by John Sexton
The Cubs’ championship drought is a record; but others have also suffered. Indeed, there are several teams and towns that have had to cope with interminable adversity. In fact, twenty-three teams have had droughts of three decades or more, with two franchises (the Braves and the Pirates) doing it twice.
The Philadelphia Phillies held the distinction of playing their first ninety-seven years without a championship—a span lasting just shy of twenty presidential administrations—before they finally won it all in 1980. But Phillies fanatics, who’ve been described as many things (loyal, loud, intense, blue-collar, gruff, and downright rude), have never bought into the notion of a curse. They just chalked it up, loss after loss, year after year, to bad baseball.
Fans of other teams have done the same. A charter franchise of the American League, the original Milwaukee Brewers, went through sixty-five years and three cities before finally winning a Series as the Baltimore Orioles (most of their losses came when they were the St. Louis Browns).
And on the South Side of Chicago, the White Sox had a profound World Series drought of their own—one that lasted eighty-eight years, actually two years longer than the famous Red Sox Curse. If baseball curses exist, perhaps the team that did the most to earn one would be the White Sox, whose best players accepted money from gangsters to intentionally lose the Series in 1919. Yet there never has been talk of a curse on the South Side. In all of these cases, a collective sense of cursedness just didn’t crystallize, not for players nor management nor the greater community that rooted for the team. For these franchises and their fans, a championship is cause for joy, and defeat a cause for sorrow, but in the end it’s about baseball—not curses (or the ecstatic moment of release called blessing). As with all hierophanies, baseball can be a catalyst to evoke the spiritual dimension, but it is not the catalyst for everyone, everywhere.
John Calvin, the sixteenth-century theologian who helped develop the second phase of the Protestant Reformation, wrote that on earth the state of mankind is completely depraved and sinful. To him, salvation came only through the unfathomable mercy of God and the gift of grace (to Calvin, the Yankees are “elected” and the Cubs are not). But maybe it all is much simpler. A shirt seen around Yankee Stadium during the Red Sox’s free fall late in the 2011 season captured this thought. The front side reads with typical Bronx gusto, THERE WAS NO CURSE, and on the back, YOU JUST SUCKED FOR 86 YEARS!
Not to be outdone, an equally insightful shirt has been sold outside the friendly confines, which asks: WHAT DID JESUS SAY TO THE CUBS JUST BEFORE HE ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN? The answer: DON’T DO ANYTHING UNTIL I GET BACK. And another proclaims the words of the late, iconic Chicago broadcaster Jack Brickhouse: HEY, ANYONE CAN HAVE A BAD CENTURY!
By now, the second century of World Series drought is upon them, but until it ends, Cubs fans will continue flocking to the corner of Clark and Addison Streets on game day—not because they expect to win, nor because they want to see how exactly they’ll manage to lose, but simply because they want to be there. Just in case.
They sit, forever waiting to experience the ecstasy of release; the blessing that follows the curse. As Dougie and I did on October 4, 1955, when next year finally came. And today, it still feels just as holy as it did more than fifty years ago.
It was the Fourth of July and the Cardinals, adorned in their traditional red and white, gathered to witness a special ceremony. But the setting was far from St. Louis, and the Cardinals were anything but ballplayers; they were the College of Cardinals, having convened at the Vatican for a ritual unlike any they had ever seen before. It was July 4, 993, the twentieth anniversary of the death of Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg, who in mere moments would be declared Saint Ulrich, in what is widely believed to be the first formal canonization by a pope.
In life, Bishop Ulrich is said to have been a wise, calm prelate who once mediated a rebellion against Otto the Great’s growing empire, the one that would later be called Holy and Roman; he also organized the defense of Augsburg against invading Magyars. His pastoral cross was said to have healing powers, and villagers believed that women who drank from his chalice would have easy deliveries; in fact, he is still the patron saint of those facing difficult births.
It was in the two decades following Ulrich’s death, however, that his name truly became associated with miracles. Many were said to have taken place at the exact site of his burial. So passionate became his following that houses of worship were named in his honor; many believed that merely invoking his likeness would generate an ability to heal (the barracks of the monastery that was built in honor of his sainthood remained intact for nearly a thousand years until destroyed in a battle during World War II). And a forged letter that emerged a full century after Saint Ulrich’s death, written to support the right for priests to be married, was at first taken seriously simply because the signature on it was claimed to be his.
Saint Ulrich will never be confused with baseball’s Ulrichs, George and Dutch, whose National League careers were so fleeting they would rank near that of the even less accomplished Archibald “Moonlight” Graham, made famous in the movie Field of Dreams. George played for twenty-three professional teams before retiring with a lone big league run batted in, while Dutch pitched sporadically over three seasons in the twenties, winning a grand total of nineteen games for the Phillies, baseball’s worst team of that—and quite possibly any—time.
Venerating blessed persons is universal. Every religious tradition has its way of identifying and celebrating them, as do some secular ones. It should come as no surprise that the concept eventually reached baseball—and the shores of the lakefront town of Cooperstown, New York, where a museum was built to honor the legends (the saints) of the game.
From Christy Mathewson to Lou Gehrig, Damon Rutherford to Henry Wiggen, baseball’s heroes—both factual and fictional—and the way we go about honoring and remembering them mirror the concept of sainthood that has been employed by religions over millennia.
The Jesuit theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin described the progressive spiritual evolution of humankind as a continually developing transformation culminating in a “supremely autonomous focus of union,” what he called “Point Omega.” For Teilhard, this evolution mirrors the stages of biological evolution, which he used as a metaphor: emergence (a new form), divergence (as the form propagates diverse forms), and convergence (a coming-together in a new unified form on a higher plane). Saints, in effect, are the foot soldiers of this process, displaying in their lives the limitless opportunities for spiritual development—in essence, an embodiment of the hierophanic experience. They are the best of what we can be.
In recent years, the Roman Church has made much of sainthood. Pope John Paul II, himself now beatified, canonized more saints than all of his predecessors combined, many of those he honored still unknown to even the most devout Catholics.
This sense of veneration is embedded within other religious traditions, even if the holy one goes by a name other than saint: prophet, miracle worker, or mahatma, to name a few. In the Abrahamic traditions, they serve dual roles as both role models and teachers.
Hebrew Scriptures identify no less than fifty-five prophets known as Navi, an abbreviation for a saying that translates to “fruit of the lips,” emphasizing their anointed place as speakers for the divine. But the prophet is more than a spokesperson or foreteller. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profane riches of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophet’s words.”
The Nevi’im, the second of three major sections of the Hebrew Bible, is dedicated entirely to the prophets, covering a period of more than six centuries from the death of Moses to the Babylonian Exile. Selections are ritually read aloud in synagogue after the reading of the Torah on the Sabbath and during Jewish festivals, a practice known as the haftarah. In them, prophets are repeatedly describe
d as objects of persecution—in a sense, metaphors for the great struggles that have confronted the Israelites through history.
In Islam, miraculous acts have been attributed to the Awliya, in Arabic the “friends of Allah.” They are celebrated today through festivals in their names and ceremonies at their tombs. Adam is considered to be the first prophet, and Muhammad the last, with all who came between them central figures of the Jewish and Christian narratives as well.
Together, the three traditions represent a pivot away from the polytheistic notion that saints are gods. Instead, sainthood serves to make concrete in a human being—a person with whom we other humans can relate—the power and effect of higher forces.
In Eastern religions, where often there is no separation between the spiritual and physical worlds, objects as well as humans can be spiritual beings. Readers of Bernard Malamud’s celebrated novel The Natural may recognize this in the mystical powers of Roy Hobbs and his bat, Wonderboy, carved from timbers struck by lightning that is meant to evoke memories of Black Betsy, the venerated lumber swung by Shoeless Joe Jackson.
In the Eastern traditions, there are no formal processes to identify what Catholic tradition would call saints. Instead of being received from a higher authority, the special persons who are the equivalent of saints are gradually identified through what amounts to societal consensus. They are almost always noted for a deep commitment to teaching and to helping others. In the Hindu and Buddhist religions, it is often a person’s internal development toward holiness that matters more than worldly activities. In Hinduism, there is the swami, a word derived from Sanskrit roots that literally means “an owner of one’s self.” Buddhist followers are taught to journey on the path to self-purification or dhamma. The attainment of ariya, referring to an especially noble-hearted person, is followed by personal striving to reach ever-higher levels of spirituality, four in all. In these faiths and virtually all others, however, individuals from the past are cited and studied for their inspirational value. Saint may be a Western word, but the essential concept is familiar everywhere.
Whatever the context and whatever its use, sainthood always has one salient characteristic at its core: a revelation of deep meaning. This is the hallmark of sainthood. Sainthood is the distinction bestowed for a life especially well lived; in effect, an induction into an honor society of those who are, as Teilhard might put it, the best of what we can be.
Baseball also celebrates its heroes. Each summer, the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooperstown is filled with introductions that describe players as the “legends” and “immortals” of the game. A sense of timeless excellence pervades the Hall of Fame, from the Latin-style script (mvsevm) chiseled above the redbrick entranceway to the gallery inside, lined with bronze-engraved plaques that honor baseball’s most storied figures and personalities.
There is no greater debate among fans than over who deserves a place in the Hall. In any given ballpark on any given game day, a scattering of discussions in the stands inevitably turns to the chances of borderline candidates, like Fred McGriff; those who have been unfairly left out over the years, like Gil Hodges; and players who are as close to a sure thing as there can be, like Mariano Rivera.
Remarkably, the baseball writers who do the voting have never elected a player unanimously. Not Jackie Robinson, not “Hammerin’” Hank Aaron, not the “Say Hey Kid” Willie Mays, not the “Splendid Splinter” Ted Williams. Pitchers Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan have come the closest, each garnering 98.8 percent of the vote. It is as much disgraceful as it is stunning that one in seven voters failed to cast a ballot for Sandy Koufax, the Dodger marvel who years later was named in a poll of two million fans as the greatest left-handed pitcher of the last century.
Two hundred miles to the south stands another baseball museum, this one just beyond the center field wall in Yankee Stadium. Monument Park has been aptly described by Brooklyn-born writer Allen Abel as a place “where plaques and standing stones honor the legacies of flyhawks, tycoons, and popes. (The numbers on the walls include 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, II, VI, and XVI.)” At its center is a monument for the greatest Yankee of them all, Babe Ruth, which simply reads, A GREAT BALL PLAYER, A GREAT MAN, A GREAT AMERICAN. Ruth’s life off the playing field often featured indulgent excess, but his central place in the game’s lore shows how in baseball it is possible to be a saint on the field and a sinner in life.
This duality, a constant in all of secular life and not merely in baseball, is almost never a significant factor in religious stories, where such lines are by definition much brighter. In the Catholic Church, for example, where the concept of a saint corrupted by vice is as foreign as a virtuous demon, the mere publication of Mother Teresa’s private struggles with her faith was jarring. Moments of human frailty in saints, like the denial and doubt exhibited by the apostles Peter and Thomas after the crucifixion, are fleeting.
In baseball, conflict and ambivalence often are inextricably part of the story. For starters, perspective is often central to how a fan feels about a ballplayer. Sal Maglie of the New York Giants was detested in Brooklyn until he became a Dodger and was loved; Mets fans loved Lenny Dykstra until he went to play for the Phillies; Minnesota fans adored their catcher, A. J. Pierzynski, until he took his much-publicized antics to the White Sox. And Yankees fans hated Johnny Damon when he played for the Red Sox (his two home runs in the seventh game of the 2004 American League Championship sank New York) but loved him after he joined the Yankees as a free agent; once he joined the Yankees, of course, the same Red Sox fans who earlier had adored him promptly despised him (after his departure, a prominent T-shirt in Boston included under a picture of the hirsute Damon the phrase LOOKS LIKE JESUS, ACTS LIKE JUDAS, THROWS LIKE MARY!).
Beyond such differences in perspective, however, there are players who, if judged only on their performance on the field, are true saints of the sport, but who simply are nasty persons at best, thugs at worst. Look no further than Tyrus Raymond Cobb.
Cobb was such a horrid person off the field that even in death his wild ride of a life—brilliant, thrilling, angry, bitter, vicious, and often violent—came back to complicate his legacy one last time. He was seventy-four when he succumbed during the summer of 1961 to cancer, prodigious amounts of whiskey, and far too many cigarettes. The month before he had entered Emory University Hospital in Atlanta with more than one million dollars in bonds from his portfolio in an envelope and, reportedly, a pistol.
At the funeral service in the north Georgia town of Cornelia, near the small village of Royston where he grew up, reporters estimated attendance at no more than 150 locals and relatives, many of them estranged. After his life of nearly three records-filled decades in baseball, only three former ballplayers and the executive director of the Hall of Fame bothered to attend the service. Two were catchers who had joined Cobb in Cooperstown: Ray Schalk, who pioneered the defensive aspects of the position; and Mickey Cochrane, who was briefly his teammate on the Philadelphia Athletics at the end of his career. The third was a fellow Georgian from the old days, a pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers named George “Nap” Rucker.
That was it. Before he died, Cobb told one of the few acquaintances who bothered to visit the hospital, the comedian Joe E. Brown, that he realized he was dying alone and that he was filled with regrets over a life he wished he had lived differently.
Cobb had first come to public notice while in the minors in Alabama through a short item in an Atlanta newspaper column by a budding sportswriter named Grantland Rice, who traveled to see Cobb play because he had received numerous postcards touting a young outfielder. Years later it was discovered that Cobb had written the postcards himself.
During his first year in the majors with the Detroit Tigers, when he was eighteen, Cobb’s mother shot and killed his father. They had been married when his mom was twelve years old; she began having kids three years later (he was the first of three). His father, a local politician, suspected his wife of infidelity and so he sneaked up to t
heir bedroom window trying to catch his wife unawares; alone that night, she mistook him for an intruder (or so she said) and blasted him with a shotgun. The following year she beat the murder charge at trial, but the weight of the killing and the doubts around it stayed with Cobb over the course of his career.
But what a career it was. After twenty-four years, he had amassed some ninety hitting records, sixteen of which were still standing when he died. Even today, his lifetime batting average of .367 seems safe, and only Pete Rose (and that’s another sinner’s story) has topped his famous hits total of 4,191. More than the records, however, Cobb was the high priest of the so-called deadball era in baseball, before the home run and Babe Ruth changed it all irrevocably, when the simple goal was to get on base somehow, advance, and then score.
Numbers don’t quite tell the story of Cobb’s dominance of one baseball category, the stolen base; vignettes do a better job. For example, the newspapers tell of at least four occasions when Cobb made it to first base and then stole second, third, and home. At least once, he tagged up and scored from third base on a pop-up, timing his dash home for the instant the infielder began his nonchalant toss back to the pitcher.