Meza 1
George J. Meza
Dr. Vogal
Cultural Anthropology
4 February 2020
RR: Baseball Magic
1.
I believe that George Gmelch wrote this article to shine light on the fact that everyone has
their own weird ways of doing things, and that every culture has their own routines,
rituals, taboos, and fetishes. Gmelch states “Baseball, America’s national pastime…”
which shows how important a sport baseball is to the American people. Gmelch talks
about how we believe these rituals play a significant difference in our lives, and how they
give us confidence to actually do things better with them. I believe part of why Gmelch
wrote this is to show that from an outside perspective we look at rituals as being strange
and unknown to our culture, but in his writing he brings a familiarity to them showing
how individuals such as baseball players have certain rituals that they adhere to.
2.
One of the rituals that I found to be interesting was when Gmelch said “Outfielder Ron
