Our National Pastime?
Recently at NRO, Mark Krikorian drew critical attention to an article in the Wall Street Journal which described how minor league baseball teams are now importing foreign players. According to the Journal, "For decades, minor-league rosters seemed the essence of the American heartland. But thanks to growing numbers of foreign players . . . the minors are fast turning into a veritable United Nations." The reason for the change is a law signed by George W. Bush in 2007, which allowed minor-league teams to import as many foreign players as they want. The law has a name only George Orwell could love, the Creating Opportunities for Minor League Professionals, Entertainers and Teams Act, since it creates no opportunities for "Minor League Professionals" who have the misfortune of being Americans. In fact, it helps drive down the salaries of American players.
John Miller was predictably unmoved, and blamed NRO's stock villain, Americans who make too much money: "I'm cryin' my eyes out for those American kids who won't play baseball unless someone pays them a signing bonus of $100,000." Miller's response would likely have been the same if the discussion had been about American computer programmers being displaced by the H1B visa program or American textile workers being displaced by free trade. What are concerns about keeping an American pastime American, or about keeping jobs in America, next to the dictates of globalism? I just wish they'd change the name of the magazine from National Review to Global Democratic Capitalist Review or some other more fitting title.
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We could not only reclaim the minor leagues for Americans, but also the cities and towns of minor league America: Toledo, Lansing, Peoria, Nashville, Jasper (IN), Louisville spring instantly to mind. My home town once had a minor-league baseball team, a state-chartered bank, a brewery and several factories. It now has none of these, and ever-increasing vacancies in its stripmalls.
Mr. Bass,
Yes, what you describe is the fruit of globalism.
Frankly, I welcome any move to more quickly destroy the ludicrous remnant of what was once "the national pastime." Baseball has long ago ceased to be anything but an arena for freaks on steroids, drug ridden psychos, and overblown egos hooked on themselves, all fraudulently set on breaking individual achievement records set in a day when the game was genuine. The occasional decent American team player & hero appears, sure. But there is no point anymore in following the "sport," which is really only another quite corrupt form of mass entertainment.
The romance of course, has to an extent remained in the small towns with minor leage teams. It is also true that you can occasionally see a real game in such venues; few can afford astroturf or domes. But those franchises are all integrally linked into the majors which are now essentially a state-controlled monopoly, with franchises in the big cities financed in a patently unconstitutional manner that, like all else now, is mysteriously beyond challenge.
Globalism is only the coup de grace to the death of baseball which has been in full gear for decades. I sincerely wish there could be a revival, and join your mourning for the minors. But from where I sit even the local little leagues are over-regulated, over-hyped, and insane. Time was, I would walk a couple blocks to see something of the pastime I once loved on the neighborhood Babe Ruth field. The small local output to sustain such places used to be in good civic spirit; the uniforms, organization, etc was just something to dress up "kids" having a good time. But the so-called "kids" don't look very happy there anymore, rather driven and paranoid, terrified of the smallest failure as their psycho yuppie parents drive them madly through yet another "purposeful activity." I have seen enough of this obscene child abuse. If foreigners really want to "play ball" with these little zombies when they grow into big ones, watching the predictable results may prove to be the last genuine American entertainment we will have.
Although I live in Natchitoches Parish, I do most of my business and used to work as a teacher as a headmaster in Red River Parish, the parish seat of which is Coushatta from which the late Joe Adcock comes. Although I could not claim to have been his friend or even close acquaintance, I met him from time to time in town. He was always friendly and quick to conversation.
For four years, in the deep woods north of Coushatta, somewhere between the hamlet of Methvin and the village of Martin, I was the teacher and headmaster of a very small private school which shared the land with Holley Springs Methodist Church and Holly Springs Cemetery. (Holley has an "e" because it reflects a family name and not the tree, which also grows in abundance in the area.) There in that cemetery, well kept but out of the way, is buried Joe Adcock. Three times, during my four years at the little school, folks showed up, one from as far away as Maine, looking for the grave of Joe Adcock. The kids who attended the little school did not know who Joe Adcock was. By the time the last of the three visitors over the years came, the kids relished narrating what they had learned about him. Several of them learned that their parents or grandparents had been friends with Joe Adcock. The last visitor before the little school closed, was the man from Maine. He told me then that he, each summer, attempted to find the grave sites of the baseball greats. He told me that he no longer watched or enjoyed the game for many of the reasons given on this thread. He sought to maintain his memory of a game which he once loved by seeking out the players of old, whether dead or alive.
George W. Bush failed at every business venture he undertook but one, the Texas Rangers baseball team. As a co-owner, he used his family's political connections to help grab taxpayer subsidies for his team's stadium, which drove up the value of the team. He also turned a blind eye to early steroid use by players, such as Jose Conseco. The team then made oodles of money, and its value multiplied.
No wonder he signed the Creating Opportunities for Minor League Professionals, Entertainers and Teams Act. It benefits his rich baseball-owner buddies at the expense of everyone else. Typical Bush. Typical Republican.
Mr. Seiler,
You are exactly right.
Might I suggest reintroducing the game of lawn darts as the national past time?
If the left and the neo-con right want to nationalize everything from the Rio to the Canadian border might I suggest a new national game for them? It is a form of suicide not unlike open borders and globalization yet it is less complex and generally more direct.
I've got some cleaning to do around here so should I find an old lawn dart set I'll mail it to George Will so he can wax on about the glory of monolithic America.
McCallum
While I still watch pro sports occasionally, I am greatly annoyed by both the outrageous salaries and personalities. However, that is what the market will bear. So to criticize the monster of pro sports is to criticize America itself. But that is another matter.
George W. Bush represents the worst excesses of responsibility and power. As a baseball owner, he was undoubtedly eager to get his hands on the best players the Third World could offer, since these kids would be overjoyed to play baseball at a salary below the "going-rate," yet high enough to buy a large chunk of their home country. For pro-owners the Third World represents a giant puppy mill.
One might argue that some good comes of this, namely helping poor kids to make a lot of money. The reality is that coming to America to play baseball is like winning the lottery. The vast majority of Third World baseball players will never even visit America, much less play on a minor or major league team.
For them, baseball remains a fun game, and they can dream of making the big show--nothing wrong with that. Perhaps baseball has been purer in the hinterlands where salaries are low or non-existent, and fame remains only a hope. The absurd “Creating Opportunities for Minor League Professionals, Entertainers and Teams Act” stokes the fires of greed, corruption, and abuse while only slightly improving the odds for those hoping to win the baseball lottery.
@John Seiler, who wrote "It benefits his rich baseball-owner buddies at the expense of everyone else. Typical Bush. Typical Republican."
Why should you be surprised? Republicans aren't conservative. They've been mammonists for a very long time now.
I never quite understood what would make a grown man sit and watch an entire game, played by strangers. I used to enjoy playing baseball as a young'un, but I never enjoyed watching anyone else play baseball, or any other sport for that matter.
July 31, 1954, Joe Adcock hit four home runs in a single game off of four different pitchers at Ebbets field in a 15-7 win over the Dodgers. He played for my favorite team, the Milwaukee Braves, and was somewhat overshadowed by Eddie Mathews (my favorite Brave, who hit two homers in that same game) and Henry Aaron. I was seven.
The only sports I enjoy watching, with one exception, are those that I played in my youth. The one exception is bicycle racing, which I grew up watching in my hometown of Kenosha, Wisconsin, which has the country's oldest operating velodrome.
Maybe the "purest" sports competition in the US today is the annual croquet match between the St. Johns "Johnnies" and the Naval Academy Midshipmen in Annapolis, MD. As Notre Dame dominates the Mids in football, the Johnnies dominate the Mids in croquet.
Where does Miller stand on taxpayer funded stadiums?
In the 1920s the two most important spectator sports were horse racing and boxing. Baseball was third place, and football was a college game played by the intelligent, studious young men -- unlike today's brutish gladiator spectacle. Russia Today recently ran a piece featuring Michael Vick, and the caption read,"former jailbird hired by the Eagles."
Enough said.
Maybe we should buy tickets to track and field events instead of watching the pap that television is ruining for us. And that includes NASCAR.
@3: I tend to agree. The "pastime" of following sports obsessively and living vicariously through "sports heroes" has got to end. Professionalism has no place in sport. One plays for physical exertion, for glory, for love of the game and for camaraderie.