The Pastime Past Time: The Uniqueness of Baseball as an American Sport - A Psycho-Biblical Analysis

The essence of what makes baseball unique amongst sporting competitions can be difficult to articulate. In this paper we suggest that what links baseball and American culture is a shared reliance, often implicit, on a biblical as opposed to a more Graeco-European way of appreciating life. Devoid of a cross-cultural perspective, however, baseball’s biblical substrate is initially difficult to discern, and therefore it is instructive to provide contrast by comparing the modern game of baseball to Ancient Greek sports and motifs. This might seem like a curious comparison except for the fact that the Ancient Greeks are credited with inaugurating the very enterprise of organized athletic competition through the Olympic games, and in so doing establishing a distinctly Graeco-Roman undercurrent that permeates most other modern sports, with notable exception, we argue, to the most Hebraic of sports: Baseball.