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It may be as trite as it is irreverent to say that baseball is good for the soul, especially during Holy Week, but it seems to be no coincidence that both baseball and the Christian calendar schedule rebirth for springtime, when the revitalized air gives new breath to faith. As Steve Rushin rhymed in a spring training poem in Sports Illustrated: "Spring, however, keeps us hopeful / Faithwise, Cubs fans have a Popeful."
Easter is when we realize that our most crooked angles are somehow realigned by a power greater than our own, which is how the infield sand must feel as the grounds crew sweeps away its blemishes between innings. For that matter, have we wrestled with every aspect of the word "forgiveness" until we ponder the answer to today's scoreboard trivia question about which Cub won the team batting title in 1980? It was Bill Buckner, who would go on to crush spirits on another island of perpetual baseball disappointment, with an infamous error for the Boston Red Sox that thwarted a thirsted-for World Series championship.
And yet, like Easter, baseball tantalizes us with the promise of a future victory that animates the present. "Next Year's Here!" replies a beer billboard in right field to that axiom of Cubs fans: Wait till next year. Baseball is the only sport in which each day brings a new game and yet another second chance; the Cubs lost 11-3 to the Reds yesterday, their seventh straight loss to Cincinnati at Wrigley Field, before nearly reciprocating that score with today's 11-1 victory. And, tugging at the dimensions of our belief, the Cubs, today at least, are in first place.
- My 2001 visit to Yankee Stadium
- My chapel meditation on sporting events as religious rituals
- B&C's annual baseball preview: a review of Roger Angell's Game Time
In their new book, It's Hardly Sportin': Stadiums, Neighborhoods, and the New Chicago, Costas Spirou, associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at National-Louis University in Chicago, and Larry Bennett, political science professor at DePaul University, examine the economic context of professional sports franchises in post-industrial urban America, focusing on three case studies involving stadium construction in Chicago neighborhoods. I sat down with them to ask them about general trends in the business of sports.
Books & Culture: You write that professional sports represents one of the "culture industries" that has become "a key survival tool for cities." How did this come about?
Costas Spirou: As our society evolved in the 1960s and 70s we experienced deindustrialization and decentralization. As the economy started to shift we observed the effort to try to revitalize cities via urban renewal programs, but as we move past this, cities are losing their economic identity and new forms of urban redevelopment emerge. In a service-oriented post-industrial economy—though manufacturing does remain as an aspect of our economy—cities are reorganizing themselves to look to culture as a form of urban redevelopment. These culture industries would include the arts and museums and tourism, and sports becomes part of the new agenda.
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