Rabbi's Week in Review Blog

I am writing the blog this week while away for some vacation time with extended family.  I have been admonished on such excursions not to bring any “work-related” reading - to keep it light. So, to no one’s surprise, I found in that reading something to write about in the “Rabbi's Week in Review.”

The book is Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight For the Soul of America, by Will Bardenwerper. As a lifelong baseball fan (poor Fay has lost count of how many times she’s heard me mention that my father, z”l—of blessed memory—pulled me out of school to attend Opening Day of the Kansas City Royals’ first season in 1969 at old Municipal Stadium—by the way, we beat the Twins that day 5–3), I immediately picked the book off the shelf at Rainy Day Books.

The author writes about his experience spending a season with the minor league baseball team, the Batavia Muckdogs. He not only covers the team, but also the fans and the spirit of this small town in western New York state. The team was formed in a new league after the previous team was one of forty minor league teams eliminated by Major League Baseball (MLB). The new league, rather than simply be a feeder for the few players that make it to the majors, was comprised of college players from smaller colleges, and a few old veterans who never made it to the majors, and just played for the love of the game, and the admiration of a small town in western New York.

The book is taking me down two paths.  

The first is about Major League Baseball itself, which seems increasingly driven by analytics and automation over human connection. (Analytics diminish the need for scouts. There’s a push for automated calls of balls and strikes instead of human umpires. Managers often manage "by the numbers" rather than with the instinct and personality of some of the game’s past greats.) In contrast, Bardenwerper describes how the new Batavia team reflects the personality of its manager, Skip Martinez. It’s a scrappy, risk-taking team—one that always tries to take the extra base and forces the other side to make the play.

Bardenwerper laments the corporate personality of the games at the major league level - that power pitching and power hitting have replaced the bunt, the squeeze play, and the hit and run.  He observes that MLB games are longer and less interesting than they once were.  He also critiques a league of billionaire owners who, by doing away with forty minor league teams, and really the minor league system, saved the equivalent of one major leaguer’s salary at the minimum level. In the process small towns have not only lost teams, but have lost jobs, lost revenue and lost a binding force that creates communities.

The second path is that of Bardenwerper’s experience meeting the people connected to the Batavia Muckdogs: the players, the owners (a husband and wife partnership in which they greet the fans at every game, work the concession stands, and stay after the games to the early morning hours counting the night’s receipts, only to be back at the ballpark by 8 am for the next day’s little league tournament), and most importantly the fans.

Bardenwerper talks about the connection of the fans to the team and to each other, fans whose families have been coming to Batavia minor league games for decades.  Bardenwerper, whose self-described politics runs to the left, found how, in the community of Batavia - politically a very red community - with baseball, the politics did not matter.  That by creating a caring, cohesive community over a minor league team, the polarization infecting our country dissipated. 

As I continue reading this book (my vacation isn’t quite over yet), I find myself thinking about the battle between Kansas and Missouri—and between municipalities—to land the new billion-dollar stadiums for the Royals and Chiefs. Is this good for our “larger small town”? I still recall the feeling in 2014 and 2015 during the Royals’ magica. championship runs, when the whole city seemed connected through baseball. No one asked about my politics before talking about our Royals. I think, too, about how sports—Royals, Chiefs, and even Kansas City A’s games in the mid-’60s—played such an important role in my relationship with my father. I know I’ll keep going to games, even as the landscape shifts—not always for the better.

Even if this is more in my imagination than in reality, in a time of polarization and social media-fueled isolation, I think we need to think of how we can come together to create community. We need to prioritize our human need for connection ahead of a cold, corporate landscape where the dollars are never enough.

In this context, I also think about our little Congregation Kol Ami.  I am proud of the way our congregants put people first, show up and care for each other, and welcome new people in.  In a time where the bonds that create communities are severing, we need a Kol Ami now more than ever. Whatever we or I do that leans to the political, to the macro of policy debates and advocacy, when we get down to it, our ace in the whole, or raison d’etra is the human relationships we build with each other.  

Let that always be our north star.