I picked a hell of a week to start writing about sports.
There I was, all geared up to maybe cover some Georgetown football, write a basketball preview or perhaps editorialize about why the Mets are easier to root for than the Yankees, and then something happened that made all of that impossible. The events of last Tuesday jarred the sports world out of place. No time to think about anything besides what happened. All games canceled. Everything put on hold.
Major League Baseball decided, after what seemed like much debate, to suspend all games until Monday and agree to extend the season to allow for a full 162-game schedule. Some people thought that play resumed too soon. Some, fans and non-fans alike, thought that the season should be canceled altogether, that everyone should just give up and go home and come back next year when baseball would matter again.
These people, as socially conscious and well-intentioned as they may have been, were blatantly wrong. Now, more than ever, we need baseball.
At some point last week everyone in the country wanted to sit in the corner of their room rocking back and forth listening to “Everybody Hurts” on repeat, surviving only on the nine cups of Mott’s Applesauce, five boxes of granola bars and two cases of Fresca that they had stocked up on at Costco. At least I did.
Eventually, however, life must go on. TV stations must start airing regular programming, newspapers must start covering other subjects (whoops), and perhaps most importantly, Major League Baseball games must resume. Baseball, whether you like it or not, is a national symbol just as important as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I can only assume that its cancellation would make our attackers, whomever they may be, feel much more successful. Playing and watching our baseball games is a way of showing our national enemies that, while they can demolish our buildings and take thousands of our lives, they can not take our pride and our spirit, the very nature of our American-ness.
I’m not trying to conjure up some false sense of a patriotic duty to enjoy baseball. I’ve never even been all that patriotic myself. I urge you, however, to watch a game this week. Hell, if you can, go to a game. If not to show your support for the United States, than just to take your mind off everything else for a few hours. It’s not inappropriate. You don’t have to commit yourself to martyrdom by refusing to think about anything that doesn’t involve the terrorist attacks of last week. If you spend 21 hours of your day thinking about tragedy and three hours thinking about a baseball game, you’re still doing your fair share of mourning. More importantly, however, you’re taking solace in the fact that baseball, life and America go on. We certainly don’t have to forget about what happened, but we also don’t have to forget how to have fun.
Do I dare end with a corny movie quote in my first newspaper article ever? You bet:
“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again. Oh people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.”?James Earl Jones, Field of Dreams
