Sports and the Fourth

From back yard to the bigs, games a big part of July 4

George Steinbrenner, that paragon of restraint and baseball acumen, was born on the Fourth of July. So was, it says right here, another famous baseball butt-in; Morganna, The Kissing Bandit.

Back on July 4, 1984, the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets played a game at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium that lasted through one Keith Hernandez cycle and 19 painfully long innings. It didn't end until almost 4 a.m. on July 5.

By the end, there were still some 10,000 people hanging around, so club officials decided to set off the postgame Fourth of July fireworks show anyway, which pretty much scared the stars and stripes out of a lot of people in the neighborhood.

In 1939, Lou Gehrig stood before the crowd at Yankee Stadium on the Fourth of July, during Lou Gehrig Day, and said, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth."

One of the reasons he was so lucky, he continued, was because "When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter -- that’s something."

Baseball and the Fourth of July go back a long ways, and it's not hard to see why. The national pastime is in midseason form, literally, at the beginning of July. And, of course, there's not a whole lot else going on. So the two, you see, were practically made for each other.

But the Fourth of July's affiliation with sports is not limited to baseball. One of the greatest tennis tournaments anywhere, Wimbledon, is going on across the pond right now, with American sisters Venus and Serena Williams in the women's final. A little farther across the pond, the Tour de France is ready to begin, with American hero (and United States Postal Service rolling billboard) Lance Armstrong again the favorite.

In fact, the Fourth of July, for a long, long time, has been all about all sorts of sports. Why, the nation's second president, John Adams, wrote a letter to his wife, Abigail -- when people actually did such things -- that gave a clear indication of what the Founding Fathers had in mind for the American Independence Day.

"It ought to be celebrated by pomp and parade," Adams wrote, "with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other ... "

And so it has been.

Almost from the time John Hancock put his John Hancock on the Declaration of Independence -- certainly by the time the War of 1812 had ended and, officially, since the date became a federal holiday in 1941 -- games and sports and bells and illuminations have marked the holiday. From back yards to the big leagues, in parks all over the country, people have played.

Family softball games, neighborhood horseshoe tournaments, 3-on-3 in the driveway. Hot dog eating contests, pie eating contests.

How far can you spit a watermelon seed?

Road races are big. In Atlanta, more than 55,000 people are expected to run in the Peachtree Road Race, the world's largest 10-kilometer race. According to organizers, the runners will crumple up more than a 500,000 paper cups during the 6.2-mile race. What could be more American than a half-million pieces of litter?

Still, summer in America has always been time for baseball, so the national pastime reigns, at least on the Fourth of July. Sometimes the day has turned simply magical. Back in 1983, the New York Yankees' Dave Righetti no-hit the Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium in front of more than 41,000 fans.

Sometimes, it's not so. Two years ago, a parachutist broke his ankle when he tried to drop through the opening in new Miller Park in Milwaukee, hitting a beam several stories above field level. Another parachutist missed the stadium altogether.

In times of war and in times of peace, baseball and many of the nation's other games have boosted American spirits and helped us forget about the difficulties of everyday living.

It's overstated to say that our games can cure what ails us, as a nation. But they can soothe, anyway. They can take us away. Whether it's 40,000 people watching a game in a professional stadium downtown, or four Cincinnatians tossing beanbags in a backyard game of Cornhole, America's games are as big a part of us as fireworks or apple pie or grill-outs.

It's something to remember this Fourth of July. It's something to remember the whole weekend. And while you're doing that, send out a nice birthday wish to The Boss and The Bandit, too.

John Donovan is a senior writer for SI.com.

Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.

 

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