ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses one particular baseball phenomenon, the foul ball, under the microscope, looking for its larger ritual significance. The white foul lines are normally treated reverentially as the boundaries of the playing space; but when a ball goes slightly outside those boundaries, the playing space suddenly expands, to include the area between the foul lines and spectator seats. The film presents a striking contrast, then, between fixed infield lines—the grandstand and foul lines—and the flexible, porous home-run wall. Indeed, the cornfield contains within itself this same contrast. The Dodgers were perennial underdogs, losing so many critical games to the Yankees and others that they simply became known as “dem bums.” But the ultimate heartbreak occurred when the Dodgers relocated to Los Angeles in 1958, and Ebbets Field was torn down a few years later.
