The Death of Baseball   by C. C. O'Lorin               I write here for the first time of my lost faith. I was once the High Priest of baseball. Both title and office were self-appointed but real nonetheless. You see, Americans are a people without a unifying mythology. We agree on no central story that tells us who we are or where we are going. We have no single archetype that demonstrates how a noble act must look. We are a people without transcendent identity—no god in heaven has claimed us as his own, pleads our case before the divine counsel, goes to war on our behalf.             From Cartwright to Whitman to Satchmo to Burns, baseball occupied this place in our cultural identity. It was just an absurd ritual of running in circles but it was the closest thing to sacred that we had ever established. Our founding fathers and documents had long ago been demythologized, but the myth of baseball’s sameness connected us to our ancestors when other institutions failed. Baseball was the last remaining ritual that connected us to our forbearers. So it is with great regret that I now announce her death.             Would that it had been a single shot like the one that took Lincoln and Kennedy. Would that it had been a public hanging like the one showcased by Boston’s Tea and Viet Nam. Rather, baseball died by way of a slow cancer discovered too late and finally treated by incompetent quacks.             I saw it happen from the altar and was powerless to stop it.             This week the other shoe dropped. Puppet commissioner and the devil himself (dressed like a union chief) agreed to have drug testing done by an independent agency. The two parties also agreed to overlook fifteen years of cheating and the desecration of our most hallowed symbols. In this way, the (spin) doctors agreed on a treatment for a still warm corpse. They squabbled just long enough so to see the patient die.              Previous generations acted more decisively and thus avoided fatality. Judge Landis banned the Black Sox. Commissioner Vincent banned Rose. In each of these potentially fatal cases, scapegoats were chosen over cash-cows. No such sacrifice can now be found amongst the fools responsible today.             Lest you doubt my doomsaying, here is my proof. It lay not in the fact that fathers are no longer able to compare past patriarchs to present messiahs, though this is true. It lay not in the fact that baseball is simply a money machine that bleeds her parishioners dry, though this is true. My proof is in my own testimony: I no longer care. Let the Super Bowl, with its billion dollar commercialism, entertain me. Let political strategists, with their cloaks and daggers, entertain me. Sure, I’ll watch them run in circles on occasion. No doubt, my discontent will wane over time. But baseball can no longer occupy the place of national mythology. Nietzsche’s slogan echoes domestic. There is no longer anything holy in the American psyche.     Dr. Pitsfield has responded to the above article:   The above priest turned doomsayer is knocking on the door of truth. I must wonder aloud whether his dark night of the soul isn’t simply a necessary step toward a more worthy religion.   It seems to me that baseball has been more like monotheism than henotheism. In henotheism, all the evil can be attributed to foreign gods and dæmons. In monotheism, there is only one God to receive both the praise and the blame. Baseball paved the way for national racial reconciliation with Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson. But baseball also glorified psychopathic racist, Ty Cobb. Baseball was able to provide a platform for the critique of J. Edgar Hoover. But it also provided a launching pad for George W. Bush. Like all manifestations of collective consciousness, baseball reflects society for good and for ill.   Lastly I must point out that our man wears the black garments of mourning. He laments his self imposed defrocking. I therefore can’t believe that he doesn’t care. Surely, he must care very deeply.     Dr. O’Lorin has offered the following rejoinder:   My self-imposed defrocking has been a numbing experience. I did indeed care deeply three years ago and even a year ago. Now I feel nothing. Dr. Pitsfield is welcome to warm that same tired pew. For that I envy him, but I simply no longer see transcendence behind the symbols. They are only numbers, names and folklore to me now.