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By Leo Tobbe
Growing up, I didn’t love sports. I didn’t mind participating in them— I liked being outside and being active, and I’ve been a competitive swimmer for most of my life. I just didn’t like watching sports on TV. My dad always had ESPN on in the mornings, and in elementary school my peers would shout across the lunch table about the March Madness and the NFL playoffs; the conversation failed to appeal to the pre-pubescent political junkie I was back then. Instead of rushing yards and three-point averages, I wanted to talk about Electoral College votes and the Iowa Caucus. CNN was my SportsCenter. In other words, I was an obnoxious nerd in the 5th grade, and the world of athletics became symbolic of my struggle to connect with my peers. That perception stayed with me all through middle school, and didn’t really change until my senior year of high school.
That summer is when my love affair with baseball started. My dad had left a Dodgers game on, and at that particular moment, I had nothing better to do than watch it. It wasn’t brutal or hypermasculine like football always felt to me. It was peaceful, it was relaxing, and it was fun. As I learned more about America’s Pastime, the reason it appealed to me in the first place grew clearer. There is no sport more reflective of the human experience. Baseball is man writ large. In classic McConnell Scholar fashion, I will support this claim using Plato’s model of the human soul.
Plato says that the soul is comprised of three parts: Reason, Spirit, and Appetite. Together, these things make us human. The Appetite refers to the most basic of human instincts. The desire for food, shelter, water, etc. A baseball player has to be fit. He has to have good enough reflexes to hit the ball when it comes to him, he has to be strong enough to hit it far, and he has to be fast enough to make it to the base before. He has to want to win, so he has to train, he has to eat properly, and he has to take care of his physical body. This is how Appetite manifests in baseball, and just as it is the simplest and lowest part of the soul, physicality is the least consequential part of the sport. That said, you can’t live without it.
I’m going to skip Spirit and come back to it, because I personally believe that it’s the most important part. Plato describes Reason as the “governing part.” It’s the cold, calculating logic of the left brain. We see it easily enough in baseball’s front office. The general manager is effectively the brains of the operation, analyzing statistics, making trades, and ultimately crafting the team’s overall strategy for the season. A good front office can make or break a team, but even in the 21st century, numbers aren’t everything. In my opinion, Spirit is what counts most.
Simply put, Plato says the Spirit refers to our emotions, but it’s more complicated than that. Spirit is about our less tangible desires. As humans, we innately seek out excellence, truth, and community. We champion bravery, ambition, and creativity. We love, we fight, we celebrate, we grieve, and then we do it all again, and we do it all together. Spirit is about culture, mindset, relationships, and habit. If the culture of a clubhouse is bad, the team will almost never be successful. If a star batter’s girlfriend breaks up with him, you might see his homers turn into fouls. If a pitcher is chewing the wrong kind of gum, it may be the difference between a win and a loss. Similarly, a pitcher and a catcher, or a shortstop and a first basemen who are lifelong friends, who were roommates in college, who watch each other’s kids, and who know each other not just on a physical but on a spiritual level, they can create an unstoppable force. Baseball teaches us that it’s the little things that count— the things that are good for the Spirit.
Leo is a McConnell Scholar in the class of 2028 at the University of Louisville. He studies political science and economics.