As holidays go, a Dartmouth Fourth of July is pretty charming and American. It's the epitome of outdoor fun promised by sophomore Summer and one of those wonderful days when every meal can be eaten around a grill. The College on the Hill and Hanover, apparently is even older than the United States, so it only seems fitting that we celebrate here.
There are fireworks, reenactments and lively free concerts. The only thing Dartmouth lacks on Independence Day is a baseball game.
For a spectator, baseball is the perfect summer sport long, lazy innings drag on over the course of a hot afternoon, always punctuated by home runs and double plays and killer at-bats. On the flip side of a doubleheader, night games provide the perfect respite from 90-degree heat.
Day or night, win or loss, stadium food approximates a Stinson's barbecue: hamburgers, hot dogs and beer. It's food for the common man, and the common man is at a baseball game. While some people are actually wearing suits in air-conditioned luxury boxes, most of the fans are in T-shirts or jerseys, no matter how much they paid for their tickets.
To clarify, the common woman is at baseball games, too, and the common child. There are also always those uncommon kids who at the age of four already know every name and number on the 40-man roster. It's never pleasant to be one-upped in a statistics argument by a kindergartner, but it happens.
There's even a seventh-inning stretch, which seems to hearken back to afternoon tea breaks in cricket, but it also marks a subtle, critical change in the stakes of each play. After this point, every hit draws a larger cheer, and every strikeout is just that much more devastating for the batter as he walks angrily back to his dugout.
Apart from its addition to the laziness of a midsummer game, the seventh-inning stretch has particular patriotic consequences for the Yankees. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Yankees have played "God Bless America" before the home team steps up to bat in the bottom of the eighth inning. Usually, this is just a recording, but the tradition is so strong now that Irish tenor Ronan Tynan who also sang at Ronald Reagan's state funeral often makes an appearance.
In August 2008, a man was actually ejected from a Yankees game by New York Police Department officers for leaving his seat to use the bathroom during the song. The man's actions violated a Yankee Stadium rule against moving about during "God Bless America," according to The New York Times. No such regulation can be found in the security policies listed on the team's website now.
The American Civil Liberties Union disagreed with the Yankees policy which seemed to force guests to participate in singing a song that may have offended their political or religious views and the fan won his claim against the police department.
Although not above disputes of civil rights and political correctness, baseball is still intertwined with Americana in my mind and the minds of many fans. In "The Natural," Bernard Malamud's 1952 novel and one of my personal favorites, baseball is at the crux of a clash between the American Dream and tragic hubris. No other sport has ever reached such mythical or literary proportions in the American psyche.
But the sport is simple. It can be played amidst corn, like in the classic sports film "Field of Dreams," and can be easily simulated on the playground or in a backyard with a few inexpensive props your hat is second base, my sweatshirt is home, etc.
In a cynical sense, baseball reflects American capitalism, like most other major sports do. Stadiums are plastered with sponsorship, players and teams appear in countless advertisements. Our beloved hometown teams are also organizations, which are large corporations trying to make money off tickets. In the trade process, it becomes clear that players too act as brands rather than individuals.
In an optimistic sense a much more fitting lens for a discussion of baseball on the Fourth of July baseball reflects the individualism so highly valued in this country. It's a team sport that highlights the all-stars. Slumps happen, but they end. The greatest heroes on the diamond have long careers that NFL players could only dream of.
Finally, on America's birthday, I can't help but think that if Major League Baseball existed in its current state at the time of the Revolution, you would all be rooting for the Yankees right along with me.
