The idea of America is, arguably, the greatest in human history. Iterating on the ideas of philosophers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Jefferson laid down a mission statement for a country that was, at that moment, no more than a dream:
Quote
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
From those founding phrases came the concept of the American dream, which has taken many forms over the two and a half centuries since but never changed in its essentials. If all people are created equal, then differences between them can be not only tolerated, but celebrated. Worth need not be anchored to one’s wealth, one’s religion, one’s skin color or one’s gender. Nor must we cloister ourselves in communities of people who think, look, dress, or act alike. The seed from which all right-minded American thought grows is the idea of our essential equality with one another. If it’s truly grown from that seed, the American dream blossoms into a lush and beautiful tree, branching endlessly and reaching upward, providing space for everyone to find the sun at just the angle they need and sharing the nourishment each leaf and twig draws therefrom throughout the organism, as needed.
On Juneteenth, though, we are forcefully reminded that it was nearly 90 years after Jefferson and his cadre of white male landowners wrote down those ideas that they first bore any real fruit. On this date in 1865, the final enforcement order of the Emancipation Proclamation was delivered in Texas, liberating the enslaved people held there past the legal end of slavery in the newly reunited nation. Until then, plainly, America had not made good on its promises to itself or to the world.
In many ways, of course, it still hasn’t. That’s part of why observing Juneteenth remains profoundly important. In the history of the world, there had never been a society built on the idea that it is possible to live and work alongside people with fundamentally different lifestyles, beliefs and traditions than your own, until this one. Indeed, before the founding of the United States of America, the basic definition of a nation included shared linguistic, religious, ethnic and (sometimes) racial identities. To believe we can all enjoy each other’s proximity, if not each other’s company, is to dream quite big—so far, too big.
There’s no nobility in a dream. The American dream is that anyone can start from the bottom and rise to the top, but that’s not true, so the dream is fluff. It’s meaningless. Just as we must comfort our children, sometimes, by reassuring them that the nightmare that sent them screaming into our beds was just a figment of imagination, we must discomfit ourselves by admitting that the American dream is just some words, not yet backed up by enough actions to make them real. We can only ennoble ourselves by doing real work—by taking the next, often viciously hard step to make that dream a reality.
What, you might fairly ask, does this have to do with baseball? Well, for one thing, baseball is uniquely American, and one of America’s most defining characteristics is how much Americans love their games. We use sports to forge community; to mend relationships; to tell stories; and to understand ourselves better, both individually and collectively. The Egyptians did that, too. So did the Romans, and the Ottomans and the Brits. With better technology, more security, more wealth and more discretionary time than any of those cultures enjoyed, though, we’ve pushed the love and the edifying influence of sport to new heights. Sports aren’t just diversion, here. Sports matter. Baseball, with the longest and richest history of any American sport, matters most of all, in this particular sense, even though it’s not as prominent in terms of viewership or screen time on ESPN as football.
It’s not as radical as it sounds—certainly, it’s not as radical as it should be—to suggest that the day Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier was the most important moment in the advancement toward racial equality that had happened since Juneteenth. Robinson’s arrival in (and immediate dominance of) the formerly all-White National League galvanized the Civil Rights Movement. That’s the kind of power baseball has, even now. It connects us to our past, for better (all the moments of hope and glory) and for worse (all the broken promises and failures), and that urges us toward our future.
Baseball brings us together. For many of us, it is one of the surest pursuits of happiness we can undertake. It fills fans’ hearts with enough joy to bring down some of the barriers we keep up the rest of the time, and it breaks our hearts frequently enough to keep us from getting spoiled or insensitive to the suffering of our fellow humans. You can look out across a packed Target Field and see lots of ways that the American dream is still unrealized, from the disproportionate Whiteness of the fans to the relative lack of Black players to the pulsing, often directionless commercialism, crushing in on the game and occasionally obscuring it. However, you can also see that dream being pulled, inch by inch, toward our real world. Fans from different races and cultures do attend, and often sit side-by-side, and sometimes strike up friendly conversations. There are rules to the game, and they’re non-negotiable. Each team gets a chance to win on merit, and the on-field authorities ensure that the fight is fair.
Racism didn’t end with slavery, 160 years ago. It remains one of several things standing between us and the noble realization of the dream set forth for this country before it was even a country. It’s still visible even on a ball diamond. However, on this Juneteenth, let’s celebrate the fact that we’re closer to making the dream a reality than we were even 160 years ago, or even 88 years ago, and endeavor to make sure that we’re closer still tomorrow. If we’re to celebrate our freedom, we can only do it by recognizing how much longer some had to wait for that freedom, and that for many, that freedom is still incomplete. Happily, baseball is an everyday game, and an everyday celebration. As we do the everyday work of making that freedom more widespread and more complete, we can lean on the game as an example of how change happens; an inspiration to keep grinding during slumps; and a source of the happiness that makes all that work worthwhile.