Rebekah Cook - Baseball as a Religion

In my final paper on The Sandlot, I found a reading by David Chidester which explored the idea that baseball is just like a religion.  Buck O’Neil, former Kansas City Monarchs first baseman, manager, scout, and MLB coach, stated that baseball was like a church.  O’Neil explained that baseball is something which teaches everyone to live by the rules.  It was this that made Chidester analyze whether baseball could represent a religion or not.  He pointed out four characteristics in which baseball can parallel a religion, a church: 1. both remain sacred throughout the change in history 2. both have uniformity 3. both create a perfect, sacred universe in the middle of a real, chaotic world 4. both allow the followers to experience sacred time through ritual and revelation.  Based on these four characteristics, he concluded that baseball can represent a religion.  It made me wonder about every sport and how they could all contain these characteristics as well.