Woodward: Not With a Bang...

Lots of people have theories about when the final decline of Western civilization began. My own theory involves an event that occurred on May 24, 1935. It happened, I'm ashamed to say, in Cincinnati, Ohio, a city I love. It was the first major-league night baseball game, an abomination that I'm certain God never had in mind when he invented the sport. On that infamous night exactly 74 years ago, and underneath the garish jury-rigged lights of Crosley Field, the Reds beat the Phillies 2 to 1. (Which is worse -- winning the first night baseball game or losing it?)

I have attended many, many baseball games in my life, both day games and night games. And I can say with absolute certitude that baseball is a game that should be played in daylight. That's the way baseball is played by children (which, after all, is the way baseball should be played no matter what the age of the players). That's the way baseball was played for the first 100 years of its history, until some marketing genius decided that more money could be made playing baseball at a time when most of the children who love it are supposed to be in bed. And that's the way baseball is played (I am quite certain) in heaven, although I am still searching for a citation from the Summa Theologica to support this contention.

Down here in Texas Rangers country, even night games are played mostly in the daylight during July and August, which minimizes the horror of the phenomenon somewhat. But there still comes that inevitable moment, along around the bottom of the sixth inning, when the lights are turned on and the great, sunny, American pastoral fantasia that is baseball becomes suddenly transformed into just one more Klieglight-illuminated showbiz spectacle. Anyone who has ever seen the difference knows the difference. (I was never a Chicago Cubs fan, but I always cherished Wrigley Field as a last outpost of civilization, until it too was swamped by the barbarian wave on August 8, 1988.)

This holiday weekend, the Rangers are involved in inter-league play (we'll leave that unfortunate innovation for a later discussion) with the Houston Astros (we'll leave indoor baseball for a later discussion as well), in a couple of day games. Good for them. I just wish there were a lot more day games to look forward to this season.

(The picture accompanying this post, by the way, is a riveting painting -- "Baseball at Night" -- by the Russian-American painter Morris Kantor. It depicts a night baseball game in West Nyack, New York, in 1934, a year before nocturnal illumination made it to the major leagues, and long before night baseball was anything other than a cultural -- or visual -- oddity. The ballfield in West Nyack where this game took place also featured professional wrestling matches and performances by trained elephants. That pretty much says it all, doesn't it?)

UPDATE: What was I thinking? I don't need St. Thomas Aquinas to help me prove that there's no night baseball in heaven:

And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light shall the nations walk; and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory into it, and its gates shall never be shut by day -- and there shall be no night there.

--Revelation 21:23-25