Baseball Is a Teacher: Lessons Learned by a Canadian Baseball Fan

Baseball Is a TeacherLessons Learned by a Canadian Baseball Fan Craig Greenham (bio) Baseball’s gifts are numerous but its greatest strength, perhaps, is its ability to teach. Each of us interacts with the game differently so no standard curriculum with universal learning outcomes is possible. Instead, the game resembles a sage elder that uses experience, allegories and parables as tools of instruction from which its students can extract meaningful lessons. Sometimes baseball’s tutorials are quick and blunt—keep your eye on the ball or suffer the consequences—but just as often its lessons can take seasons to learn. In many ways this pattern mirrors the game itself; lightning quick reactions blended with unhurried reflection. In an on-demand world, however, baseball fans seem to understand delayed gratification. When I think about the many things baseball has taught me, the example that leaps to mind took me years to learn but its wisdom will last a lifetime. It is a story of a grudge, remorse, forgiveness and second chances told by a spurned fan held hostage by non-negotiable ideals in a world of compromise. If the reader will indulge me, I would like to share that imparted education in its unabridged form. I was born in 1977, the same year that the Toronto Blue Jays played their first season. As an Ontario boy it might be assumed that I was hockey-mad (and I was and am) but that oversimplification belies the truth of the Canadian sport landscape. Hockey is the game most intertwined with our national identity, but athletic-minded Canadians have room on their calendars for more than one sport. Contrary to the tired stereotypes we sometimes perpetuate, Canada is not a frozen tundra year-round. We have glorious summers and baseball has long been part of our athletic tradition. Historians have examined claims of a game in Beachville, Ontario, from 18381—a year before the fabled but farcical Abner Doubleday game in Cooperstown, New York.2 Baseball’s Canadian roots are deep. From the earliest age that I recall, I loved the Blue Jays. They were my team, but it seemed they were everyone else’s team too. The club’s exploits were common [End Page 142] summertime fodder for my childhood chums as well as the adults in my life. The Blue Jays gave me common ground with older generations and allowed me to be a participant in discussions with a crowd with whom I shared little else. I knew nothing, for example, of high interest rates that made home ownership perilous in the 1980s, or the notions of Quebec separatism that had begun to challenge Canadian federalism. However, I knew baseball and made insightful observations that often elicited impressed looks from the grown-ups in my audience. I gathered as much information about the sport as I could, pouring over my O-Pee-Chee baseball cards (the Canadian version of Topps) and studying the statistical and biographical information. I learned the finer points of the game from the well-versed broadcasting team of Don Chevrier and Tony Kubek that brought the Blue Jays into the homes of the nation. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can conjure up their voices all these years later. I grew up in a rural area and the agricultural demands of summer made league play challenging. I sporadically played for town and county teams, but much of my early baseball was played in our spacious backyard with family and neighborhood friends or on the sandlots at my elementary school in the fall and spring. Baseball bats on the schoolyard had yet to be outlawed as potentially menacing instruments of violence and, occasionally, a teacher or two joined in the fun. Regardless of the daily lessons, recess was king as it married our physical desire for baseball with childhood’s abundant creativity to adopt alternative personas. We did not merely play but we became Blue Jays players—at least in our imaginations—right down to the mannerisms and batting stances. Initially we called out the name of the player we wanted to be, and the first person to do so got the privilege of being...