Sitting high in the stands next to daddy, I felt like a princess. Mickey Mantle struck out every at-bat that afternoon. And nothing, but nothing, could have dampened my spirits on that glorious summer day at Yankee Stadium. The memory is steeped in American tradition. The event is symbolic of America.
Baseball is the American pastime.
And Mickey Mantle's career is the embodiment of the American Dream. To have experienced that momentous occasion in my impressionable youth has given me the glorious gift of assimilating the American culture into my own identity. It is part of my ancestry, as surely as it is part of me. Published in 1790, Royall Tyler's play, The Contrast , is an astute examination of the urgent need to define America as a separate identity in a new and independent country. As with the urgency of a teenager who must re-evaluate taught values, question the validity of cultural traditions, and find and define a unique identity which also can be comfortably assimilated into his social situation, America was a nation urgent to set its own standards.