Game Seven vs. Election Day

Tonight, America will be treated to the ultimate winner take all sporting extravaganza, the seventh game of a World Series. Roughly a week later, America will experience the ultimate winner take all political extravaganza, Election Day. Let's compare and contrast, shall we?

Tomorrow night, either the Cleveland Indians or the Chicago Cubs will become world champions. If it's the Indians, it will be their first such championship in 68 years. If it's the Cubs, it will their first in 108 years. Either way, there will be great, unbridled joy unleashed throughout the land. Someone will be chosen as series MVP for their outstanding play. Fans of the losing team will be crushed, having come so close after all those many years only to come up short. A minority of them will rail against the umpires, others will bemoan the bias of Fox Sports for unashamedly rooting against their team. But most of them will take the loss in stride since they have so much experience dealing with defeat and disappointment. We will be treated to images from inside the winning clubhouse of grown men giddy with victory, dousing each other with expensive champagne, acting for all the world to see like teenage boys after a victory over a cross town rival on Homecoming night. Baseball fans will rejoice to see the entire nation focused on "our" game. But as the clock strikes midnight, and all of the commentators have finished giving us their take on the game, we will all be a bit sad since pitchers and catchers don't report to spring training for another three and half months!

Next week this time either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will become President of the United States. An election that took what seemed like years and took us to depths never before probed in our moral and ethical history will finally be over. Either way, there will be no joy, unbridled or otherwise released throughout the country, only profound relief that it is finally over. There will be no MVP selected. Supporters of the losing candidate will be enflamed with anger. A majority of them will rail against the entire rigged process and claim that the election was stolen from them, others will rail against either Fox News or the mainstream media for their blatant bias. Hopefully, only a minority of them will take to the streets, Molotov cocktails in hand. We will be embarrassed to see the winning candidate make his/her victory speech. But, when the clock strikes midnight, nobody. . .and I mean nobody will be sad that the 2020 New Hampshire primary is 39 months away. Why? Because for the next four years we will be lead by either this. . .

Or, this. . .

We will have far more immediate things to be sad about.

Winners and Losers

Great baseball game last night. I picked the Bluejays to win despite the fact that they are an overwhelmingly unlikeable team. I'm not totally sure why this is. Maybe it's their beer can hurling fans, maybe it's the supremely arrogant, bat-flipping, look at ME star, Jose Bautista, or maybe it's just my xenophobic grudge against Canadian baseball teams. But, I make my baseball predictions purely on the merits, not with my heart. So I'm one for one. However, I might not have been if the Orioles had been managed by practically any other manager in baseball.

All of my baseball life I have been told about the brilliant baseball mind that dwells inside the dome of one Buck Showalter. Maybe so. Maybe the dude has forgotten more about baseball than I've ever known. But apparently last night he forgot that the best closer in baseball was on his roster. Instead of bringing Zachary Britton into the game with two on and one out and the season on the line in the bottom of the 11th inning, he decided to leave the hapless Ubaldo Jimenez on the hill, he of the ugly 5.44 ERA. The rest, as they say, is history. Nice job, Buck. That's like deciding to pick up your hot date in your rusted out 1975 Pinto and leaving the bright red Maserati in the garage. That's like deciding to serve the President of the United States corn beef and cabbage while there's filet mignon in the fridge. That's like . . . well you get it.

But that's the great thing about baseball. It's the great game of what ifs.

Yesterday was one of those days. I knew it was going to be a stressful pressure cooker long before the sun came up. It was set up for stress. I had three high anxiety appointments, and three administrative foul ups to mitigate, all before lunch. But, it's the paperwork stuff that's the worst. My invaluable administrative goddess, Kristin, was on vacation, which left me and my sledgehammer personality to try and deal with the sort of bureaucratic knitwittery that requires patience and forbearance. It had the potential to get ugly. But, some sort of miracle happened. I actually was able to steady myself, rein in my worst instincts, and spend an hour and forty five minutes on the telephone communicating with idiots and morons without so much as a "wait a gosh darn minute!" All three problems got resolved in my favor without acrimony or bloodshed. It was a beautiful thing.

Today will be equally stressful, as Pam and I prepare for our weekend getaway in Gatlinburg with the kids. Heading west and to higher ground seems like one of my better ideas considering the weekend forecast! Yep, watching playoff baseball on a 60 inch flatscreen in a luxury cabin high up in the Smoky Mountains with my family seems like a top five decision of 2016 to me!

Baseball. A Defense.

Despite the ridiculous weather that finds my local forecast for this Wednesday March the 26^th calling for wind chills in the 20’s all day, baseball’s opening day is right around the corner. Yes, I am aware that the Dodgers and Diamondbacks have already played two games in Australia, and no, I refuse to count that as opening day. Bud Selig is an octogenarian idiot.

This time of year always produces within me a desire to defend baseball from all of its distracters, since it has so many. Honestly, this blog isn’t written to persuade any of you, just to get a few things off my chest. What follows are the most popular complaints about my favorite sport and my pithy retorts:

1. Baseball is too slow. Compared to what? The length of a baseball game is like a snowflake, no two are exactly the same. A 1-0 pitcher’s duel might be over in 2 hours, while a 9-8 slugfest might take 4, and don’t get me started on extra innings! The point is that baseball is a game played outside of time. There is no clock. Outside of the distances between the bases and the distance between the pitcher’s mound and home plate, there aren’t even any uniform dimensions in baseball, making baseball the most individualized sport in history. Do some games take too long? Yes. Are some players annoyingly deliberate? Yes. But that just means that they are more fun to boo! Baseball is a game where you can actually relax while watching, have a casual beer and talk about life with a friend. Why is everybody in such a hurry to get back to the stresses of their lives? Chill out.
2. Baseball has lost its popularity. True, so have marital fidelity, manners and the Protestant work ethic, so baseball is in good company. I freely admit that baseball is no longer the National pastime, having long ago lost that honor to reality television. Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, and I still hate it. Besides, popularity is fleeting. In 50 years, after the NFL has been sued into oblivion by all of its former players for turning them all into drooling paraplegics, baseball will still be here to pick up the pieces.
3. Baseball doesn’t attract the best athletes. True. Dustin Pedroia looks like some guy who should be bagging groceries at Walmart. What is he, 5’7” 160 soaking wet? He would have to put on 30 pounds just to get a job as a water boy in football. But, so what? He’s a terrific second baseman and hits .300 every year. It bothers me not at all that Usain Bolt would lap him in the 100 meter dash. It’s baseball, not the freaking decathlon.
4. Baseball doesn’t have enough black players. Yeah, well…we have a ton of Latin players. When was the last time you saw an All-Dominican backfield in the NFL? How come nobody complains about the relative lack of Hispanic players in the NFL? Yes, I’m aware that any list of the finest baseball players in history would have many, many African American players on it. And honestly, I think it is a shame that for whatever reason blacks seem to have abandoned baseball for basketball and football. But, there is no such thing as affirmative action in sports, no requirement that a roster reflect the racial diversity of the community. If there were such a thing, we would have to insist on more white guys in basketball, and who wants that??
5. The baseball season is too long. Compared to what? A Presidential election campaign? 162 games is a long season, but baseball is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s a game that rewards long term consistency. The grind of the season exposes teams that are only good in spurts. The best teams in baseball lose 40% of their games. It takes awhile to separate the wheat from the chaff.

So, there you have it. Both America and baseball have gotten slow, lost popularity and have a problem with minorities.

Play ball!!!

Schadenfreude

The world is in a crazy, messed up place right now. There’s the Middle East with the Syrian circus and a soon to be nuclear Iran. In this country we’ve got Biblical-grade floods creating islands in Colorado, and deranged men waltzing into supposedly secure military facilities, whipping out shotguns and killing people. We have a completely dysfunctional federal government about to officially run out of money while simultaneously trying to implement a 3000 page health care law that no one, and I mean NO ONE understands. So what’s on my mind today? Baseball, baby!! There are pennant races afoot, so the end of the world will just have to wait until October.

Can the Nationals do the impossible and come from beyond oblivion and sneak into the playoffs as a wildcard? Probably not, but its baseball, so one never knows. All season long the Nationals just haven’t clicked. They’ve seemed tentative, tight, as if the burden of expectations was too much for them. Then, out of nowhere, back in early August, it was as if they all looked at each other and said, “What the hell, we’re out of it now, so let’s just go have some fun.” Since August the 9^th they are the hottest team in baseball. Just last night they swept a double header from the Atlanta Braves and are only 4 and a half games back.

Then there’s the American League wildcard race where four teams are still battling for the last spot. After 150 games, these four teams are still separated by a mere 3 games. The Cleveland Indians, Baltimore Orioles, Kansas City Royals and the New York Yankees are slugging it out every night as if every game was the seventh game of the World Series. It’s been spectacular baseball. Watching the Red Sox utterly dominate the Yankees down the stretch, to watch the aging Yankees fall victim to a pulled muscle here and a stiff neck there has been something close to heaven for me. I believe the word is Schadenfreude, a word so rich in all the wrong human emotions that it could only come to us from the Germans. Experiencing pleasure from observing the misfortune of others is not a healthy place to live long term, I know. But for these last few weeks, watching the Yankees crumble has been like renting a fabulous house at the beach. I don’t intend to stay here forever, but what a fabulous vacation spot!!