david broder, in the
washpost, wrongly posits that partisanship in washington can be directly traced to the lack of pro-baseball in that city:
what has been missed by most of the historians and political scientists is the fact that political conditions in washington began to decline in 1971, the year the baseball senators decamped for texas and became the rangers.
baseball was the tonic that soothed washington's nerves. after a hard day in the senate, members on opposite sides of the foreign aid bill debate could repair to robert f. kennedy stadium, 22 blocks away, knock back a few beers and watch frank howard pound the stuffing out of the ball. by the same token, disgruntled bureaucrats, bloody from fighting to save their pet programs from the fiscal surgeons in the bureau of the budget, could sit in the stands and enjoy the sight of camilo pascual baffling the yankees with his curveball.
that tonic has been missing from washington lo these many years, and look at the mess we are in. the city and its resident politicians now fixate on football's redskins, who play only eight home games a year -- and in one of the ugliest stadiums ever constructed, with no certainty except that the traffic will be maddening on the way in and worse on the way out. and you wonder why the atmosphere is poisoned by anger and frustration.
an interesting theory, and cute enough to fill a column in a national newspaper. but, while mr. brody's initial feeling that a major change in baseball was the watermark of when things began to go screwy in this country, he unfortunately picked the wrong event (washington senators leaving for texas) as the catalyst.
no, unfortunately for the world, the day everything changed was not 9-11-01, but 8-8-88, an easy-to-remember palindrome of a date that is as insidious as it is cute.
of course, that's the day that the first night game was played in wrigley field.
no more was baseball, and by extension, the soul of america, pure. no more was the game, and thereby anything else, done for the pure pleasure of it. no, now chicago baseball had to go into the night, to create more revenue, to accommodate busy schedules of business men who wanted their baseball and their day job.
yes, it was 8-8-88 when baseball in the daytime, the last vestige of doing something for the pure joy of doing it, was hooked up to a billion gazilliwatts of luminescence so the spot lights could be shown on gate receipts. the last place where kids could learn sportsmanship, team work, and personal bests, without the pressure of profit margins interfering was dragged, unceremoniously, into the 20th century, courtesy of the 80's, the decade of greed.
was it the cause of the world's present problems? was it merely the effect? was it only a sad, sad coincidence that allows us to wax with self-righteous nostaligia about how bad things are compared to how great things were?
we may never know. but in this time of millionaires setting the national agenda, one can't help but long for a simpler time when playing ball the natural way, in god's great sunlight, was considered by a whole city to be the way to do it.