SOURCE: Aitken, Brian. “Baseball as Sacred Doorway in the Writing of W. P. Kinsella.” Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature 8, no. 1 (fall 1990): 61-75.

In the following essay, Aitken examines the various allusions to religion in Kinsella's writing.

Ninety feet between bases is the nearest to perfection that man has yet achieved.

(Red Smith)

Two years ago at the Canadian Learneds at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, I gave a paper entitled “The Emergence of Born-Again Sport” in which I examined Athletes-In-Action, one of the Evangelical Christian organizations catering to professional and elite amateur athletes. I ended the paper with a brief discussion of the relationship between religion and sport and in the process identified three positions. First, sport and religion can be viewed as being totally different realities; for philosopher Robert J. Higgs sport belongs to the world of the beautiful and play, whereas religion by nature belongs...