Nostalgia

As a fan of the Green Bay Packers, I have to say that this is shaping up to be a most exciting football season. I've been a Green Bay fan since becoming friends with Carlos. 

But my football loyalties are shallow. I'm a baseball man, a fan of the once and future dreaded (but always hated) New York Yankees.

I follow them around. That's me at Fenway. I had doffed my hat at the moment that photo was taken, but look at the two guys standing below my right arm.  Yankees hats.  And look at the fellow seated in front of them. A Derek Jeter jersey.  We are there, in the bleachers of Fenway. The opposite would not occur in Yankee Stadium, not unless the Red Sox fan in question wanted humiliation. Or possibly violence.

The Bleacher Creatures of the Bronx are the fellows who learned to chant obscene comments about the sexuality of Dice-K's mother in Japanese. Two senior professors once took me to a Red Sox game against Toronto. They weren't surprised, exactly, at my comportment. 

In some ways, Boston and New York are inverses. In NYC, nobody could care less if you wear Red Sox paraphenalia. In fact, Manny Ramírez managed to blow a shot at turning most of Washington Heights and a big chunk of the Bronx into part of Red Sox Nation. (Guess how he blew it.  Right.)  In Boston, though, people feel free to yell at me in the street for wearing a Yankees hat. (And so I mostly don't, except around Harvard Square.) On the other hand, Yankees fans do fine inside Fenway, even in the bleachers ... and the reverse ain't true in the Bronx. (I wouldn't risk it on the D-train after a game neither, to be honest.)    

So why am I a baseball fan? Three reasons. (1) I actually played it back in the day.  Sure, now I have trouble throwing a ball ninety feet, but I played the real thing, unlike football.  I think I played tackle football maybe, like, twice in my life, and even then it was way way watered-down because we used neither pads nor helmets and I am still here to talk about it. (2) I understand baseball.  People who don't understand baseball won't admit this, but the game is actually simpler than football. And (3) ... history.  Baseball's just got hella more history than football. 

Which brings me to nostalgia. I rarely give Brink Lindsay props. After all, he has no idea what really caused the Great Compression, mistakenly believes that the Democratic Party lost white male votes outside the South during the 1960s and 1970s, and claims that the Great Society contributed to "an explosion of crime, urban riots, family breakdown, and welfare dependency."  But he did say one very very clever thing about nostalgia for the 1950s, when baseball ruled supreme, and today's political debates:

"Republicans want to go home to the United States of the 1950s, while Democrats want to work there."

True or false?

Comments

[Jasmine Pierce]

I'm probably too innocent for my own good but what does the "Democrats want to work there" bit mean?

[Carrie]

Maybe white male Democrats. I wouldn't have been allowed to work there. So, no.

[DaveMB]

What the quote refers to, I think, is that the 1950's saw powerful unions (at least in major manufacturing industries) and a more reliable social safety net than ours today. (Is the latter true? There was, after all, the widespread poverty documented by Michael Harrington, no Medicare, etc. -- if it was so great back then, what need for the Great Society?) The intended comparison, fair or not, is between a line worker for 1950's GM and a Wal-Mart associate today. The former could at least expect a stable career if he remained healthy.

[Carlos]

"People who don't understand baseball won't admit this, but the game is actually simpler than football."

Well, yeah.

I will say this about baseball: at least broadcast coverage shows the whole field. For a game that's all about the forward pass, half the time you're left guessing how a play really developed.

Still, not as bad as hockey coverage.

[Noel Maurer]

It depends on the coverage, unfortunately. I have found myself yelling at the screen, "What are the infielders doing! Where are the outfielders!!"

It's the same problem as football, although my impression is that football coverage is steadily improving while baseball is getting a bit worse. I still do that trick of turning the sound off the TV and turning on the radio during baseball games.

To accurately cover a hockey game, you'd just show a shot from the ceiling for the entire time. And let's not mention the problems with showing soccer on the tube.

[Jasmine Pierce]

OT: Just curious - it's "Noel" for male and "Noëlle" for female right?

[Noel Maurer]

I think you're right, Jasmine, but I honestly don't know. I got the name because my father is named "Leon," and "Noel" sure beats "Leon Jr."

My mother always pronounced it "No-El," but that caused the other kids in the schoolyard to question my possession of a Y-chromosome. Since I wasn't able to persuade people to call me "Billy," I've gone by Noel (pronounced "knoll," more or less) ever since.

There's a Noel Watson here at HBS, and he pronounces it "No-El."