TRIVIA QUESTION: Under what circumstances does the prospect of a sentimental exhibition about the link between baseball and Americana make an otherwise smart museum's judgment turn to Cream of Wheat?
ANSWER: Whenever the Baseball Hall of Fame says so.
In the early nineties I worked part-time in the Oakland Museum's public information department, and enjoyed the job immensely. Like so much about Gertrude Stein's beleaguered Bay Area urban stepchild, this excellent museum is a well-kept secret, offering professional, esthetically pleasant, and often corrective perspectives on the state's history, art, and natural science. A good recent example was the show on the effect of the Vietnam War on California; the work of, among others, history curator Marcia Eymann, it was for the most part thorough and accurate, as well as different.
However, "Baseball As America" -- which opened last weekend and is hyped as "the first major exhibition to examine the relationship between the national pastime and American culture" -- is one that never should have made it to first base.
Not having seen it myself, I can't comment on its possible strengths. I'm guessing that they're in the overblown, foundation-funding-up-the-wazoo Ken Burns documentary tradition, which I have my own reservations about. That's another subject for another day.
I'm simply refusing to see "Baseball As America" and I'm urging others to do the same. That's because the show was organized by Major League Baseball's phony Hall of Fame, located in the sport's ersatz birthplace, Cooperstown, New York. (You don't have to understand the infield fly rule in order to know that the essential elements of the game we now recognize as baseball started at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, if not earlier and elsewhere.)
Corporation-bashing can become a tired riff; no institution exists and survives without compromise or historical blemish. But my beef with the Baseball Hall of Fame is specific. And it's grounded in fundamental American values that the Hall pretends to cherish but in truth violates at the slightest inconvenience.
Two years ago the Hall scheduled a celebration of the 15th anniversary of the classic baseball movie Bull Durham. The event was canceled by the Hall's president, a former Reagan Administration flack named Dale Petrovskey, because two of the film's stars, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, were outspoken critics of the war in Iraq.
In a letter to Robbins and Sarandon rescinding the invitation, Petrovskey said, "We believe your very public criticism of President Bush at this important -- and sensitive -- time in our nation's history helps undermine the U.S. position, which ultimately could put our troops in even more danger."
Candidly, I didn't agree with everything Robbins and Sarandon were saying about the war at the time. (Though, in light of the mess we now face, I have to admit that those of us who either supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq, or enabled it by not more actively opposing it, have a lot of explaining to do.) But, of course, that's not the point. The last time I looked, we still had a right to dissent in this country.
Others agreed. Faced with a firestorm of criticism from almost all political quarters not already invaded and occupied by his extreme right-wing friends, Petrovskey issued a statement kind-of sort-of apologizing. He didn't rescind the rescission of the Hall's invitation to Robbins and Sarandon, and reinstate the Bull Durham event. Nor did he turn in his resignation, as any honorable person would have done.
Petrovskey wrote: "The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is a very special place -- a national treasure -- and my responsibility is to protect it. Politics has no place in The Hall of Fame. There was a chance of politics being injected into The Hall during these sensitive times, and I made a decision to not take that chance. But I inadvertently did exactly what I was trying to avoid. With the advantage of hindsight, it is clear I should have handled the matter differently. I am sorry I didn't pick up the phone to have a discussion with Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon rather than sending them a letter. We are so lucky to have Baseball -- a game that unites us as Americans. The events of the past week show us all that The Game burns brighter than ever and continues to stir passions in many people. Our wish is that every American will visit Cooperstown and join us in celebrating Baseball, our national pastime and the greatest game of all."
Well, if Petrovskey's original letter constituted an "inadvertent" politicization of the Hall, I'm the Emir of Shmoe.
The issue wasn't that Daley hurt Timmy and Susie's feelings by not calling them on the phone first. The issue was that Petrovskey's actions abused his position and the institution he claimed to represent. Yet, like so many who appropriate sports in the name of uberpatriotism, he was only too happy to inflict hit-and-run damage on principle and then do nothing to repair it. What a jerk.
My personal response to this affair was twofold. First, I began boycotting the television coverage of the All-Star Game, an increasingly meaningless midseason marketing ritual whose cynical commercialism has finally and irretrievably reduced to zero its useful connection to the sport's history.
Second, I vowed henceforth never again to set foot in the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum or to patronize anything associated with it. For the Hall has come to represent everything wrong with contemporary museum culture.
I realize that sports are not only big business but also part of the rhythm of national life, and this means that collective action by fans almost always fizzles into willy-nilly populist resentment. We may not like late starting times, commercial overload, and snail-pace games that have us tucking our school-age kids into bed after midnight. But we love baseball too much to tune out. You never know when you might miss the '69 magic of the Mets, the '88 heroics of Kirk Gibson, or the '02 pluck of the Angels.
The All-Star Game and the Hall of Fame are different: low-cost, high-yield targets that hit baseball's arrogant and mawkish hucksters where they hurt -- in TV ratings and spinoff merchandising -- without sacrificing our own positive passion for the sport's sunnier side. Memorable moments from recent All-Star Games couldn't fill the syringe used to drain Barry Bonds' balky knee, despite the desperate and athletically dishonest gimmick of tying the result of the game to home-field advantage in the World Series.
As for the Hall, it was beset by cronyism and skewed priorities from its inception in 1939. The perennial arguments among fans over which players rate as the greatest of all time can easily carry on without reference to a theme park plunked down in upstate New York. Independently, fans have begun setting up their own authentic museums, filling them with artifacts and scholarly papers not beholden to today's tulip-crazed memorabilia industry.
For its part, when offered "Baseball As America," the Oakland Museum would have done our community a service by sending Petrovskey and his ilk to the showers, rather than deciding to partner on a corrupt cash cow. Mark Medeiros, the museum's interim executive director, is an old friend who shares my enthusiasm for baseball and its history. A few years ago he co-curated a charming exhibition on the people, places, and quirks of the old Pacific Coast League, the pre-expansion era cradle of Lefty O'Doul, Joe DiMaggio, Casey Stengel, and others. But by jumping into bed with the craven Baseball Hall of Fame, Mark has made a bad call and I've told him so.
As autumn dawns, real baseball fans will be rooting for the A's in the American League West stretch drive. They'll be following the postseason. They won't be wasting their time and money at an empty homage packaged by a museum that has surrendered its claim to legitimacy.