If you’re not a baseball fan, or if you’re not familiar with Vin Scully, just think about the impact of nostalgia on your life and the importance of relationships in it. I wrote about legendary Dodger baseball announcer Vin Scully in my latest Federalist piece, not because I know much about baseball. I don’t really. But he is now in his 65th year announcing for the Dodgers, and I believe his story says something big about how our lives intersect with so many others. If you read my essay “Vin Scully and the Soul of the Crowd,” you may well connect with what Scully says he felt as a child listening to “the roar of the crowd” on the radio:
His fascination with the “roar of the crowd” represents something I think we all want and which is unattainable on earth: the chance to converse with all of humanity at the same time. It represents a desire to be in community—or in communion—with others. It’s like being in a grand conversation in which no one can predict what will happen next. A community like that is held together through mutual respect and the anticipation of joy.
This is a feeling that I think reflects in part what C.S. Lewis meant in his essay “The Weight of Glory,” a universal human longing to “bathe” in a glory we can hardly put into words. Lewis notes that we often mistake this for a sense of "nostalgia," but it's so much more than that. Nostalgia can overwhelm us with a sense of wistfulness. When that feeling takes hold, we find ourselves looking back with longing, hoping to find something "close to home," something permanent to hold on to. Nostalgia is triggered by any one of our senses. The sight of a memento, the sound of a voice, the touch of a fabric, a frangrance, a taste. It comes to us as a reminder that we feel lost in time and we ache for a sense of connection in relationships with others through all of space and time. The sound of Scully's voice brings back memories of my father listening to his beloved Dodger games. It brings back echoes of my childhood -- as it does for so many baseball fans who grew up hearing Scully call the plays while telling us stories. The idea of his career ending brings us sorrow. We'll miss him. And the feeling is mutual. In his words, "It's the relationships I'll miss most."
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