11-29-90 . . . The Fall 1990 issue of The Public Interest contains an exchange between Donald Kagan, a Yale history and classics professor, and George Will, a columnist who happens to hold a Ph.D. degree in political theory [from Princeton University]. [Donald Kagan, “George Will’s Baseball—A Conservative Critique”, The Public Interest (fall 1990): 3-20; George F. Will, “The Romantic Fallacy in Baseball—A Reply”, The Public Interest (fall 1990): 21-7.] The topic, of all things, is baseball. Several months ago Will published a book entitled Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball, in which he discussed the various ways baseball players try to improve their game. He picked a manager (Tony LaRussa) and three players (Cal Ripken Jr, Tony Gwynn, and Orel Hershiser) as his subjects. I haven’t read the book. Now Kagan comes along to criticize Will for “reducing” baseball to a craft or science. This, Kagan thinks, takes the romance and heroism out of the sport. He obviously despises many of the changes that have taken place in baseball during the past two or three decades, including the emphasis on baserunning. Kagan’s favorite baseball event appears to be the three-run homer. Will, in response, accuses Kagan of committing “the romantic fallacy”. All he means by “craft”, he says, is “discipline, a set of physical and mental skills subject to constant refinement on the basis of cumulative knowledge” (page 22). Both essays are written in a tone of mock seriousness. For example, Kagan points out that Will is a Chicago Cub fan and that the Cubs haven’t won a World Series “since Teddy Roosevelt was president; no doubt such lengthy frustration makes a man disgruntled and causes him to lose his judgment” (9). Will responds in kind, as when he addresses Kagan’s claim that baserunning skills have supplanted the skills of hitting:
The running game is not a substitute for hitting, it is a substitute for standing around and waiting for someone to hit the ball hard enough to wake up the Kagans who are dozing in the stands, uninterested in anything more subtle than a three-run home run (24).
Touche! I laughed as I read the essays this morning. Kagan and Will put on a great show: two adults fighting in public about a kid’s game. One thing is clear: Disagreement about the value, point, and meaning of baseball will always be with us; it’s part of the attraction of the sport.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 