Blog: Baseball trumps the world

Wow. So much going on. Wars. Elections. Oil spills. Natural disasters. Powerful, crooked people doing unspeakable things to undermine the American democracy. I’m happy to report that none of that matters in light of the fact that the 2010 Major League Baseball post-season has begun.

Sure, Israeli-Palestinian relations are in the toilet, U.S. drones are blowing up Pakistani soldiers, Afghanistan is clearly hopeless, and hundreds of people are probably drowning right now next to sewage-soaked endangered waterfowl somewhere. But Roy Halladay of the Philadelphia Phillies just threw the first no-hitter during the MLB playoffs in over 50 years. That is a big deal.

Yes, a river of toxic sludge is poisoning uncounted numbers of Hungarians. But Shane Victorino got a two-out single to score two runs. He’s from Maui. That matters to me.

This enthusiasm for baseball is my patriotism. I don’t need a political party, a cause, a catchphrase. I have baseball. I vote, and I track box scores. I know that after 9/11, the United States turned to baseball to watch the underdog Arizona Diamondbacks upset the New York Yankees in a seven-game World Series. The Hollywood ending would have had the Yankees win, but very few Americans live in Hollywood. Delayed but not denied (the end of the regular season was pushed back one week), Major League Baseball was there for every American in that dark and uncertain time.

I also know that national sport is a time for the people who comprise the nation to forget work, to forget the mundane, and to embrace the abandon with which the team we care about tries to win. We return the favor. We tacitly forgive cry-babies, those who make more than the gross national product of some small nations by just showing up to the ballpark for a month. Did they get the hit, the strikeout, or make the double-play? That is what counts.

Thankfully, baseball doesn’t seem likely to go sideways any time soon. Hell, it’s survived the steroid scandal that dominated any baseball conversation for a decade and sullied the names of some of those who might have been the greatest ever. Well, they sullied their own names. But the game has always been bigger than the headlines it generates.

As midterm elections roll around, I’ll pay attention to who is on my ballot and what they’re selling, but only as my MLB postseason attention demands permit. I’ll be in the voting booth, and I’ll be wearing my Phillies pajamas.