Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game

by John Sexton, Thomas Oliphant, Peter J. Schwartz

Overview

A love letter to America's most beloved sport and an exploration of the deeper dimensions it reveals

For more than a decade, New York University president John Sexton has used baseball to illustrate the elements of a spiritual life in a wildly popular course at NYU. Using great works of baseball literature as well as the actual game's fantastic moments, its legendary characters, and its routine rituals-from the long-sought triumph of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers to the heroic achievements of players like the saintly Christy Mathewson and the sinful Ty Cobb to the loving intimacy of a game of catch between a father and son-Sexton teaches that through the game we can touch the spiritual dimensions of life.

Baseball as a Road to God is about the elements of our lives that lie beyond what can be captured in words alone-ineffable truths that we know by experience rather than by logic or analysis. Applying the inquiry usually reserved for the study of religion to the secular activity of baseball, Sexton reveals a surprising amount of common ground between the game and what we all recognize as religion: sacred places and times, faith and doubt, blessings and curses, and more.

In thought-provoking, beautifully rendered prose, Baseball as a Road to God elegantly demonstrates that baseball is more than a game or even a national pastime: It can be a road to a deeper and more meaningful life.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Can baseball be a “road to God”? Sexton, the president of New York University, a former Brooklyn Dodgers fan, and tortured Yankees convert, considers the question as only an academic can. He draws heavily on the writings of University of Chicago professor Mircea Eliade, who proposed the existence of a phenomenon known as a “hierophany,” a connection to the “ineffable domain” of sacred manifestations, or in layman’s terms, the “touching of a transcendent plane.” With assists from journalists Oliphant (The Boston Globe) and Schwartz (Forbes), Sexton weaves supporting testimonials from physicists, authors, transcendentalists, and theologians into his reasoning over the course of nine chapters, or innings, with his summary reserved for the 10th. After loading the bases through nine, though, Sexton confesses that his thesis is little more than a balk. Baseball is not a “Road to God,” even if it can awaken us to an “often missing” dimension of life. That’s deflating after his logical progression from thesis to proof, but it’s a thought-provoking proposition for zealots and skeptics alike. (Mar.)

From the Publisher

Praise for Baseball as a Road to God

“In the church of baseball, John Sexton is one of the preeminent theologians.”
—Bill Moyers in an interview with John Sexton on Bill Moyers Journal
 
“This book takes the reader on a remarkable spiritual journey, using the secular sport of baseball to explore subjects ordinarily associated with religion—prayers, altars, sacred space, faith, doubt, conversion, miracles, blessings, curses, saints and sinners. There is magic in these pages.”
—Doris Kerns Goodwin, from the foreword
 
“ . . .a thought-provoking proposition for zealots and skeptics alike.”
—Publishers Weekly
 
“An elegant little meditation on life and the afterlife, well worth reading . . .”
—Kirkus Reviews

"John Sexton has written beautifully about the magic of baseball: its near irresistible appeal, its legends, its breathtaking moments of drama, its heroes and villians. He has also written with great insight about the intense-felt character of religious perception. And he has—dare I say it?—woven the two together miraculously."
—Ronald Dworkin, author of Law's Empire and the recipient of philosophy's prestigious Holberg International Memorial Prize

"Baseball as a Road to God is both a wonderful collection of delightful baseball stories that allows the reader to relive the moments of joy, despair, anxiety, and inspiration, and a meditation demonstrating that baseball is rife with the profound and complex elements that constitute religion. The stories reflect a love of baseball and call upon us all to live slow and notice, illustrating the availability of a joyful, spiritual life."
—Governor Mario Cuomo

"Baseball as a Road to God illuminates baseball as you've never experienced or thought about it before. John Sexton has given us nine 'innings' of lively stories and insights that take our national pastime far, far beyond the playing field. He has pitched a perfect game!"
—Arthur R. Miller, professor of law and resident scholar at Good Morning America for more than two decades

"John Sexton's book, Baseball as a Road to God, provides a thoughtful and intriguing examination of the connection between baseball and religion. In this wonderful book, John navigates in clear language the complex questions linking faith and America's favorite pastime. Using his parlance, this book is a home run."
—Rachel Robinson, founder of the Jackie Robinson Foundation

Library Journal

After more than a decade teaching a course on this topic, Sexton (president, New York Univ.) shares some of his insights in this elegant meditation on the ways in which baseball evokes the essence of religion. Drawing on the work of religious historian Mircea Eliade, Sexton's reflections develop out of the foundational concepts of the ineffable and hierophany. The first refers to that which is indescribable in words but known through experience. The second is the breakthrough of the sacred into the ordinary world. Building on these shared starting points, Sexton further explores parallels between baseball and religion across topics such as sacred space and time, faith and doubt, conversion, miracles, blessings and curses, saints and sinners, community, and nostalgia. Masterfully utilizing the vast riches of baseball stories, and liberally sprinkling supporting thoughts from luminaries such as Yogi Berra and Abraham Heschel, Sexton creates a convincing case that baseball, like religion, "can awaken us to a dimension of life often missing in our contemporary world." VERDICT Contrary to what his title implies, Sexton's message is more about finding a sense of the spiritual than of finding God. This is an essential read for baseball fans of all spiritual and religious perspectives.

Kirkus Reviews

A tour of religious thought from the vantage point of that most perfect of cathedrals, the baseball diamond. "Baseball can teach us that living simultaneously the life of faith and the life of the mind is possible, even fun," writes lawyer, theologian and New York University president Sexton near the close of this examination of religion's chief questions as seen through a baseball glove. So it can, and if Stephen Jay Gould observed that science and religion were nonoverlapping magisteria, baseball might just connect them into a Venn set. If science sharpens the mind to a razor edge, then, Sexton counters, religion is a medium of "contemplation, sensitivity, awareness, and mystical intensity"--and so, as every fan knows, is the game, which makes, as Sexton deems it, "a wonderful laboratory." There are some big questions to ponder, many of which Sexton explores. If there is a just supreme being in charge, for instance, then why have the Cubs labored in the vineyards of hell for so many years? Can God hit a home run so powerful that He can't catch it? More to the point, Sexton observes, baseball's calendar is nearly liturgical. Its doubters often become converts to the faith, while its true believers are so often dashed against the rocks; it is a matter of saints (Lou Gehrig) and sinners (a much longer list), with some (Shoeless Joe Jackson) fitting on both lists. Sexton's view is refreshingly small-c catholic, embracing Taoism, Dante and Yogi Berra in a single sweep, and his enthusiasm for both baseball and the otherworld is refreshing. Whether it will make a doubter of a believer is another matter, for while there may be no atheists in the foxhole, there are still those sad souls who march away from Wrigley Field season after season. An elegant little meditation on life and the afterlife, well worth reading while waiting for spring.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172300448
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	11/15/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

Related Subjects

• Sports
• Baseball & Softball
• Baseball - General & Miscellaneous