The literary boys of summer

 “There is certainly no evidence that baseball has descended from a ritual of human sacrifice, but the umpire is quite as much of a pharmakos as if it had: he is an abandoned scoundrel, a greater robber than Barabbas; he has the evil eye; the supporters of the losing team scream for his death. At play, mob emotions are boiled in an open pot, so to speak; in the lynching mob they are in a sealed furnace of what Blake would call moral virtue.”

(pg. 46, Anatomy of Criticism)

Between reading the “Archetypes of Literature” and Anatomy of Criticism, it seems safe to presume Northrop Frye’s main contention states that all literature and as a result all modern human activities stem from a primeval instincts played out through ritual and the Myths created by ritual. As I read Frye and his contentions, I tend to agree simply based on the massive amount of obscure and not so obscure literary references he uses to back his arguments. While I am sure “the clearest example of high mimetic comedy is the Old Comedy of Aristophanes;” arguments such as these tend to drowned the average reader of literary criticism in terminology and more importantly an unfamiliar reference. I can look up “high mimetic” and “Old Comedy” however I fail to truly understand Frye’s meaning until I read and comprehend Aristophanes. When reading Frye, countless examples like the above create a fissure between simply reading words and true understanding of said words. Thankfully, Frye occasionally inserts a gem amongst all the mush that allows a layperson such as myself to feel a bit more like a well read literary scholar. Enter the quote from above taken from page 46 of Anatomy of Criticism. I come from an athletic background and while I am capable of understanding dense literary metaphor, the occasional sports reference eases the transition a bit. This quote perfectly exemplifies Frye’s contention concerning ritual and myth in literature. No better modern pharmakos or scapegoat emerges from modern culture than an Umpire. This most hated species of Zebra comes under constant scrutiny from players and armchair quarterbacks alike. While I previously believed very little correlation between Baseball and Ancient religious beliefs, the umpire as a scapegoat metaphor becomes perfectly logical. Although baseball may not exactly be literature, it helps one such as myself better understand theory of literature according to Frye. Wait…Hold on a minute…Didn’t one of Frye’s contentions state that “the structures in words are partly rhetorical, and hence literary” There are plenty of words in and around baseball, perhaps it’s a bit more literary than first expected.  I'll bet thats what Lou Piniella thinks.