In a Vulgar Society, Class Is a Casualty

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 9, 1998 | by Woody West

Let us contemplate the matter of "class." Not class as in economic and cultural distinctions and not as in the fashionable frolic of the academics in which the triad of "race, gender and class" supposedly shapes every act and event of social existence. There's another context, one that signifies demeanor that we recognize as "classy" -- as demonstrating a quality of thoughtfulness that can elevate daily conduct to a higher plane and can inspire others to emulation.

To be classy is more than to rise above the merely vulgar or coarse (which rules out much of television, most of film and all of pop music). The best way to categorize it may be to say that it is action or utterance that earns our admiration by unusual grace. It matters not whether the instance occurs on the public or the private stage or whether it is noted by many or by few.

There's not been a great deal that could be accounted "classy" on our public stage recently. Quite the opposite. Which brings us around to baseball, oddly or interestingly enough. As this is being written, the extended season at last has reached the World Series (one of these years shortly, relief pitchers in what used to be called the Fall Classic will have to be brought in from the bullpen on a sled and huskies).

A class example occurred after the final game in the American League wild-card game. In that Fenway Park confrontation, the cosmically accursed Boston Red Sox were whacked 2-1 by the Cleveland Indians and denied the chance to contend for the AL pennant. After the final out, the Red Sox players disappeared into the clubhouse as if propelled by a hurricane-force gale -- all but one.

Nomar Garciaparra, the nifty Red Sox shortstop, emerged from the dugout and faced the thousands of disappointed Boston fans who, in the nature of disappointment, often find it difficult to leave the scene of despond. And Garciaparra, alone of the Red Sox, stood on the field for several minutes facing the grandstand -- applauding the Boston fans for their support. That's class.

One or another sportswriter might have noticed and written a sentence about the young ballplayer's sense of the appropriate, though not in the newspapers I saw. Nor did the television announcers mention Garciaparra's gesture; in fact, there was blessed silence from announcers, and a viewer was left with a tableau of those unaffected moments in which one player acknowledged the fans who pay his salary and underwrite his celebrity.

(While on the subject of baseball, the game invariably provides a wild quote or two as part of intense competition. Omar Vizquel, for instance, the Cleveland Indians' shortstop, in the middle of the AL championship series with New York, was quoted as saying, "Everybody wants the Yankees to win. ESPN. Fox. NBC. CNN. FBI." As they eventually did.)

It is not difficult to find in history examples of classy behavior, and the further back one goes, such instances were considered just good manners.

At Appomattox, as every schoolchild knows, while Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was drafting the terms of the surrender he glanced (as historian Shelby Foote writes) at the sword Gen. Robert E. Lee was wearing -- and then added a sentence to permit Southern officers to retain their horses and sidearms, thus relieving the great Confederate soldier of the added humiliation of handing over his sword to his conqueror. Classy.

In this media-soaked society, one of the casualties is proportion. In the frantic competition for our time and attention among increasing cable TV channels, within the cyberspace universe -- not to mention the cell phones ringing, faxes whirring and other capillaries of communication flowing forcefully -- it is difficult for one thing to seem more compelling than another. As distinctions blur about what genuinely is admirable and what is noxious, what is useful and what is useless, only the notorious is likely to command attention.

It may be the salvation of the republic in these vexing years, however, that vast numbers of Americans resist the media shriek and shout. They go about their daily chores and fulfill their obligations with unassuming dignity and persistence. They retain the discipline of assigning proportion to the affairs and goofiness of the wider world.

Recall George Eliot's lovely ending to Middlemarch, in which the novelist reflects on the life of Dorothea Casaubon: The "growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." A "classy" life, if you will, and a wider canvas on which to fit the engaging gesture of that young member of the Boston Red Sox after the game.

Some of us will remember Nomar Garciaparra's class act after we've forgotten who won the 1998 World Series.