As a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, I was offended twice by Rep. John Shimkus' (R-IL) rant on the house floor. Offended once by the naive overly-simplified nonsense coming out of his mouth. And offended a second time that he's a Cards fan!
But to get serious, maybe he's right. Maybe the war in Iraq IS like Major League Baseball. Just not quite in the way he thought it was. More on the jump.
There is obviously no direct correlation between the war and our national pastime, but there are a few, albeit minor, similarities.
For any baseball fan, one of the most painful things to watch is a pitcher who is left in there too long. There's nothing like watching your favorite player hurl a 7 inning gem, only to blow it up in the 8th because they got tired. As a Cubs fan, I've lived and breathed the pain of overextended outings by watching my hero Kerry Wood have his arm shredded by excessive usage.
And the same thing goes for our brave men and women overseas. Last month Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that all overseas tours would be extended from 12 to 15 months. Families which were expecting their loved ones home have to wait. Our already tired and weary soldiers have to keep fighting for another quarter while Exxon Mobile piles up record profits for another quarter.
The feeling I get watching our real heroes being held captive an extra 3 months in a civil war is a bit like the feeling I got watching Mark Prior throw his 130th pitch in a single game in 2003. "You're leaving him in there too long".
But lets not stop there. Anyone with a basic understanding of baseball philosophy (Dusty Baker, if you're reading, take notes!) knows that the most sound strategy is to put your best pure hitters at the top of the order. Have a guy who can get on base 4 out of 10 times? Put him at the top of the order, so your bashers can drive him in.
Well, despite owning a team at one time, George W Bush has obviously never paid attention to how a lineup is ordered, or he would not be purposely putting his own best of the best at the back of his proverbial lineup. You may recall the Iraq Study Group, a collective of the brightest military minds in our country. They very rationally suggested that we start getting the hell out of Iraq, along with equally rational things such as engaging our "enemies" in the region and the like. And what did the President do? Listen to the same old fools who told him to start the damn war, and instead of scaling back the occupation, he escalated it. I'm sorry, but continuing to go to the same people with the same wrong answers is about as smart as putting Neifi Perez in the 2 hole. Stupid, stupid stupid.
And, finally, any baseball fan knows that tipping your pitches is every bit as bad as just telling the batter what you're going to throw. And by refusing to even listen to the concept of a timetable for withdrawal, we're just tipping our strategy to the insurgents. Instead of letting them know it's a fastball down the middle, we're letting them know it's another brigade right into the meat grinder. Sure, it's a nice soundbyte to say "a timetable is a date for surrender", but that isn't true. A timetable would force accountability and urgency onto an Iraqi government which has shown little reason to hope they'll do it without one, and it would force results onto a military leadership that otherwise seems content to run the clock out. Having no exit strategy and a constant steady pour of soldiers into a civil war is no less stupid than throwing Albert Pujols a belt high fastball right down the middle.
So, in closing, you CAN draw fair comparisons between the Iraq war and the game of baseball. Just not quite like Mr. Shimkus would like to.