Passion Plays

July 25, 2022
This entertaining history examines the religious and cultural roots of baseball, basketball, football, and hockey. Dartmouth religion professor Balmer (Bad Faith) provides a whistle-stop history of the four sports and highlights some of their quasi-religious features, discussing how hockey’s spread among Catholic communities coincided with the addition of the penalty box, which draws on the Catholic principles of penitence and absolution. Balmer also suggests that the development of competitive team sports in the latter half of the 19th century reflected a growing concern about men becoming feminized as they started taking more “sedentary” office jobs because of the Industrial Revolution, giving rise to the “Muscular Christianity” movement that “valorized robust, athletic Christians” and spawned numerous church athletic leagues. The author’s most thought-provoking contention is that “increased passion for sports in recent decades has, for many, displaced traditional expressions of religion,” and he posits that the appeal of religion and sports lies in their affinity for rituals and authoritative texts that impose rules on a disorderly universe. The illuminating insights into how sports reflect the historical periods and communities in which they developed will change how fans see the games. This one is a winner.