Bill Clinton at the Church of Baseball: The Presidency, Civil Religion, and the National Pastime in the 1990s

The red, white, and blue bunting that adorns the stands of Major League Baseball (MLB) stadiums for opening day ceremonies and playoff series might be the perfect symbol of the national pastime's quasi-religious status. It designates a high holy day, and it combines our ravenous appetite for sport with national pride, resulting in rites and observances that seemingly carry the weight of religious significance. Fittingly, the cover of Bill Clinton at the Church of Baseball is embellished with a string of bunting that frames a photo of President Clinton as he raises his fists in celebration and takes in the festivities at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, one of the great cathedrals of baseball.The image perfectly introduces Birkett's contribution to Mercer University Press's Sports and Religion series. Birkett is interested not so much in how sport and religious traditions interact but rather in how baseball functions as a kind of pseudo-religion. He approaches baseball as an important component of the broader American civil religion that provides shared rituals, beliefs, and belonging. More specifically, he is interested in the ways that Clinton deployed baseball—its language, imagery, and milestones—to advance legislative agendas, consolidate support, and distract from scandal. Birkett points out that the book is not a comprehensive account of Major League Baseball in the 1990s, nor a history of the Clinton administration, but rather “an examination of the occasions when two cherished, yet fallible, national institutions—the presidency and Major League Baseball—became intimately entwined under Clinton's watch” (25).Birkett relies on sociologist Robert Bellah's American contextualization of the notion of civil religion. More recently, philosopher James K. A. Smith has coined the term “cultural liturgies” to describe the cultural practices that shape our desires and orient us to the world in particular ways. Birkett describes the ballpark's formative rituals and Clinton's adept use of these rites (and the myths that inspire them) to sell his legislative agenda to a fragmented American public. Viewing Clinton from the perspective of the “First Fan” or the high priest of the American civil religion, among other things, helps to make sense of the emergence of the culture wars that so influenced his two terms in office. When public life is divided by competing moral systems, rather than simply disagreement on certain key issues, the religious register of seemingly secular endeavors becomes evident.Surveying the landmark events of Major League Baseball in the 1990s is a surprisingly effective lens through which to view Clinton's contested and complicated legacy. These events are Ken Burns's Baseball (1994) documentary, the 1994–95 players strike, Cal Ripken Jr.’s record-breaking 2,131st consecutive game, the fiftieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking MLB's color barrier, and the 1998 single-season home run chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Clinton's intersection with each of these events draws out a unique feature of his presidency. His interactions with Ken Burns (specifically the documented communication between Burns and Clinton's communications staff) indicates that Burns's retelling of baseball's myth formed part of the liturgy for the civil religion that Clinton tried to shape in an effort to unite the country. The players strike brought out his activist streak. As he intervened in negotiations, his democratic ideals aligned him with the players union against the team owners and angered MLB commissioner Bud Selig. Clinton's enthusiasm for and rhetoric about Ripken's record for consecutive games played drew out the conservative Clinton as he marshaled the celebration of Ripken's consistency and work ethic to advocate for welfare reform that focused on work requirements and limited the government's responsibility for providing a social safety net. Birkett uses the response to the ceremonies honoring Jackie Robinson's legacy to contrast Clinton's and Jessie Jackson's respective approaches to affirmative action. Finally, the pursuit of the single-season home run record by McGwire and Sosa provided an example of heroic virtue that contrasted with Clinton's moral failures during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The sum total of these various interactions is a nuanced portrait of Clinton as a skilled communicator, an ambitious politician, and a flawed person.Birkett most effectively captures baseball's civil religious role in his chapter on Ripken and welfare reform. His descriptions of the ceremonies surrounding Ripken's 2,131st game evokes the religious mode of the celebration, and his recounting of Clinton's broadcast booth commentary demonstrates more clearly than any other example the president's ability to use the national pastime to communicate a unifying message. In his acknowledgements, Birkett reveals that he was present at that game in the summer of 1995, which must partially account for the particularly evocative description of the night's events. Another thread throughout the book is Birkett's critical treatment of racial issues during Clinton's presidency. The discussion of affirmative action and Robinson's legacy is the most obvious example, but he also explores how the idealized blue-collar work ethic surrounding Ripken was coded white and contrasted with criticism of “irresponsible” Black athletes. The racial thread is also traced through the McGwire–Sosa home-run race, contrasting the celebrations surrounding McGwire's sixty-second home run with the paltry acknowledgement of Sosa's.The book relies heavily on records from Clinton's presidential archive, as well as interviews with members of Clinton's staff. The bibliography is followed by “A Note on Sources,” which gives a glimpse into the arduous task of finding relevant material in a mostly undigitized archive. Birkett's careful research and engaging storytelling offer a convincing picture of the ongoing civic import of baseball in the last decade of the twentieth century. The book offers an important contribution to our understanding of Clinton's presidency. His baseball rhetoric traces a neoliberal shift in policy during his two terms in office, narrating the story of the left's disillusionment with the forty-second president. It also contributes to the assessment of MLB's cultural significance in the 1990s. Decades after baseball's “golden age,” Birkett demonstrates the sport's continuing ability to capture the national imagination, animate public discourse, and shape collective desires in that era.