Baseball teaches values, tied to nation’s fate, professor says

Football: “a game of action that discourages thought and reflection”..after that, much like Chico, California in ‘22…it’s raining rocks in Oldcootersville.

On Saturday, the longtime Kansas State University history professor returned to Kansas Wesleyan, this time to discuss the effect of baseball to the health of the American form of government.

“It’s the game that drives me, and it’s still the greatest game devised by human beings,” Robert Linder said.

Historically, baseball has functioned as one of the key avenues for teaching each new generation the values that hold the country together, Linder said, and to be a successful player requires mental agility as well as physical strength. Now football, “a game of action that discourages thought and reflection,” is increasingly popular, he said.

...“Why Baseball is Better than Football, Especially for Republicans: The Presentation that Nobody will Publish” was the title of Linder’s address, which he read from a manuscript he wrote and submitted to a leading history of baseball journal in 2008.

Linder said the essay was termed “inappropriate” and was not published, and the remarks written by the journal’s reviewers included the question: “Who is this crazy old coot anyway?”

...“There’s sufficient separation on the field between players that they can’t hide from individual responsibility in a crowd—as they do in football or in Congress,” Linder said.

In baseball, each player’s skill is highlighted, and there is a faith in the individual, he said. Individual merit and self-reliance is the “bedrock of baseball,” and the value of the individual is also the driving force in civilization that keeps government intrusion into private lives at a minimum, Linder said.