c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Eugene Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author most recently of”My Brother Joseph,”published by St. Martin Press.)

UNDATED _ We learn a great deal about this nation as we look down on it from airplane windows.

Corn and wheat fields beyond the dreams of the psalmist spread below, as do the great cities that pulsate, in their broad avenues, skyscrapers and churches, with America’s pragmatic material and spiritual energy.

A unique revelation of America’s soul is found in what we see tucked and burrowed in every lot and cranny in and around these cities and these plains.

Baseball fields sun themselves everywhere, as crowded and as democratic as beaches. Most of the infield skins are as dry and scuffed as western saddles from everyday use. The angular white geometry of football and soccer fields can also be seen, but they lack the lopsided diamond shape and the asymmetrical outfields that are reflections of us. Most of us come in used, indifferently maintained condition, too.

Life, like baseball, is easier to play at home, where our steps are sure and we know the distance to each outfield fence. Like a baseball team, we go on road trips regularly, leaving home in our version of the hero’s mythological journey the national pastime reproduces. The form of the playing field varies, the headwinds may thwart us, and, even though we may be doing our best, we make outs and errors anyway.

Baseball, alone of major sports, is not governed by the clock. Like us, it lives in and outside of time. Each game, like each of our days, imposes its own rhythm on us.

A game immune from the demands of the clock possesses an eternal aspect, as does all true play _ that is, those moments we enter without thinking about ourselves or what we will get out of what we are doing. We play at work when we carry it out because we love it and, by that love, break the shackles of time. The irregularities of the field, the winds and the howling fans no longer affect us. We are lost, we can truly say, in what is no longer labor but a sweetmeat of joy.

We are as lost in those moments as the cloistered monk in his hard-earned contemplation. Indeed, philosophers have often noted the resemblance between true play and contemplation. The latter, after all, is the outcome of forgetting ourselves, of clearing away the distractions of our self-consciousness and self-concern so that we become one with what we are doing.

Baseball may be the last school of public virtue. Against the grain of the culture and the explosive content of many modern movies, it rewards patience and self-restraint while it punishes impulsiveness and a showy need for immediate gratification. It is a subtle game in which thinking is more important than brute force, and the interplay of the tactics of opposing managers is as engrossing as it is public.

Baseball also acquaints us early with concepts of fairness and unfairness, especially if the youngsters who are playing are allowed to arbitrate conflicts themselves without the interference of their parents. On baseball fields, children learn something about character and how self-centered players can spoil the game. It is better, in a great spiritual lesson, to let such spoilsports go home, even if they take the bat and ball with them.

Unfairness persists, of course, as in everyday life. The minor mystery of a strike zone shifting with every umpire prepares us for inconsistency in other areas where bad calls will be made on us many times for reasons we probably never fully understand.

To appreciate the magic of baseball and the way in which, better than many a liturgy, it generates wonder, one should visit Cooperstown, N.Y., where the Hall of Fame attracts fans from all over the world. Watch the men, especially those of middle and older years. As they peer into the display cases and at the mementos of great players, the years slip away, and in their eyes and bearing they are boys again, moving in another time with lighter steps and lighter hearts.

It is no small American magic _ and some measure of spiritual mystery _ that ransoms us from the grip of time and hints, however mildly, that we can be born again and become the little children to whom the Lord promised easy entrance to the Kingdom.

DEA END KENNEDY