Laura Race
Penn Yan, New York

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Born in the decades before the Civil War, baseball spread like wildfire during the war. Union boys in the Midwest learned it from the boys of the East, and Yankees from the North taught it to their Confederate captors. Enthusiasm for the game reached all regions, all classes. What had once been the province of city merchants and professionals, the gentlemen of the day, became a game for the people. The Civil War democratized American society, including baseball, our national pastime.

Tom William Odom
Lake Worth, Florida

Not so much a metaphor of shared experience, the connection between baseball and the Civil War seems more deeply rooted in a return to that which once was. The need to get on with things may be eclipsed by a yearning to reconnect with patterns of life that disappeared on a thousand battlefields. Baseball may have enabled former soldiers to regain a portion of their lost innocence. They would agree that the game of baseball, with its simple message of competition, fair play, and male bonding, is as much a quest for innocence as it is a celebration of the strength of America–South and North–and a lasting epitaph to the courageous energy of that era.

Rich Hill
Metuchen, New Jersey

In baseball, you don’t have to hate your opponent while the action plays out, and after the contest is over, the camaraderie becomes part of the game. Though death was often the outcome in battle, there was little hatred involved; they were just trying to win. Abner Doubleday would probably have been happier throwing a baseball than lobbing a cannonball from Fort Sumter, but he no doubt noted the similarities.

Roy E. Triebel
Wantagh, New York

Americans are passionate about both the Civil War and baseball because there are not any two things that are more American. The mythical feats of the great generals and players stimulate the passions and imaginations of both the historian and the fan. Robert E. Lee’s boldness in dividing his army at Chancellorsville and Babe Ruth’s in calling his shot in the 1932 World Series are the stories of legend. While their triumphs are out of reach of the normal man, we can all envision ourselves as bit players.

David F. Nolan
Richmond Hill, Georgia

Baseball played a vital role for the soldiers in camp, relieving them of the horrors of war. After the war they took the game home and created a baseball boom, truly nationalizing the game. But the real story is the game itself. Were it not so much fun to play and watch, baseball would have gone the way of its parents, rounders and cricket, and become just a footnote in American history.

William Gump
Kent, Ohio

Both the war and the game evoke feelings of pride and serve as a testament to the indomitable spirit of man. Americans rally to protect battlefields such as Gettysburg and Antietam to remember forever the heroic deeds of a bygone era. The same sense of maintaining continuity with the past surrounds the desire of many to preserve the pristine nature of the nation’s ballparks. So long as the country relishes its past, there will always be someone willing to learn about the great war or relive the epic Game Seven.

Keith M. Finley
Hammond, Louisiana

Baseball and the Civil War share a common core. In the war, both sides felt that blacks were incapable of independence without support of their white “fathers.” In 1863 Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Some of them became soldiers, but they were led by white officers. Later, in baseball, blacks were prevented from playing the game with whites until 1947, when Branch Rickey, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, enlisted Jackie Robinson for his team. It is now 51 years later, and the game’s leadership remains white. Blacks still hold no real power.

Milton Pascaner
Decatur, Georgia

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