Manual Labor, Academe, and Baseball

Joe Carter’s column this week draws on the autobiographical to illustrate an important point of comparison between workers in the world of labor and their counterparts in the world of ideas: Both idealize the other’s lot; but, as Carter argues, the two life courses are different in kind, and neither benefits from undue idealization:

Of course there’s nothing wrong with wanting to talk about ideas, even the idea of how manual labor can lead to an intellectually fulfilling life—a theory I fully endorse. But the ideas about work proffered by agrarian academics and garage-dreaming cubicle workers are hardly the same as those of real farmers and trade workers. If we ask manual laborers to speak for themselves, we may find that they view manual work as  work and shop class as a place for crafting  stuff , not souls.

George Weigel’s column this week makes an argument not about theology or the role of the Church in the world, but baseball. Weigel makes the case for including  61* among baseball’s all-time greatest films:

61* is not flawless. It’s crude at one or two points (but so was the Commerce Comet, Mantle). The computer imaging of old Yankee Stadium (not the redesigned one just torn down but the original House That Ruth Built) is a little shaky, as is the re-creation of Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, site of most of my sacred baseball memories. A few bits of casting are off: Neither Whitey Ford nor Ralph Houk looks quite right. Nonetheless, it’s a terrific film.