30-Years

There’s a magical place where both Hirsch springen und baseballs fly. A place where ancient legends are as familiar as Grüezi, and concurrently, new legends are born each spring.  A place where diamonds have not traditionally been found, yet are now commonplace, coming to life every weekend afternoon, coupled with grown men running around in pajamas, carrying a tree limb.  It’s a place where the old and the new collide.  The land of the birth of the Protestant Reformation, melds with the pastime of a country founded from that very reformation.  It has been said, „if you want to understand Americans, you have to understand baseball“ and further „if you want to understand Germans you have to understand Goethe“. But what if you want to understand German baseball?  There is a place. 

I have a confession to make.  30 years ago, I knew who Franz Beckenbauer was, but I didn’t know who Goethe was.  It took a Neuenburg Atomics to introduce him to me as we took BP on the Hartplatz.  I’ve had a lot of time (four children, an entire teaching career, 27 years of marriage,and countless funerals) to read and digest him……..and to process my relationship with the Atomics community.  Never could I have phathomed the impact that the Atomic family has had on my life. Those early days for the Atomics, if they weren’t so ängstlich for the Vorstand, would have been comical. The bravery, courage and determination of the founders and players of the teal Atomics is astonishing. Goethe said: „Daring ideas are like chessmen being moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game“.  And that’s it isn’t it?  Someone had to make the first baseball move in Hoch-Schwarzwald.  While other teams have come and gone, the Atomics have been the mainstay.  According to Goethe, the Atomics have won. The Atomics have won; because they dared to move that first pawn in a chess game when everyone else was playing checkers. 

Second confession: When I came to the Atomics in 1996, at only 25 years old, I thought the German mentality was planning, thinking, thinking and then planning…..in that order. Overthinking would have been my uneducated summary of the German mindset.   The Atomics have taught me, as Goethe has said, „Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world“.  In America we say „talk is cheap.“  The Atomics are priceless.  What the Atomics have done in the last 30 years was unimaginable to me in 1996, but not to those running the club.  I remember them telling me about their plans to get sponsors, building their own field, locker rooms, hosting international teams and having a baseball academy. They had a vision, and they put that vision into action with tireless commitment, dedication and belief in something greater.  While other clubs put their time and resources into bright and maybe shiny things, the Atomics leadership correctly saw the big picture behind the veil, the heart of the matter, Des Pudels Kern.  They saw that conflict, obstacles, jealousy and ego could sabotage their mission just as Gretchen in Goethe’s Faust.   

I was only with the Atomics for two seasons. Those two seasons changed my life.  Once, you shaved my head.  Once we won the championship. You taught me how to drive a car like a German, the right way.  You tended to me when I was sick, and home sick.  The Verein knew my wife and I before we were married, Danelle and I solidified our relationship while in Neuenburg, and she and I came back to Neuenburg on our  Hochzeitsreise. Some of you were right beside me shortly after mein Vater died. We were hosted by you in 2008, and again in 2023….The club hosted me on three other occasions, many of you visited me and my family over the years at Gästehaus Person in Connecticut or New York, Boston, Florida, or Texas.  You have been a family to Danelle and I, and we count you as some of our closest friends. Some of you joined me for an American Thanksgiving, Christmas, and birthdays. You were with me and Danelle for our 25th wedding anniversary.  You then hosted my son, who played with the Atomics in 2024. Your generosity, hospitality, compassion, listening and competence are all part of the Atomic way. If Faust only had the Atomics as his mentor, instead of Methastopholese.      

My only regret is that my life’s calling drew me away from the Atomics to study people like Goethe and to try to make sense of this game of life.  Goethe helps this American understand that playing baseball is not just playing baseball.  It is living life toward excellence, in a seriousness demanded by our very existence.  To hit, run, throw and catch to our best ability is just as important as loving, caring, honesty, kindness and contemplation.  Running around in pajamas may be the closest thing we do to understanding ourselves.  Baseball teaches us virtue in the midst of failure.  The Atomics taught me that being a good teammate is like taking care of our neighbors, and that winning is a process, not an outcome, and like Faust, if I desire to win without a moral compass, I have not played the game well, and that Spielen is an important human activity which gives us a shadow of our true purpose in this life, to run the race straight and true.  The Atomics have taught me that humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less.  The Atomics have taught me that taking care of the baseball field is like taking care of our gardens.  “The world is so empty if I think only of mountains, rivers & cities“ says Goethe; „but to know [that the Atomics]  think & feel with me, though distant, are close to me in spirit, this makes the Earth for me an inhabited garden“, a Gemeinschaft where we live and cry together, if only apart by 3,800 miles. The Atomics have taught me to think about my purpose, the nagging question all of us have at the end of all of our one act plays.  While feeding me and clothing me, the Atomics gave me hope.  The Atomic way is full of hope. 

There is a place where ewige Hoffnung entspringt (hope springs eternal), a double play is Beethoven’s Moonlight piano sonata, a perfectly placed bunt is as vibrant as the cornflower is blue, a home run as towering as the Alpen, a diving fielder glides like a golden eagle, and a blood red sunset over the Rhine is as peaceful a site as a „safe“! call on a straight steal of home. “He is happiest“, says Goethe, be he king or peasant, who finds peace at home.” At home. 

This home, this magical place, is Neuenburg am Rhein.  Thank you Atomics for the 30 years of allowing us to rent a room in your home and to travel together not knowing when the curtain may close for either of us.