“Who’s on First?”

This being baseball season and not just baseball season but the sweet part of the bat in terms of the calendar, I welcomed the opportunity to talk to a young, British couple that had gone recently to a San Francisco Giants game. We ended up talking about the past, since that’s what baseball is all about. It makes the past come alive like Ezekiel’s dry bones. It’s not the national “pastime” for nothing. Everything in baseball comes from and returns to the past. That’s what keeps it eternal while other sports fade away like a summer romance. Not only doesn’t baseball fade away, but it pops up again from the frozen earth in late winter like a snowdrop.

We talked about how baseball permeates American culture, language, movies, and literature. I brought up that iconic piece of Americana and filmography by Abbott and Costello, “Who’s on First?” When they said they were only vaguely familiar with it and couldn’t pronounce Costello’s name, I figured it was time to show them (see video below). I think they understood most of the set, although they struggled with Costello’s fast-paced, Jersey accent in some places. It wasn’t too easy for me, either. But the humor, based on language and word play as so much great humor is, got through.

Beyond the Brits and baseball lies a fundamental question about how we pass on the traditions that we have received, to paraphrase St. Paul about the Gospel message. This is a two-step process: identifying the tradition in the first place and handing it on to the next generation. Honestly, I am not sure how well we do with either. “Who’s on First?” was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2003 and chosen by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 greatest lines of all time. And, of course, it has been enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Yet how many Americans under a certain age even know about it?

I actually don’t blame them if they aren’t up to speed with a comedy routine from the forties. I barely know who Taylor Swift is and couldn’t name any of her songs. On the other hand, I wasn’t around in the forties, either, but I have a very inclusive view of the past. I can enjoy comedy from that time even while recognizing period specific things like phrasing and dress. My attitude is that, if it’s a human product, I can enjoy it and share in it by virtue of my birth. The Gospels belong to me as much as to St. Paul, and Hamlet’s inner torment speaks to me as much as it did to those watching the play in the Globe Theater.

But we live in an entirely different world now: smaller, faster, smarter. Obviously, things like artificial intelligence did not exist in late sixteenth-century England or first-century Palestine. I don’t consider AI a threat or intrusion, at least not yet. In fact, I use it in my writing, where it really does save time. It’s like having a research assistant. But that may change. It has the potential to alter not just what we think but how we think, eventually affecting our concept of personhood. In a very short time, it will evolve from a product of technology to a producer of it. That is happening already. What will be the consequences of that?

This may sound counterintuitive, but I think the way forward is through the past and our ability to hand on the traditions we received from previous generations in ways that make sense for people today. But these traditions must be received for them to be relevant. That may be a problem, since there may come a time soon enough when our reception becomes compromised and memories fade away like that summer romance, never to return.

How long will that take? A generation, less? This is not a conservative issue. It affects all of us, and I am astonished by the lack of historical knowledge of many people. It’s not a question of being “unburdened” by the past, as some insist, but being aware of and informed by it. That could start with something as simple as knowing the answer to “Who’s on First?”

Image credits: feature by Tim Gouw on Unsplash; Abbott and Costello, Public Domain – Snapshot Image – https://archive.org/details/ClassicComedyTeams, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25914575. Want more? Go to Robert Brancatelli. The Brancatelli Blog is a member of The Free Media Alliance, which promotes “alternatives to software, culture, and hardware monopolies.”