In his April 15th article, Tim Stanley wrote about his experience going to a baseball game. While that on the surface doesn't sound interesting, this game was his first ever baseball game. Though confused about much of the technicalities, Stanley took away an important message: Baseball is representative of the American Dream. He writes, "Everyone gets a go at the bat. If you hit a home run, that's great. If you strike out, that's your lot. It's very meritocratic with no prejudice and ample rewards for the talented." he also breaks the game into one of an individual sport as well as a team sport. Because he has no outsider biases towards the game, Stanley can break the game into unique parts and examine them in a way no fan ever could. What shocked me was his parallel to "military pageantry" in the game, from the walking of the flag to the singing of the "Star-Spangled Banner."
I could find a connection to this blog post essentially to everything we've read so far but I feel Underworld is most pertinent. When the novel opens, we are faced with a scene of discomforting parallels: the winning of the Giants-Dodgers game and the launch of a nuclear weapon in the same day. When Manx Martin walks through the Bronx he hears loud noises and realizes these are people lined up for the World Series game. DeLillo doesn't explicitly say it but I think he intended for the World Series fans to be more invested in the game because of the fear of nuclear war.
I also saw a connection to Great American Novel in terms of the patriotism, military-pageantry aspect. When the Ruppert-Mundy's are forced out of their stadium they are doing it for America; that's why they lie at the heart of the Great American Novel. Baseball and Americanism are inextricably linked; the game's context in Japan or South America takes on a whole new set of attributes and fundamental groundings.
