Paternal Pastime Harrison Kuntz English 105 Online Dr
Paternal Pastime
By Harrison Kuntz
“Hey Dad, you wanna go play catch?” I could not possibly enumerate the times that I hopefully posed this question to my father between the ages of six and thirteen. The simple act of sharing something, specifically baseball, with a father has meant so much to so many sons in America over the past century. Early in life the common ground that baseball provides fathers and sons is absolutely invaluable to the bonding process, and to the task of raising a boy to become a man. As young men grow and change, their interests become very diverse and adaptive to the cutting edge of the world around them. These changes require mutual interests in order for the father and son relationship to remain strong. Once again baseball can become the glue that holds men of different generations together no matter how the world, and even the males themselves, change and evolve. This glue is not simply a by-product of already existent positive feelings, but a source of the positive feelings themselves. Unfortunately while men can use the virtues of competition to create positive relationships, they can also be very stubborn and confrontational creatures. These fiery attitudes frequently lead to conflicts between fathers and sons that may never be resolved. Thankfully baseball has always been one avenue on which fathers and sons can meet to vent their frustrations and get past differences. Rather than becoming an emotional mask behind which men can hide their emotions, the game brings those feelings to the forefront and forces them to be addressed. Our memories of and relationships with our fathers are cherished by millions of American men, and our connections with them are held in high esteem. One of the most common of these connections is baseball. Baseball is a medium through which fathers and sons often connect and resolve differences both in film and in reality.
The one form of media that has best captured the emotional relationship developed between between men has been the film industry. We can easily see this value represented in The Sandlot where bonding is a major issue. The Rookie illustrates this by bringing an estranged father and son back together both literally and symbolically in a baseball stadium. The Sandlot examined how reconciliation can occur through the acceptance of responsibility for a boy, while The Rookie showed two older, more mature men who took years to finally reunite. Of course we would be remiss if we did not name Field of Dreams as the one movie that brought all of these values together over the course of a lifetime, and then some. The game provided first a common ground between a boy and his father and by the end it was this same common corn-free ground that allowed a final reconciliation between a mature man and his deceased father. Filmmakers love to tug at the heartstrings of their audiences, but men are usually tough to reach. Luckily for the industry and for us, Hollywood has discovered that bonds established between fathers and sons through baseball translate well onto the big screen.
What could a middle-aged man possibly have in common with a young boy? The fact is that even at a young age, sons possess many of the natural characteristics that their fathers do. They want to compete, they want to impress, and they want to assert their abilities. This is backed up by psychological studies, which have proven that, “One area of competence that is particularly highly valued by the majority of children is athletic ability” (Carr, 20). The fact that both fathers and sons often have competitive personalities opens the door for baseball to enter the relationship. The game can be shared both through active participation in the back yard or on a ball field, and by sharing in the act of being a spectator. When a son is playing baseball in front of or with his father, he is trying to impress, as if it were his first job interview. The father is traditionally the first hero of the son, and the easiest way to gain the attention of this hero is to impress him through admirable athletic accomplishments. This carries over to when the father and son take in a game together either in person or on television. They see men with almost superhuman abilities imitating the experiences that they share together, and these men are heroes to them both. As they live and die with each win and loss of the team, each hit and strikeout of the star player, the father and son are fostering a bond that they will always cherish. The typical father and son bond that is strengthened through the game of baseball can be found in Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer, one of the most successful baseball books ever written. Thirty-five years after his childhood, Kahn still described it in very chaotic terms. “What a house. Two parents teaching. A grandfather pulling teeth. A housekeeper screeching. A sister pouting…A radio program, Brahms, sex, poetry, Karl Marx, and Freud. The bond between my father and me was baseball” (Kahn, 15). Thousands of sons from Kahn’s childhood in the 1930’s up to even the present day could make similar claims. Both through active participation in the game and watching others perform great deeds on the diamond, fathers and sons often forge a bond through a common interest in this time-honored pastime.
This bond through baseball serves more purposes than a utility infielder. Most importantly it allows men to express their emotions and grow closer both in spite of and due to our modern masculine ideals. While everyday American life demands that men remain calm, tough, and emotionless at all times, baseball is an escape from these expectations and feelings and also a manifestation of them. It allows for emotions to be expressed in the form of passion for the game, team unity, the thrill of victory and of course the agony of defeat. Without baseball, how would a son ever be able to witness his father show emotion such as was described in Donald Hall’s classic Fathers Playing Catch with Sons?
“Pee Wee hits a home run off Carl Hubbell and the Dodgers win. Sitting there in the front seat, eleven years old, I clap and cheer. Then I hear my father’s strange voice. I look across my mother to see his knuckles white on the wheel, his face white, and I hear him saying ‘The punk! The punk!’ With astonishment and horror, I see that my father is crying” (Hall, 33).
By allowing his son to experience the “shock and horror” of witnessing him weeping over a wall-clearing moonshot, the father unintentionally humanized himself and brought them closer. The game also requires the manly toughness that both fathers and sons are proud of displaying. It is not the part of the weak to stand in a box and attack a hard ball that another man is throwing at high speeds. All of these principles lay the groundwork for fathers and sons to come together. Baseball is necessary in this because just sitting down and talking, as it would with a mother, a sister, or a lover does not easily develop the father and son relationship. Therefore a father’s engagement in baseball with his son does not serve to encourage the growth of the male stereotype; it simply gives the relationship a more personal human dimension. As a result fathers can connect with their sons on deeper levels than they could without the game.
Ted Williams used to claim that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports. However one of the hardest things to do in life has to be raising a son. Parents, especially fathers, can use all the help that they can get in this task, and baseball is often an important tool in that toolbox. Psychological and social studies have recently proven that the role of a father is absolutely crucial in the development of children. Dan Poulter, a Los Angeles psychologist, claims that a father’s involvement in his son’s interests “is like giving your son gold bricks. He gets emotionally fluent. He becomes comfortable with showing love, hopeful, generous, and compassionate” (Neubert, 1). The easiest way for a father to get involved in his son’s interests is to engage in the activities that both share an interest in, and this frequently means baseball. Poulter also claims that the inverse of this is true. Sons whose lives are devoid of a strong male connection are much more likely to engage in violent crimes and to at least suffer from major psychological issues (Neubert, 1). No amount of money or power in the world can raise a son to be a man who makes positive contributions to society. The only thing that a father can do is to nurture his son through the commitment of time during childhood. This time is most effectively spent as fathers and sons create memories by sharing in common interests. If this interest happens to be music, theatre, politics, or art, then those could all be effective mediums. However sports are most popular with sons because they allow the children to physically explore their relationship to their fathers. “(My son) looks at me and shouts ‘Daddy’ making the fiercest face he can muster. He is working on knowing his own being, his physical and emotional body, through contact with me” (Vogt, 193). Often the gap between generations at a son’s tender young age is bridged by the timeless game of baseball.
The makers of The Sandlot knew exactly what they were doing when they illustrated many of the complexities of the father and son bond through baseball in their movie. Scotty Smalls moved to a new town because his mother had married a man that he barely knew named Bill. Baseball was Scotty’s only connection to the other boys in the town, and so he went out and played every day. Bill, who happened to have been a baseball fan since he had learned it from his own father, desperately wanted to in some way develop a relationship with his new stepson. The only way to do this was to relate to Scotty through baseball, just as his father had done with him. This was symbolized when Scotty’s mom told him about Bill’s Babe Ruth autographed baseball that he had received from his father. She quipped, “Maybe he’ll give it to you one day.” In fact, Bill was already trying to pass on the game of baseball to Scotty. He initially attempted to play catch with Scotty but the game, like the relationship, went badly and Scotty ended up with a black eye. However by the end of the movie, after many trials and tribulations, the relationship had improved as Scotty and Bill got to know each other through their common ground in baseball. At this point we can see them playing catch together, and even throwing curveballs. The makers of this film fully recognized that a son’s relationship to his father can often be illustrated only through baseball, and they portrayed this fact very accurately in The Sandlot.
At what point does the bond that fathers and sons have through baseball expire? The fact is that usually it does not expire, simply because few men ever completely grow up. A quick observation of the conduct of grown men at professional sporting events would present more than sufficient proof of this fact. The bonds that fathers and sons share do however change greatly as the sons enter manhood and the fathers begin to enjoy AARP benefits. After the son has matured, he and his father can now share many similar life experiences, and often relate to what it is like to support a wife and children while holding a job. They also have increased opportunities to bond. The relationship is now completely devoid of the father’s dominance over the son. They are now free to cultivate a manly friendship through baseball. Renowned poet Donald Hall commented how the “one guy to another,” “Let’s go have a few drinks,” type of bond can manifest itself through the pleasures of the sport for fathers and sons. “Baseball connects American males with each other, not only through bleacher friendships and neighbor loyalties, not only through barroom fights but, most importantly, through generations” (Hall, 49). The role that baseball plays in the man to man friendship of a mature son and his father is not diminished as soon as the term “grandfather” enters the equation. The relationship between father and son changes greatly over time, but baseball often serves to keep American men close.
The Rookie effectively showed how two men who were veterans at life found a way to relate to each other in the game. Jim Morris was a man who had given up his own dreams and settled down with a family and a steady job. Like many men, he was at odds with his father over choices that he had made long ago. Although he did not speak to his own father, he was raising his children to appreciate the game, just as his own father had raised him. When Morris finally decided to pursue his own personal dreams again, many questions of fatherhood became a part of his situation. Not least of these was the fact that Morris missed his own father’s support. He needed the paternal bond that baseball had helped establish long ago in order to perform his best on a baseball diamond. Finally he did reestablish that bond, and the location of this event was no coincidence. Morris met up with his father in the baseball stadium of his first major league game, thereby showing that the two came together through baseball both early in life and in old age. The Rookie strongly showed how a father and son can relate to each other through baseball when the son has grown into a man using both symbolic and literal devices.
Few would deny that many American men enjoy baseball, and that as a result fathers and sons often partake in the game’s pleasures together. Some, however, would question whether baseball has such a direct effect on the bond. The problem then becomes, can baseball really become a source of positive interactions between fathers and sons, or are its effects merely by-products of already present emotions? Experience and psychology have shown unequivocally that baseball is often the only source of positive feelings between a father and his son. Roger Kahn could not possibly found any connection with his father through the maelstrom of “Brahms, sex, poetry, Karl Marx and Freud” had they not been able to put it all behind them to play baseball or watch the Dodgers. Donald Hall would only have understood his father as cold and emotionless if Pee Wee Reese had not belted a game winning blast and evoke an explosion of emotion. Dan Poulter demonstrated common interests such as baseball are crucial to father and son relationships. Also David Carr and Gregory Vogt both separately felt that the competitive urges inherent in both boys and men provide grounds for positive relationships. These competitive urges are certainly satisfied by participation in baseball-related activities. Without baseball many fathers and sons would not be able to establish many bonds that could not be cultivated through other means. One can therefore conclude that baseball provides for many positive feelings rather than merely feeding off of them.
In baseball conflicts often involve a little bit of dirt being kicked around and possibly some spit taking flight. Although fathers, just like umpires, rarely reverse their calls, arguments between fathers and sons can be much more serious. As a son grows into a man, his relationship with his father can become even more complex. Unfortunately the very aspects of men’s characters that draw them to athletic competition can also cause them to come into conflict with each other. The father may or may not approve of the decisions that the son has made throughout his life.
“(Fathers) may hope their sons share the same passions and commitments they do. They may be somewhat blind to the fact that their sons are only vaguely interested, or minimally talented, in the areas they themselves have developed to forge a path in life. They may wish for their sons to carry forward unfulfilled dreams of their own, and they may be in for some big disappointments” (Vogt, 92). Also the growth of a son is often accompanied by a growth in his willingness to argue, especially if the father has genetically and psychologically transplanted this trait in him. The psychological component of this transmission may be particularly crucial, as
“some men’s construals of their masculine gender role predispose them to appraise intimate conflict situations as threatening. Several studies…have consistently shown that these men typically respond to their appraisals of threat by attributing greater negative intent, reporting greater anger, and reporting greater verbal aggression” (Moore, 139).
Competitiveness, passion, and stubbornness are all magnified within the father and son relationship because of the intimacy of the two. Unlike women, who are often willing to resolve disputes over time, men are likely to allow their pride to interfere with any chance of reconciliation with those close to them. The psychological effects within the men of a family unit of this mindset are well documented. “Men who have not experienced a reconciliation with their father don’t seem to achieve the kind of confidence, self-possession, authority, determination, or decisiveness they might be capable of” (Vogt, 193). It is not surprising that conflicts between fathers and sons develop as time passes, and these conflicts can severely damage both the father and the son. Although the many confrontational emotions that rise between fathers and sons can cause major conflicts, there can still be positive chemistry in the family clubhouse because the two never have any reason to discard the bonds that they established through baseball early in life. There could be few better ways to bring a father and son back together than to pursue the shift in the relationship from that of dominance to that of a friend. Adult male friends often socialize by watching and discussing sports, and this is just what adult fathers and sons do as well. Even the deep tensions that can sometimes be felt between older fathers and sons can melt away while watching the game with a cold beer. Thankfully we also know that damage to the relationship can always be repaired. Poulter claims that, “It’s never too late, and that’s the truth. All men crave their father’s approval” (Neubert, 1). The bonds that baseball provides not only allow fathers to enjoy a common interest with their sons, but they also son can bring them back together after conflicts.
Many times the only way that fathers and sons are able to resolve their differences, regardless of age, is through baseball. Is this a positive situation, though? Some may feel that all baseball does during the reconciliation of a father and son is provide an emotional mask for the two to hide behind. However psychological research and logic both prove that baseball does not hide emotions, it liberates them. The game allows the men to release their natural aggression into a positive environment rather than directing it towards each other. At the very least it is better to have a father and son both yelling at the umpire from the stands than it is to have them yelling at each other. The game provides one of the few outlets available to men to release their negative emotions and allow the positive feelings that fuel a reconciliation to grow. (Vogt, 240) Baseball, whether it involves playing for a squad or watching a favorite team, has the rare ability to foster mutual respect and start dialogue, even if it is small talk, between estranged members of opposite generations. This ability provides a much-needed conduit for fathers and sons to vent their frustrations and get together to resolve differences rather than a façade that obscures their emotions.
The Sandlot and The Rookie both illustrate situations in which fathers and sons were able to resolve their differences through the medium of baseball. One, The Sandlot shows how this can happen when the son is a boy. The other, The Rookie, shows how this can be accomplished when the son has become a man. In The Sandlot, the conflict arose from the fact that Scotty had stolen Bill’s Babe Ruth autographed baseball from him for his friends to play with. Scotty then promptly proceeded to hit the ball into the clutches of “The Beast.” The boys attempted many creative measures to try to recover the vaunted ball, but it was destroyed. Scotty expected to be “grounded for the rest of my natural born life,” even though he had gained a replacement ball signed by the entire 1927 New York Yankees Murderer’s Row team in the ordeal. In fact Bill only grounded him for a little while, and it ended up being a net gain because it strengthened their relationship. Certainly many of us can relate to the feeling of having to “own up” to our fathers about some wrong that we had committed, and the conflict that this creates. However we can also relate to the way in which a peaceful resolution of this conflict can foster an important mutual respect, just as it did for Scotty and Bill. For most of us the source of the conflict might be a wrecked car or some other destruction of property, but the end gain is the same. Both the conflict and its resolution in The Sandlot were a result of Scotty and Bill’s shared interest in baseball. The Rookie also shows how baseball can help a father and son get past their differences. This time the problems were much more serious and deep rooted, as Morris was a grown man who had been at odds with his father for years. However just as Poulter said, it was not too late. When Morris finally achieved his goal of making the major leagues, and happened to do so in his home state of Texas, his father decided that it was time to end the struggles. The elder Morris symbolically offered a chance at reconciliation by showing up at the big game. When Jim saw him after the game, he was overwhelmed with emotion. The beginning of their reconciliation was completed when Morris accepted his father’s symbolic offer by tossing him the game ball. It was baseball that allowed Morris and his father to take huge steps towards repairing their relationship late in life, just as it was baseball that allowed Scotty and Bill to begin building their young relationship. Both The Sandlot and The Rookie do an excellent job of showing how the differences of fathers and sons can be resolved using baseball.
One movie, more than any other, went the distance to show all stages of how fathers and sons come together through baseball. Field of Dreams displayed the full spectrum of how a father and son can find a common ground and bond early on in life. It then went on to show how it can heal many wounds very late in (and actually after) life, and how the common ground provided the basis for a renewed positive relationship. Ray Kinsella grew up with a father who had been a former minor league ball player. Baseball was the very foundation of their relationship, and his father instilled a true love of the game in him. However like many men as Ray reached adolescence differences with his father lead him to rebel against his father’s generation along with many other young people during the sixties and seventies. Unfortunately he never reconciled his differences with his father prior to his death as he began his own life on an Iowa farm. This haunted Ray until voices in his cornfield along with his own midlife crisis lead him on a baseball-related quest to discover what was missing in his life. All of his trials gradually lead him to unconsciously make peace with his father’s memory, until finally he met his father’s ghost. All that he could do in the presence of this spirit, face to face with his own past, was say “Hey Dad, you wanna have a catch?” This not only symbolized that the reconciliation had become complete post-mortem, but that these two mature men could find common ground through baseball. As noted psychologist Gregory Vogt has said, “(Field of Dreams ends with the fulfillment of (Ray’s) longing to meet his father again and feel his father’s pride in him, and to receive his father’s blessing” (Vogt, 237). Field of Dreams evoked strong emotions in many American men, including myself because it represented many of the emotions that we felt but were never willing to openly express. This movie succeeded in demonstrating the ways in which fathers and sons can relate to each other through baseball both early and late in life, while also using the game to resolve deep rooted conflicts.
Films such as The Sandlot, The Rookie, and Field of Dreams all share a reliance on the dynamics of father and son relationships. Their successes can be attributed to the ways in which men can relate to how baseball offers a common ground early in life as well as after the son reaches maturity. They also recognize that the natural personalities of men can often lead to conflicts, and that resolving these conflicts can be difficult. Showing that no matter what has come between them, fathers and sons always have the option of putting it all behind them on a baseball field lends the film a realistic personal appeal for the audience to relate to. Baseball’s timelessness has captivated and intrigued America for over a century. This element has encouraged many men to share this treasure with their fathers or sons. Both baseball and relationships between fathers and sons change and evolve rapidly rendering their comprehension difficult. However we have seen the effects of each on the other in real life, psychology, and film throughout the past century.
Works Cited
Carr, David and Weigand, Daniel A. “The Influence of Significant Others on the Goal Orientations of Youngsters in Physical Education.” Journal of Sports Behavior. Vol 25 Issue 1. (2002) : 19-22.
Hall, Donald. Fathers Playing Catch With Sons: Essays on Sport (Mostly Baseball). New York, New York: North Point Press, 1998.
Kahn, Roger. The Boys of Summer. New York, New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2000.
Moore, David and Stuart, Gregory L. “Effects of Masculine Gender Role Stress on Men's Cognitive, Affective, Physiological, and Aggressive Responses to Intimate Conflict Situations.” Psychology of Men and Masculinity. Volume 5(2) (2004) : 132-142.
Neubert, Cheryl Rosenberg. "Fathers Play a Pivotal Role in Child Development." The Orange County Register, 29 June 2004. 7 October 2005 ................
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