It used to be thought that sports served as a kind of escape from the everyday grind of modern life, offering a respite from the unending litany of depressing news from the world of politics and international events. The former was regarded as frivolous but entertaining, the latter as vitally important but grimly serious. Now, I’m not so sure.
Major League Baseball has taken over the day-to-day operations of the Dodgers, ostensibly because of a growing alarm over how the business side was being handled as the McCourts wrangled over their ongoing divorce deliberations. Like so many fans of the old Brooklyn Dodgers, the presumption that this awkward development might have left Walter O’Malley spinning in his grave is presumably one of the few mitigating factors as we watch it unfold.
If wretched management is the primary criterion for this unilateral intervention, then I can’t help wonder how my Metsies have managed to avoid having a truckload of erstwhile management consultants in MLB caps descending on Shea Stadium, or whatever they call it now. I suppose if I had just a wee bit more faith in Bud Selig’s managerial prowess I might be in favor of a similar intervention in Queens to what is being attempted on the West Coast, but if I were to somehow have a wee bit more faith in Bud, then it would be something of a first.
I don’t know what Major League Baseball attendance numbers are showing, but the anecdotal power of watching ESPN’s Sports Center shows me so many empty seats along the prime box seat areas that they ought to be worried. Most of the other big-time sports are either in the throes of labor upheaval or on the way, baseball’s greatest stars from the last generation are squirming in court proceedings that discuss intimate details like the size of their, uh, family jewels, various sports icons of every description are being scolded for having a potty mouth and just generally speaking, a trip to the sports pages isn’t quite the leisurely interlude that it was intended to be.
But politics? That’s where all the frivolity and levity has gone. When I was a kid growing up, politicians were people like Richard Nixon, a guy who looked as gloomy and serious as an undertaker but boasted great street cred in terms of international relations and a willingness to clamp down on all those pesky Vietnam War protesters at home. Say what you will about how it all turned out in the end, but at least during his time in public office, we took him seriously.
But somehow now the national political stage is littered with people who seemingly wouldn’t have been allowed into the convention center in the old days. Modern media has given rise to a time when voters ponder the credentials of people like Donald Trump, Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann, to name just a handful. I’m not being partisan by selecting three wing nuts from the far Right, merely acknowledging that while both ends of the spectrum have oddball curiosities, the far Right’s are the true all-stars when it comes to embracing lunatic notions and apparently making them sound rational.
Fifty years ago, people this wacky wouldn’t have been given an audience. Imagine what Edward R. Murrow would have done to a bewildered Donald Trump, who dizzily displayed his monumental ignorance of Supreme Court rulings when it became clear he had no idea that the 1973 Roe v Wade decision was based on the Right of Privacy that had been established in earlier Supreme Court decisions. Actually, it would have been more fun had Murrow been the one asking Sarah Palin about which newspapers or magazines she customarily read. He could have inelegantly blown smoke in her face, rather than having it done the other way around.
Of course, I may be off base in calling what passes for politics on the national stage as being something amusing. There are good reasons why sports is supposed to be fun and politics is supposed to be a serious business. We may have started to lose our way a bit when we began getting the two confused.
- T.S. O’Connell