God’s Game: Baseball or Golf?

What a wormhole I opened up here!

The genesis of it (pun intended) emerged from the time and season: Baseball is opening and the Players’ tournament just ended with the Masters on the horizon.

My initial entry point was just to mark and compare the good, the true and the beautiful of both sports.
Which has the more transcendent spectator experience? Better food? Who has the better sports call voice; Vin Scully or Jim Nantz?

What about the overall aesthetics of the games? The sound of the crack of the bat and pop of the catcher’s mitt vs. the contact of a perfectly struck 5-iron and the whistle of the wind through trees. Fenway Park vs. Pebble Beach.

And game play. The more clearly demanding sport, in terms of athleticism needed, is baseball, but does golf not get some points for allowing guys who cannot necessarily play other sports, well they can compete well into their senior years? I mean, I’m pretty certain that a senior tour in baseball would not be very pretty to engage in or to watch.

There are then the quotes about each sport from the best in their games, smart people and movie scripts (indeed, Kevin Costner is featured here for both sports):

For baseball:

1. “The game of ball is glorious.” – Walt Whitman
2. “Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday’s success or put its failures behind and start over again. That’s the way life is, with a new game every day, and that’s the way baseball is.” – Bob Feller
3. “People ask me what I do in the winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” – Rogers Hornsby
4. “I am convinced that God wanted me to be a baseball player.” – Roberto Clemente
5. “A hot dog at the game beats roast beef at the Ritz.” – Humphrey Bogart
6. “Never allow the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.” – Babe Ruth
7.

8.

For golf:

1. “Of all the hazards, fear is the worst. Golf is good for the soul. You get so mad at yourself you forget to hate your enemies. Golf is a game in which you yell ‘fore,’ shoot six, and write down five.” – Sam Snead
2. “Golf… is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well.” -P.G. Wodehouse
3. “There are no shortcuts on the quest for perfection.” -Ben Hogan
4. “Golf is the loneliest sport. You’re completely alone with every conceivable opportunity to defeat yourself. Golf brings out your assets and liabilities as a person. The longer you play, the more certain you are that a man’s performance is the outward manifestation of who, in his heart, he really thinks he is.” -Hale Irwin
5. “What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive.” – Arnold Palmer
6. “Don’t play too much golf. Two rounds a day are plenty.” – Harry Vardon
7. “If you’re caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a 1-iron.” -Lee Trevino
8.

And one on both:

“Well, it took me 17 years to get 3,000 hits in baseball, and I did it in one afternoon on the golf course.” – Hank Aaron

________________

Answering those questions and ranking the quotes would be simple enough, but would such answers get me closer to exhausting the question of which was truly God’s game? I don’t think so.

It is a good idea in my experience, when confronted with a serious intellectual challenge, to consult St. Thomas Aquinas. He has all the answers, and I’m not being hyperbolic here.

In the prima pars of the Summa Theologica, Thomas spells out the eight positive attributes of God; that is to say the things we can logically deduce about God without limiting Him in some way. Sure, (pace Pseudo-Dionysius) our words and thoughts on God are going to be woefully inadequate in attesting to the one God “who is, who was and will be forever” (French version of the Glory Be). However, Thomas helps us to advance the conversation when he argues his core, epistemological claim: A thing is good insofar as it acts according to its nature. The ultimate good is God because God alone exhausts all of the following qualities:

1. He is simple. (God has no constituent parts. His essence—what He is—is the same as His existence, I.e. that He is.)
2. He is perfect. (God lacks no good or further perfection.)
3. He is good. (God is goodness; in other words, all that is good is found in its completeness in Him.)
4. He is infinite. (God is in no way limited by time.)
5. He is everywhere. (God is in no way limited by space.)
6. He is unchangeable. (God is utterly immutable; He doesn’t mess with His own perfection.)
7. He is eternal. (God is permanent, perfect permanence, in fact.)
8. He is one. (God is perfect unity, or Tri-Unity given Christian revelation. Furthermore, his act and potency are one.)

In fact, since God is all of these things, the more a being is like God, the better or closer to perfection it is. It makes sense then to put baseball and golf through the Thomistic wringer as it were. How do both sports reflect divine simplicity? Divine perfection? Ubiquity?

_______________

So, what do you think? Are you like me and have concluded that it is baseball although by a lesser margin than one might have thought at the onset?

Vote and voice your displeasure below:

 Loading ...