Copyright 2006 by Thomas Gangale
While I was in Washington, DC recently, I stayed with an old flying buddy who is an Air Force Academy graduate, has a strategic planning job as a GS-14, and holds the rank of full-bird colonel in the West Virginia Air National Guard. After an afternoon of walking the Manassas battlefield in the sweltering Virginia summer, we talked about Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and global warming over an Italian dinner.
"It's not greenhouse gasses," Mike said in a matter of fact manner, "It's baseball."
It was only due to my military training that I avoided spewing cabernet all over the good colonel.
"Baseball?"
"Baseball. Nature is a baseball fan. She's warming up the planet so that more baseball can be played in more places and for longer seasons."
Needless to say, I was skeptical, but as we explored Mike's theory, I saw that the logic was inescapable.
"In temperate climates, baseball is played from spring to autumn, but not in winter. But, look where the winter leagues are... in the tropics: Mexico and the Caribbean. It's warmer there. And where are all of the spring training camps? Arizona and Florida. Hot there, right?"
And it had been damned hot in the Washington area that day, as it had been all that summer. Didn't the new Washington baseball team--the Nationals--have something to do with that?
But, having been trained as scientists (at taxpayer expense, no less), Mike and I understood that correlation is not necessarily proof of causality, so we examined the historical trends. Baseball was mentioned in Britain as early as 1744, but it gained real popularity in America a century later. Professional teams emerged after the Civil War. The National League was established in 1876 with eight teams, and 25 years later the American League formed, also with eight teams. Today there are 30 major league teams in North America, and there are professional leagues in a dozen or more East Asian and European countries. Global warming is usually attributed to industrialization and the resulting carbon emissions, but simultaneous with this has been the growth of baseball. Experts are beginning to worry about the Siberian permafrost melting... and with the collapse of communism, guess what? Russians are playing baseball.
"Ah," I exclaimed. "I see some cross-linkage to greenhouse gasses! What are baseball gloves made of?"
"Cowhide."
"Can't have cowhide without cows. Can't have cows without cow farts. More baseball, more cow farts."
As our discussion proceeded, I began to see baseball as a specific instance of a more general phenomenon. "What about cricket, which evolved from the same roots? Cricket's played in Australia, South Asia, and Africa. All hot regions."
"Good point," Mike agreed. "But it's also played in Britain. It's cold there."
"A minor anomaly," I waved dismissively. "Just like Canada has the Toronto Blue Jays. Not statistically significant."
So, it's clear that the world is coming to a slow boil because of the ever-increasing popularity of baseball and cricket. It's not the Greenhouse Effect, it's the Infield Fry Rule. This is as plausible an explanation as has come out of the present US administration, and as I said, Mike and I were educated on the government's dime.
But we don't just have training in the physical sciences, we're also policy wonks, so now that we had characterized the problem, we had to look for solutions. "We need to reduce our baseball emissions," Mike said. "We need to go back to a 154-game schedule."
"A prudent response," I agreed, "But I wonder if that would be enough. There are so many more teams now than in the old days, and much larger stadiums. And I think it would be a tough sell at the White House. The Boss used to own a team, and he probably still has friends in the business."
Mike chewed on this. "Well, he certainly wouldn't want the US to cut back unilaterally. There would have to be an international treaty. The Chinese, the Japanese, the Europeans, all of them would have to agree on reductions. Same with Australia, South Asia, and Africa. They have to cut back on cricket."
"And getting that agreement would take years, possibly decades. Is a baseball emission unit the same as a cricket emission unit? What's the conversion factor? That has to be negotiated. Meanwhile, the problem gets worse." Then I took a different tack. "Now, suppose Nature is also a football fan? Football is mostly played in cold weather. Hell, they even play it in summer in Canada, and it's a lot cooler in Canada."
"Interesting!"
"Suppose we radically expanded the National Football League and lengthened the season. This would be a robust response, and it would offset the economic losses from shortening the baseball season, if that became necessary, but I think NFL expansion is our best first response. Expand NFL Europe, too. The CFL can stay about like it is, a couple of new teams at most. You don't want to make Canada a whole lot colder."
"I think we can brief this," Mike nodded hopefully. Then his face suddenly brightened. "Oh, Condi's gonna love this! She's been thinking about becoming the next NFL commissioner!"
I raised my forearms upright. "Touchdown!" And the crowd went wild.