Actually, there is crying in baseball

Most of you know that my husband is a big fan of baseball, and I began following the sport when we became a couple. Forty years and change later we therefore found ourselves in Cooperstown, New York, at our fourth visit and third Induction Weekend. For the uninitiated, that’s when the new Hall of Fame players officially join the Hall.

We’ve come for the induction of all three Astros who are in Hall: Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, and, this year, Billy Wagner. Having watched them play in Houston, we enjoyed seeing them receiving baseball’s highest honor. Attending Induction Weekends also becomes a bit of coup-counting among the more competitive (read: Yankees) fans. Remarks like, “How often have you been here? (Fill in number) times? Well, I’m (fill in the number one or greater) ahead of you. I started coming with (fill in a player, always referred to by first name, like you’re buddies) and keep coming back.” I’m just grateful they stopped at comparing years and forewent any comparisons related to male anatomy.

As for Mark and me, this weekend we did pretty much what we have done twice before. We attend the events. Mark pays to have players sign baseballs, and I urge him to buy even more signed balls at the souvenir stores lining Main Street. We buy tshirts featuring our favorite inductee. We sweat a lot, as most of the events are outside. And we look for places to park. Minus sleeping and eating, that’s a fairly comprehensive summary of our weekend.

One thing we haven’t done is participate in events or shopping related to baseball movies, which is a whole baseball subculture. This year, for example, actors from “The Sandlot” signed autographs – for a price, of course. Also for sale are signs with baseball movie lines or riffs on those lines. The pizza place where we ate lunch today, for example, proudly proclaims on a wall hanging that “If you feed them, then they will come.”

This year the hottest movie seemed to be “A League of Their Own,” which is certainly a favorite at our house. Some years after seeing this film, we traveled to Cooperstown and got autographs from members of the All American Girls Baseball League. Of course, no big autograph company organized their signings; instead, these baseball veterans posted up under someone’s lawn umbrella and signed balls for $10 a pop, a sum that wouldn’t even get you the “B” from Billy Wagner. Big surprise.

But this year memorabilia from ALOTO was in stock at most merchants’ sidewalk tables and in several stores. I bought a Rockford Peaches T-shirt (peach-colored, of course). But most of the items featured Tom Hanks’s most iconic line in the movie. I probably walked by a dozen vendors with signs, pictures, and shirts all proclaiming that there is no crying in baseball. 

I’m here to tell you that Tom Hanks – really, the scriptwriter, I suppose – is wrong. 

We’re often taught in this country that athletes are supposed to be strong, which then translates into stoic. Play through the pain. No pain, no gain. Just rub some dirt on it. And to be sure, athletes do often play when they are hurt, sometimes grievously. Just like they play when they’re angry or sad or discouraged or even frightened. But they don’t cry, right? 

Sure – except when they do. We saw that this weekend Billy Wagner teared up during his Induction speech – shoot, he teared up in a pre-speech video discussing whether he was going to tear up during his speech. CC Sabathia, who is one big dude even though he’s lost 40 pounds since retiring, talked freely about how he started crying during the Induction speech by the son of Dave Parker. Parker, a star player, had been denied admission to the Hall for years, in some large part because he was Black and not submissive. He died a month before Induction Weekend. And there wasn’t a dry eye in the house when Dick Allen’s widow talked about how her husband, a Black superstar, was treated by the Philadelphia fans in the 1960s. Let’s just say that the City of Brotherly Love failed to live up to its name, and the the Hall of Fame followed suit by waiting decades to honor Allen. 

So trust me, there’s definitely crying in baseball, at least at Induction Weekend. There are tears of grief, of sorrow, of shame, and of overweening joy. And it’s a glory to behold. 

Now, don’t get me wrong: I still love A League of Their Own, and I understand that the no-crying line beautifully advances the film’s story of learning about gender norms and coming to terms with our own blind spots as we learn and grow. But I’d like to think that Billy and CC (see above about first names) showed us just a bit of what athletes are really like – ready to do tough things to get their jobs done, but also fully human. They have the tear tracks on their faces to show it.