THE NATIONAL PASTIME by Jim Redwine

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Gavel Gamut

By Jim Redwine

(Week of 03 May 2015)

THE NATIONAL PASTIME

Those of us who play or played baseball know spring only truly arrives with the smell of leather gloves and damp earth. Heaving a soggy horsehide that has rolled through the dew because you could not bear to wait any longer for the sun to dry the morning grass is the Vernal Equinox to baseball fans.

Baseball is how Americans used to pass time. Now we have CNN, MSNBC, FOX News and endless accounts from effete, blow-dried, pancake-based nabobs to misguide us.

Ferguson, Missouri, Cleveland, Ohio, New York, New York and Charleston, South Carolina recently pervade our psyches the way baseball used to before we acknowledged the simmering dissatisfaction many have with our legal system.

But critical mass may have been reached in Baltimore, Maryland just last week when the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox cancelled or postponed two games and played one in secret due to fears of rioters. Of course, some may see no problem with the Orioles and White Sox playing in secret. After all, in a season that lasts more than 160 games most teams already play to empty ballparks until the playoffs. Perhaps baseball could learn from the NFL’s sixteen game season.

Be that as it may, when America’s pastime is held hostage to fears that fans may show up, the problems begin to come into focus. Most of us who do not live under a cloud of concern that we might be harmed, rather than protected, by the legal system, may be upset our baseball games are impacted by current events. Mr. Gray’s community may beg to differ.