The first article I ever wrote for the Thinker was last spring.  It was all about how I so missed baseball.  I've been a fan all my life.  I was a Braves fan first in Milwaukee and then in Atlanta, where I lived for over forty years.  The COVID pandemic had taken away my favorite sport, and I hated this loss of my favorite entertainment.  I was thrilled when it returned even in a shortened form and was ecstatic when my Braves came within one game of going to the World Series.  This year was destined to be even better, I thought, plus the All-Star game was going to be held in Atlanta — actually in Cobb County, where I had resided all those years.  It would surely be a great season for Braves fans.

But then MLB announced that it was pulling the game out of Atlanta.  The new election law in Georgia is unfair, representatives said.  The game will be relocated to a more worthy location, to a city and state as yet unnamed, but surely one unconcerned about the result of the 2020 elections — a city and state where there are no deplorables or clingers to be found, where there are no limits to mail-in ballots, where the dead have an equal voice in elections, where you can vote early and often.

I highly doubt that the commissioner of baseball, Rob Manfred, has read the Georgia fair elections bill.  Sadly, many prominent sportswriters jumped on the woke bandwagon in demanding that Atlanta be stripped of the game.  Our bumbly, stumbly, mumbly shell of a president (also unlikely to have read the bill unless someone loaded it onto a teleprompter for him) said the All-Star Game should be moved.  And now it has been.

Baseball is a beautiful sport.  There is no clock.  It isn't over 'til it's over, and as with most sports, it is one of the last bastions of meritocracy.  If you can hit a down and away slider coming at you at over ninety miles an hour, the game has a place for you, at least as long as you don't gamble on your sport or mistreat your domestic partner.  That's fair.  Hell, I would even let Pete Rose into the Hall of Fame despite his gambling, but that's a discussion for another day.  But on this day, baseball has broken my heart.

I forgave game stoppages in the eighties and a season-ending strike in the nineties, demonstrating stupidity and greed on the part of both players and owners.  I can easily overlook the flamboyance and over-the-top showmanship of many of today's players in the interest of letting them have a bit of fun while they play.  But I can't go along with this calculated, political move on the part of the owners.  The commissioner works for the owners, and the possibility that a move like today's could have been made without a majority of owners going along with it is more than unlikely.  It is impossible.

So baseball has joined the NBA and NFL in their wokeness.  Politics has contaminated every form of entertainment in our country.  I am beyond sad and beyond furious for this latest insult.  I have never before been so upset with "my" game that I have been tempted never to watch another inning.  I may get over it, but then again, I may not.

I hope Cobb County, Georgia sues the MLB organization for a billion dollars.  Or a trillion.  Maybe Mumbles Biden will be forced to put it in his next gargantuan spending bill.  Meanwhile, I am glad I am old.  I don't know how much more of this  I can take.

Image: jtaricani via Pixabay, Pixabay License.

You can find the MeWe post for this article here.