Baseball, Life, and Politics

Lessons from America's past-time
by R.J. Moeller
(conservative)
Monday, April 20, 2009

Opening Day has come and gone yet again this year for baseball fans. I couldn't be happier that my favorite sport is here once more. For a guy who recognizes the need he has to cut back on at least some of his many guilty pleasures, whether it be late-night chocolate chip cookie eating or any-time-of-the-day Reno 911 watching, I have to admit that "avidly" following the sport of baseball will simply never be up for negotiation.

Baseball is the greatest game around for many reasons. The tradition involved with the sport is an easy and obvious point. The need for a combination of individual skill and seamless teamwork is unique and exciting. Luck, chance, and silly superstitions give baseball the necessary aura of mystery and intrigue for any legendary story to be properly told.

There are many different ways to play the game. Different and distinct batting stances and pitching mechanics are as numerous and diverse as the snow flakes falling on a mid-April Chicago day. The situations that managers find themselves in can be decided upon with the aid of something as complex as a mathematical formula devised by MIT grads, or as mystical as the feeling (of indigestion) in Lou Pinella's rather large gut.

But ultimately, even in a sport intended for children that grown men get reimbursed millions of dollars to play, there are better ways to run your team than others, and better ways to play the game than others. This idea of "better ways" is true to all facets of our lives.

We've forgotten this fact.

Whether a sports fan or just an average American citizen (and hopefully voter), we've lost sight of the fact that there are rules to the games we play, and within the confines of those rules there are certain strategies that undeniably produce better results than others.

There are discernible reasons why some succeed and some fail.

A fan haphazardly interfering with a ball on the foul line during an important game isn't the reason your team failed to reach the World Series. The wealth or poverty of the parents you were born to does not ensure what kind of person you will ultimately be, personally or financially.

Timely hitting, consistent pitching, and reliable defense are what good baseball teams display. Sure there are variables and injuries and the often inexplicable late-season collapse, but no one builds a baseball team around the idea that they have just the right mixture on their roster of Pisces's and guys who wear the same underwear during win-streaks to appease the "baseball gods" all the way to October immortality. Managers, General Managers, and team owners want talented players and they want lucky players, but what they really want is a talented, lucky player who is fundamentally sound.

They want someone who knows the rules, plays by them, and plays by them better and more consistently than the competition. The teams that win, win because they play the game the way it is meant to be played: correctly and superbly.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Alec Baldwin's public statements criticizing the state government in New York for raising taxes on the movie and television industry, which he correctly pointed out, would lead to production companies leaving for greener fiscal pastures. This then would leave workers in New York without jobs and the state without the millions in taxes they are currently receiving. It is the equivalent of the manager for your favorite baseball team fining your team's best player and hitter for providing too many crucial game-winning hits and for playing far too stellar a defensive position in Center Field.

Neither Baldwin's real-life example nor my hypothetical sports analogy makes much sense, and that is precisely because we know things aren't right in both instances. Something is missing in both instances. That something is called "common sense." A failure to recognize the truth and reconcile yourself, your emotions and intellect, to it.

I would add here that one of my other favorite things about the sport of baseball is the limitless opportunity to debate and rehash decisions and strategies from previous games and seasons. Reporters, sports talk radio hosts, and your garbage man all have an opinion about last night's controversial call to the bullpen in the 8th inning.

This stems from the sport's "every-man" quality that is made possible by the sizable number of Americans who play it in organized leagues growing up. We all feel like we're experts because it is something we literally can do, even if not as well as our heroes in the Sports section.

Yet it must be reiterated that not all interpretations of a baseball game or key decision in that game are correct, and some are just flat out wrong. They deny sound judgment and ignore historical, statistical facts. While no one has all the answers, that doesn't mean no one has any answers.

Running a town, state, or country isn't an easy thing. Neither is managing a baseball team. I get that. Trust me when I say that my arm-chair is thoroughly worn in from all the retroactive quarter-backing I've done.

But the fact that such things are difficult is all the more reason why tried-and-true methods are so invaluable. It is because being a governor or president or manager of the Chicago Cubs is not easy that when those tried-and-true methods are ignored or even overtly contradicted many of us cringe in intellectual and emotional discomfort.

A team back in the 1850's (when baseball became an organized sport) that decided to try and "innovate" by playing defense in the field with their backs to the batter might for a brief time be called progressive. A team that tried it every 30 years or so since the 1850's because they resented the other teams for their successful, show-off style of facing the batter while playing defense would rightly be called insane.

So if one were to apply that standard to our present day political situation, what are we to say to our elected officials in government when they are pursuing economic policies and enacting protocols that even unapologetic liberal activist Alec Baldwin identifies as untenable and fool hearted?

What should the response be from an informed taxpaying citizen when even politicians supposedly on his "side" of the aisle are ready to dismiss the rules (Constitution), tradition (233 years of a relatively free market republic), history (60 years of failed socialist policies in places like Europe and Canada), and common sense to endorse the government take-over of everything from General Motors to your local pediatrician's practice?

In the name of progress we are regressing as a nation. Because things are indisputably difficult for us right now, we're ready to toss aside all of the values, principles, and practices that created the type of prosperous country where not being able to take a second family vacation to the Caribbean this year is how the average suburban kid knows the economy is down.

Forget the fact that the men who established this particular way of doing things for us two centuries ago were under infinitely greater levels of stress, insecurity and uncertainty about the future than we could ever imagine. What have you done for me lately, John Adams?

The reality is that we are a nation who no longer cares about the truth. Plain and simple. It's hard to know the truth as it pertains to economics and systems of government when you not only misunderstand the ones that don't work (i.e. socialism), but haven't taken the time to learn what has brought us unprecedented success.

And what is more, the best way to play the game has been muddled in enough people's heads that they are beginning to question whether we should play at all, or switch to another Euro-style game.

We're so far off the path to reasonable debate and discourse as a country that liberals feel like if they acknowledge that they too distrust their government as Thomas Jefferson did, or don't care for the seemingly endless stream of bailouts with our tax money as Milton Friedman would have, or want to see state's powers increase while Washington's decrease as Ronald Regan believed, that they will have to give up their pro-choice stance or desire to see more work be done to help the poor. It simply isn't the case, and the failure to realize this is us.

Whatever happened to asking, "Does it work?" about an idea or policy before finding out if Sarah Palin and her unsophisticated accent have anything to do with it? As my intellectual and ideological hero Dennis Prager likes to say: First tell the truth, then give your opinion. Where do we see this going on in any capacity in our government?

Debating what our trade and tariff policy with Finland ought to be is legitimate.Debating whether or not our federal government should take over the American auto industry is nonsensical. We have been successful where others, like Europe, have not precisely because we have always asked the right questions and pursued the best answers, the better ways, even if it wasn't always the poll-tested nice answer, the politically correct way.

The truth is, right now we're playing defense with our backs to the batter again, and come 2010 and 2012 it will need to be time to tell the powers that be to head back to the political little leagues they came from.

There is too much at stake, and we love this game, our game, far too much.

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©2009 R.J. Moeller, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Monday, April 20, 2009
Last modified: Monday, April 20, 2009

The views expressed in this article are those of R.J. Moeller only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. R.J. Moeller is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

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