In his intriguing book, Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game, John Sexton describes events in baseball that seem to defy reduction to words or logic as “ineffable.” Sexton doesn’t claim that baseball is a spiritual activity, but illustrates how some of us, but not all, may experience moments in baseball as having a spiritual quality or meaning.

This class is an opportunity to reflect on memorable personalities and moments in the game, including:

• George Herman “Babe” Ruth, whose career began as a Boston Red Sox pitcher during WWI and the pandemic of 1918;
• Ruth’s infamous trade to the New York Yankees the same year, which inflamed a bitter Yankees-Red Sox rivalry enshrined by James Taylor in his ballad, Angels of Fenway, in 2015;
• The formation of the Negro National League in 1920 and the rising prominence of Black players like Jackie Robinson who desegregated baseball when he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947.

Reading Sexton’s book is not required but encouraged. Why not come on out? “Play ball” and see what happens.