The Sea as Metaphor from the Caribbean to Galilee

In the previous post, Dominican letrado Goitia exclaimed that it was indeed possible to return to life after being thrown into the sea. In the specified contest between famed Dominican squads Gimnasio Escolar and Atlético, Goitia gloated how Atlético sent the “poor boys” of Gimnasio Escolar crazily spinning all over the field in futile pursuit of batted balls and frustratingly unable to stop the Atlético running game.  Goitia openly admonished another Dominican letrado associated with Gimnasio Escolar, Orgen, personally. “Now you shut up, Orgen?” he wrote. He continued, suggesting that Orgen abandon his place in baseball and instead devote himself to his writing, and not to come back to the scene like a ricocheting baseball.

As it turns out, Orgen did ricochet and had a response for Goitia. Two weeks later, Orgen, continuing the favored metaphor of the sea, predicted that Gimnasio Escolar will make their "friend" Goitia surrender his soul to the creator in a deep sea. However, he clarifies that this is not the Caribbean--instead, Orgen declares that this sea is a deep sea of shame, longing, and tears. 

Listin Diario (Santo Domingo) November 17, 1917.

The use of the sea as a metaphor recalls some scholarship I recently read on Mark's use of the Sea of Galilee as a literary device. I won't summarize too much of it in this space, but you can read it here. Notably, it appears that Mark drew upon Greek and Jewish sources to establish the role of the "sea" (much more a lake) of Galilee in presenting the Markan Jesus, with a priority on symbolism over geographical accuracy.

Prologue

I have decided to begin a blog to accompany and document my historical forays, and also as a tool to motivate and encourage myself to continue in doing so. I am beginning this with personal intentions, although if it is of interest to anyone else, a part of my role as a historian may be slightly fulfilled. 

My primary interest is the development of baseball in the early modern Caribbean, especially the Dominican Republic. My master's thesis, to be defended this spring, deals with this phenomena in the context of the U.S. occupation of the island during the First World War, the nature of Dominican resistance to foreign rule, and the role of the urban intellectuals of Santo Domingo, or letrados, in the advent of the Dominican game. 

The name for this blog comes from one particular exchange between the Dominican letrados who covered baseball in the capital. In a tradition not unique to Dominican baseball (I'll expand on this in a later post), Dominican letrados, writing anonymously, associated their baseball discourse with a poetic tradition. One writer, going only by Goitia, composed:

¿Se puede volver a la vida

después de tirarse al mar?

Is it possible to return to life

after being thrown into the sea?

The sea as a metaphor is common in the various baseball diatribes I've encountered in my research, not surprisingly due to the proximity of the Caribbean. I could not help but wonder if the usage of "thrown into the sea" is an allusion to the Gospel of Mark. I am not certain there is a connection, but an additional vein of my layperson's historical interest is biblical scholarship, I felt the title was sufficient in encompassing whatever I may write about or share here.

Listin Diario (Santo Domingo), October 31, 1917.