not pay attention.



What does it take to make a lasting impression? Or, maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe the answer should be focused not on the impresser, but the impressed. And if any sport is suited for dwelling and even lingering in a moment and soaking it in for what it’s worth, good or bad, it’s baseball. In no other sport can down moments still be so thoughtful.