Thursday, March 8th, 2012
Tampa, Florida
IS IT BASEBALL OR POLITICS?
Just what is America’s favorite pastime? Is it baseball or politics? The past few years have offered interesting comparisons. On one hand, the country is enmeshed in a full-blown presidential campaign with deep divisions over how to stimulate the economy and how to define America’s role in the world. Because of urgent concerns with these issues and others, politics has become a major spectator sport all over the country. But don’t sell baseball short. Not only has baseball been around longer than any of America’s professional team sports, the game’s highs and lows have been injected in national politics, almost from the sport’s inception.
Now, I’m a diehard baseball fan. I grew up in St. Louis, and lived next door to the general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, the great former Cardinals shortstop, Marty Marion. I was in his box on a Sunday afternoon in May 1954 — May 2, to be exact — when “Stan the Man” Musial hit five home runs on the same day in a doubleheader at Busch Stadium. All this week, I’ll be in Tampa for spring training and I’ll watch five major league ball games, including a trip to the home stadium of my perennial favorite, the New York Yankees.
The problems of major league baseball have often been a mirror image of the problems facing America. Its history is both a reflection of this country’s fears and ignorance, and its hopes and promises. Like almost any other cultural phenomenon of such prominence, baseball has served as solace and as a poke to our conscience. Continue reading “Jim Brown’s Weekly Column: Is it Baseball or Politics?”