What Was Stolen from Us

One perfect day forty-five years ago  - at least I assume it was perfect because it was San Diego - a young mother from Dayton, Ohio took her one year old daughter to a baseball game. She dressed the child in the visiting team's gear, passing on team fandom to a fifth generation.

The team was nearing the end of its most successful decade in its long history - indeed, in the history of baseball in its entirety - with one of the greatest lineups ever assembled largely intact. The girl was too young to appreciate them, of course, and she'd be too young to feel the sting when the team was decimated by the institution of free agency a couple of years later. She was even too young to remember the Hall of Fame catcher roaming the outfield on bum knees when she attended her first game in a space age stadium on the banks of a muddy river on the other side of the continent.

Over the years, that fandom became part of her identity. Christmases and birthdays saw team gear unwrapped with glee. Attending games was a special treat for the girl, her two sisters, and her single mother trying to make ends meet. The team gave tickets to straight A students in the region, which became an annual tradition. A family friend would occassionally give his coveted blue seats to them. If they were lucky, they'd get to three games in a season. One particularly special year, she managed to go to one game a month.

That stadium by the river was a playground. The thrill of seeing it rise from the concrete and asphalt as their car rounded the highway bend remains in memories four decades later. So, too, does the feel of the black squishy stuff one walked on to get to the gates. And that first view of the verdant field as you walked from the concourse to the rainbow colored seats? Was it Heaven? No, it was Ohio. But it damn well could have been the Pearly Gates.

Then came the best possible outcome, the wish of every human being who has ever felt a passion for baseball. Her team won the World Series. They had been in first place the entire season, but they hadn't been expected to claim the trophy. She was in 8th grade.

Who could have expected that thirty-two years would pass with barely a sniff of a pennant? Who could have expected that baseball would change so much that rich guys who owned teams would lose on purpose, that indeed, it became ingrained in the culture, and that her own beloved team, the oldest in the game, would be one of those losers? Who would have thought that the racist old lady with the Nazi gear would be the last owner who cared to win?

Who could have expected that a fruit heir's son, a spoiled rich kid with no concept of what it means to work for a living, would berate the fans on the holiest day of the year - Opening Day in Cincinnati - and do it again in a luncheon for the biggest diehards of all? 

In the time since their last League Championship Series appearance, fans have been told time and time again to have patience, that rebuilding would finally return a trophy to the Queen City. Only once did they assemble a roster that could have gone somewhere, but the Fruit Heir refused to pay to fill the glaring holes, and that window shut after two failed division series and a wild card loss. A DECADE later, the wealthhoarding owner once again refused to fill the holes on a decent roster with a very good pitching staff, crying poverty and opting for another rebuild.

The team is exciting now. Call me skeptical. Maybe they'll contend this year, and they may next, but what always happens is the fruit guy cries poverty when it doesn't work out and it comes time to pay the young guys, so they're traded for prospects and the cycle starts all over again. The talking heads seem to think the Reds are legit contenders this year, because the central divisions of both leagues are full of greedy owners who pretend that because they live in the Midwest, they have a right to claim poverty. Only three teams are over .500 out of ten, and the Reds aren't one of them.

None of those owners is worse than the silver spoon born wealthhoarder in Oakland. The youngest son of the founders of GAP, this recluse isn't content with the $2.2 billion he's worth. No, he insists on a massive redistribution of wealth from the common folk to him in the form of a $380 million dollar taxpayer funded stadium. Oakland wouldn't give it to him, so he threw a richy fit and is moving the team to Sin City. That's $380 million that doesn't go to roads, police departments, libraries, social services, or any of the other things that are necessary in a modern society.

What Oakland fans did last night was nothing short of astounding, staging a "reverse boycott" and showing up in droves to cheer on their team. They've been blamed for not showing up. But why should they? Trust fund babies who never had to work for their wealth can't grasp that most people have to make choices in what they buy, and anyone with a modecum of sense doesn't waste money on things that make them feel bad. The owners think they are entitled to own a Major League Baseball team because that is what wealthhoarders do - they hoard wealth - and they think those baseball teams are theirs to destroy.

But sports teams are public institutions. Baseball is so hallowed in this country that it has a special trust exemption granted by Congress. Was so hallowed. Now that greed has become the way of life in this country, nothing but money seems to be hallowed.

I'm excited about the Reds again, but it will never be the same. Those fruit family assholes have stolen that from me. The wealthhoarders have stolen it from all of us. They are thieves.

But that is what America (and the world) has become. You see it in the record profits made by food and gas companies as corporate execs took advantage of a pandemic. You see it in the cost of housing which has exploded the homeless population and put another significant percentage of the population on the brink of it. You see it in the go fund me campaigns begging for donations to have life-saving medical procedures. You see it in the commercial train accidents, trucks blowing up highways, the neo-slavery in our factories. You see it in the wildfires, the devastating storms, and the flooding caused by corporate greed. The economy isn't bad. The wealthhoarders and the politicians who protect them are.

The top 1% of Americans took $50 TRILLION from the bottom 90% during the pandemic. That is the single greatest redistribution of wealth in history. It is THEFT. So is stealing a public institution from a city.

Until Americans stand up against the wealthy and take back what is rightfully ours, they will continue to steal from us. That's gonna take more than showing up to a baseball game in protest. 

But it was one heckuva start.

A Summer without Baseball

The sun is still high

In late afternoon sky

It's hot, but it's not

A breeze in late June.

The parade has long passed

For our game on the grass

The crack of the bat

I can't hear it.

Phil's shadow I saw

On our Holy Day's lawn

I thought, let's not

So I didn't.

Now summer's begun

And nobody's won

It's greed, not need

But I miss it.

Losing Is Theft

I pulled a Capitals shirt over my head today, an Ovechkin shirsey I bought eight or nine years ago one warm May day when the sun was shining as brightly as the Caps playoff chances. I was meeting up at Lou's City Bar to watch a Caps playoff game after work and needed something appropriate for the day. The red has since faded somewhat, and the number 8 under the name of the greatest goal scorer in hockey history has cracked, but the shirt represents a team that has been to the playoffs all but once in the last fourteen seasons, winning the division in ten of those years and one glorious championship.

This is not a post about hockey. It's about fandom and winning and ownership and how losing is theft.

The Capitals had a good run in the late 90s/early 00s, going to the Stanley Cup final in 1998 when I was a junior in college in SW Ohio and knew little about the NHL. Ted Leonisis took over as owner in 1999 and went to the playoffs three times before a three season period of not qualifying.

Then he said enough.

He scored big in drafting Alexander Ovechkin #1, and he knew this was a player to build a franchise around. He rebranded the team, going back to the red, white, and blue and frankly awesome logo of earlier years. He signed Team USA hero and All American Boy T.J. Oshie and surrounded Ovi with good or great players, concocting creative (and sometimes criticized) ways to dance with the NHL salary cap. He filled needs when they became apparent. This was an owner who wanted to win.

Ted Leonsis is why I know what winning feels like.

Oh sure, it helps to have the greatest goal scorer of all time on your team, but you have to have a front office willing to assemble a supporting cast. The Cincinnati Reds Baseball Club, est. 1869, having been blessed with one of the greatest hitters of all-time, does not have such a front office to support him. Joseph Daniel Votto, winner of the 2010 MVP, owner of a career slash line of .302/.417/.520, top ten all-time 1B in WAR, 328 career homers (including 33 in his age 37 season) is the kind of player you're supposed to build a franchise around. When I think back over the last decade and try to recall his teammates, I often struggle to put names to positions because their achievements have been so forgettable, or they were underperforming fan favorites like Scooter Gennett. I think back to the times I was actually excited about signings -  getting Aroldis Chapman was akin to a coup, for example. So, too, was hiring Kyle Boddy, whose frustration with Reds ownership led to his resignation last week. Castellanos was a great signing but we all knew it was two years and no more, because El Cheapo remains at the helm. Castellanos is the exact kind of supporting cast one needs to win. But a winning baseball team needs not a handful of capable guys, but more than 25 players because of inevitable injuries. Herein lies the problem.

The Reds have a lot of great players, many of them #1 draft picks or top prospects, but when you replace All Star starter Jesse Winker with Aristides Aquino, and any good shortstop with Kyle Farmer, you're basically making yourself the Pirates. No one could have predicted Suarez falling off the proverbial cliff, but here's where a capable front office steps in. If one of your key guys is not performing, you go out and get a replacement. That's what Ted Leonsis has done. He's filled holes with the likes of Shattenkirk or Hagelin or any number of quality players that are available at the time the need arises. They haven't always worked out, but that's sports.

Contrast that with the Reds, who had glaring bullpen holes before the season began that were never addressed. Ole Bobo was content to keep running out the same failing arms as the division waa slipping away, then let the trade deadline pass with negligible upgrades. When injuries piled up, he was fine with running out players who have no business on an MLB roster in a pennant race.

It's been 31 years since the Reds won a World Series. THIRTY-ONE YEARS. Even Bob was young then. I remember when we passed the twenty year mark and I thought it'd be embarassing if we reached thirty years. That was back when the future was bright. It seems like a lifetime ago.

In recent years, I've been able to watch the Washington Nationas win baseball games and a World Series, a team whose ballpark I can walk to. This city, who lost one baseball team to racism and another to capitalism, a city blamed for the political decisions made by people you send from your states, a city with no congressional representation, deserved that World Series more than any other city out there. I went to a division series game and my first NLCS game that year. The city was electric; it was so much fun.

But it wasn't the Reds.

Nearly a month ago, the Reds were in control of a wild card spot, but I stopped watching. They had begun their freefall, and I no longer had the patience for it. Me, a fifth generation Reds fan who saw her first game at age 1, me who used to plan gatherings of Reds fans in DC to watch or attend games, who watched nearly every Reds game since getting an MLB.TV subscription in 2004, who scrambled to listen to Homer Bailey's MLB debut on a scratchy transistor radio from my DC porch when the power went out, who saw Cueto and Bruce's MLB debuts in Cincinnati and who once melted my car battery to see Votto and Bruce play in Richmond.

I used to love the lore of the past, the mythological status of Redlegs greats, the stories of the Big Red Machine and fantasies of a World Series of the '76 Reds vs the '27 Yankees. Once I did a GABp tour and nearly annoyed the tourguide because I knew all the answers to his Reds history questions. I even celebrated Obama's 2008 victory at Reds historian Greg Rhodes's house. And I bought 2019 Opening Day tickets because I wanted to be a part of the 150th anniversary season.

But Reds past successes have become a tired cliché. Those victories have long passed, and clinging to the glories of yesteryear aren't enough anymore. Joe is dead. Pete is a disgrace. Johnny's record is broken. Our team history matters, but it belongs to museums, not marketing.

Bob cries poverty because he didn't make an additional $80 million in profits last year. No matter how much the wealthhoarders try to own them, the truth is that baseball teams belong to those who give their souls to them, and perennial losing is theft. While it is inexplicable that we devote such vast quantities of spiritual energy to a game, the heart wants what it wants. This is the essence of being. Our fandom unites us in ways that border on mysticism. Most of us understand what it means to feel "electricity" in the air when we're at a game, and I'm sure if neuroscientists monitored our brains during these moments, they'd find endorphin levels that mirror drug use or prayer. We may even meet the qualification for addiction.

I guess it's time for rehab.

You see, I have learned what winning is supposed to be, and I learned it from a sport I wasn't born into. I should have put a Reds shirt on this morning, excited for October baseball. Instead, I gleefully don the name of a Russian on my back, ready for this weekend's first pre-season hockey game.

If you've lost me, Bob, you've also lost a heckuva lot more diehards who quit in silence.

I know people say, oh, you'll be back next March. But you know what? I never watched or listened to a single Spring Training game this past March, and I never felt less enthusiasm for Opening Day. I can't imagine getting excited for another bad season next year.

The heart wants what it wants. And mine doesn't want this.

Major League Fail

About two weeks ago, MLB Advanced Media made an update to its At Bat app. In an instant thousands of people with Android devices lost the ability to listen to or watch baseball games on their phones.

We paid for this, of course. And now we are not able to use the product that we paid for. It worked fine in April. I used it nearly every day to listen to ballgames while gardening or to watch when I was not home. Now that's all gone.

Customer "service" is no use. They've had hundreds of calls but they won't do anything about it. I sent an email to customer "service" at first. It took a week for them to respond with this generic nothingness:

There's no apology, no explanation that this is a widespread problem. I know it is from the dozens of people who have said they had the same problem on Twitter. Here are a few:

Same problem with no response. #Frustrating

— ⚾️Dodgers All Day Every Day ⚾️ (@steevo33) May 10, 2018

I have sent multiple complaints. No response...

— Karen Engle (@boxorama11) May 9, 2018

and mine is now broken. It must have added another update.

— Hingle McCringleberry (@orioleslifer) May 9, 2018

I just asked for a refund.
They DM'ed me trying to "once again" fix the problem.
I just kept responding "No. I want a refund".
So I guess I am getting one.

— Harry Yeprem Jr. (@HarryFromCBus) May 9, 2018

The https://t.co/clWpAC3jJJ app stopped working on my phone this weekend as well.

— RePeTe (@Cincypiano) May 7, 2018

It's not working for me either. @mlbatbat

— Ashley Davis (@AshleyDavis32) May 6, 2018

You get the picture.
When I finally broke down and called after a week, the support guy didn't seem to care. He transferred me to technical support. That guy didn't care, either. He told me they've had many calls about it but he didn't care. He just assigned a ticket number.

This is what happens when I log in through my settings. (I have cleared credentials multiple times and re-logged in. Each time it says I am good to go.

But when I try to listen to a game, I get this:

And when I try to watch a game, I get this:

Now, I worked in a place where we released an app update that was broken, and you know what we did? We pulled it from the Playstore and put up the old version until we fixed the new one. It took one day.

It's been two weeks and MLBAM has not only not fixed it, but they haven't apologized, haven't offered a refund, and haven't given any indication that they are going to fix it at all. IT'S BEEN TWO WEEKS.

I paid for an MLB.com subscription, as I have for a dozen years or so now. At Bat is part of that subscription. It does not work anymore. You make it work FOR ME. It's not the other way around. I'm not supposed to go get a phone that fits your product. I'm not buying a freaking iPhone. I so hate corporate America. There is literally nothing we can do. I will file a complaint to Consumer Affairs or whatever, but nothing will come of that. We are powerless against big corporations that don't give a shit about anything but profit. Screw the customer. They got their money from me already, why should they care about me being happy with the product I bought?

My Reds Preview

Let's see if I can do this before my attention span wanders. Writing a blog post on spring or something. Blah blah insert cliche here blah blah poetry of baseball blah blah time of rebirth blah blah flowers and stuff blah countdown to Opening Day blah blah blah blah.

I think I ruined my own enthusiasm with an overuse of spring passion in the past. I've run out of things to write. Or read, for that matter. So much baseball writing has become statistics-based or arm chair analysis and I find so much of it boring and cliche. I have such a diminished attention span these days I can't focus on that kind of tripe. I don't read blogs anymore unless there's a link on Twitter. I love baseball history and history in general and often relied on baseball memories for content when I was writing on this blog. Writing is hard for me these days and I can't figure out why. It's not just a lack of focus, which is a big issue, but a struggle to find words and write well in general. It's like I just lost the language skill. Maybe it's a lack of practice (yes, writing takes practice like any sport or musical instrument) that was brought about by the inability to focus. I don't know if the attention span thing a result of social media or the fact that I started seeing Chris and now never have the right environment to write in. Maybe it's stress or brain damage or a tumor or depression or straight up apathy.

I'm trying to write a guide to Opening Day in Cincinnati for Nationals fans but I am realizing how much I don't know about the new Cincinnati since I am never there more than once a year and sometimes none at all. Still, I could do a history and some tips and stuff, and maybe give Reds fans some info about baseball here in Washington, too. I'm mad as hell that MLB and Findlay Market have ruined 99 years of tradition by scheduling Opening Day on a Thursday and not holding the parade on Opening Day - a baseball history-lacking fanbase like the Nationals should be treated to the full spectacle that makes Opening Day in Cincinnati a holiday. I don't care that it's Easter weekend. You could have started the parade at another location AND kept the market open. I feel like you have stolen this from us. If I had lived in Cincinnati, I would have organized a protest of sorts. Fans have failed us, too.

As far as the Reds go, I'm not sure what to think. I am tired of going into every season not knowing if the starting rotation will get outs. I am tired of going into every season thinking it will most likely be a 90 loss season. Management blew it in the early part of this decade by not going all in when they had a chance (Ryan Ludwick in LF? Really?) and the rotation was one of the best in baseball. Three years (four?) of dumpster fires has really put a damper on enthusiasm. We can get excited about Castillo but the rest are question marks, except for Bailey, whose inconsistency is consistent. I don't want to sit through a couple of more seasons of crap before Greene is in the rotation. Sure, Mahle, Romero, and Garrett are promising, but promises in baseball are broken more often than not. (Evidence A: Bailey.) If I remember correctly, Mahle wasn't even considered a prospect until last year. In addition, I don't think the team should count on Finnegan or DeSclafani given their constant injuries. I think hiring John Farrell as a pitching scout shows 1. a commitment to find better pitching and 2. a lack of confidence in the pitching they have. Which gives me no confidence in the immediate term.

The offense is pretty fun but you can win games when you're scoring six and they're scoring seven.

I want to feel excited again, the way I felt in 2010 until the dismantling of the team after the 2013 season. Even in 2009, you could feel change was in the air. I remember the opening line of a post on Minor League Ball by John Sickels about the Reds farm system in 2007:

Good Lord.

The rest of the post explains:

This system is loaded. You have the top quartet of Bruce/Cueto/Votto/Bailey, but even beyond them there is a good combination of performance guys and projection guys. My initial run through came up with 49 names worth writing about. I have narrowed that down to 39, which is the most I can put into the book. Even that, some of the guys I cut I wish I could put in.

Take heart, Reds fans. You have a lot to look forward to.

I remember the feeling with depressing nostalgia given that Bruce and Cueto are gone, Bailey never lived up to expectations, and we never got past the NLDS. At least we still have Votto. I wouldn't trade him for any player in baseball, but I hate that we are wasting his prime years, some of the greatest seasons in the history of the game. Let's not forget that farm system also included Frazier, Mesoraco, and a host of other players who went to be major leaguers. Sickels says today's farm system is good and underrated. I hope he's right.

I'd like to be surprised. I have no expectations. I'd rather cling to those fantasies of hope in August when you logically know your team is out but you still root like hell for fate to make everything go your way than be out of it in April. I think I'd settle for those August fantasies at this point. At least that's progress.

Sometimes being a sports fan is pure nihilism.

As the internet saying goes, "Eat Arby's."

Hats

What is a life?

It is a book consisting of chapters, each ending with some sort of emotion, each beginning with a sense of uncertainty about what comes next.

It is the people that come into it, some staying if you are lucky or fated to have them remain.

It is the many hats you wear, sometimes quite literally, as in the case of Carlos Beltran.

It is the body you are born with, the one that is always changing, the one that aches and ails and ages no matter what you do to stop it, the one that ends and disappears.

Imagine rising to the top of your field, one of the greatest to ever do what you do, having to fight off decline until you can no longer fight. At some point, a life ceases to be about beginnings and becomes about endings. Memories are mere attempts to relive what has already ended. But we are blessed to have them.

Imagine a kid in Puerto Rico hitting bottlecaps with a stick, a life not much more than dreams of future greatness. Imagine the joy of a new beginning, a lucid dream, the start of a new chapter with a brand new Major League uniform and a life defined by what it could be. Imagine standing before tens of thousands of people, bat in hand, ready for your first chance to star in that dream.

The hits came, the homers, the stolen bases, the All Star games, the changing uniforms and failed postseasons and the fading star, and then, that one glorious feeling, the purpose of all of this, a World Series Championship, all subchapters in a life.

What is a life?

It is all of those joys and those sorrows and this one, the end of another chapter, a long, prosperous one. It is all the people, the teammates and the fans with all the different hats, and me, too, one who had the good fortune to watch the entirety of a Hall of Fame career, the one who for some reason at this very moment in this life finds herself overcome by emotion in coming to the end of the chapter of a life not mine, if only because it is not a part of a life, but of all life.

Next chapter: Cooperstown. But what hat will he wear?

Fed up

The Nationals - and Dusty Baker - are on the verge of another failed post season, and I don't even want to watch the game tonight.

I don't want to watch the same failed lineup make out upon out. I don't want to watch the same failed relievers be put into situations they shouldn't be in. I don't want to watch Dusty Baker mismanage another team out of the postseason.

Moreover, I don't want to watch the same fans and media make excuses and defend the manager and players as if they can do no wrong. I wonder if some of these people have ever watched a non-Nationals baseball game. I know some of them aren't watching the rest of the postseason games.

It wasn't a bloop that lost the game yesterday. It was putting Solis in the situation to give up the bloop. It was starting a .226 hitter over a .315 hitter in the outfield. It was failing to drop a clueless Trea Turner down in the order and bat one of the few successful hitters, Michael A. Taylor, at leadoff.

It was constructing the exact lineup three games in a row, one that, save for one glorious inning, has produced a single run in the entire series.

And now they turn their hopes to a mediocre Tanner Roark, who can be hit or miss, and when he misses, he misses badly.

This is a five game series played over the course of a week. The games are not like the regular season. There is no tomorrow. There is no "we'll get 'em next time." There is no miraculous recovery from a slump...that can take weeks. The World Series champs will be crowned by then. There is only changing things up, being creative, and approaching the games with a sense of urgency. And we get none of that.

I watch these other managers do extraordinary things like pitching Chris Sale on three days rest when he is supposed to start the next game and struggle to recall any postseason decision by Dusty that was beneficial to the outcome of a game or series.

I lived in California and followed the Giants in 2002. I walked out of Pac Bell Park after World Series Game 5 thinking there was no way the Giants could lose. With a 5-0 lead and eight outs to go to a World Series championship the next game, Dusty made the controversial decision to pull Russ Ortiz and hand control to his bullpen. They lost that game and the next and the World Series.

I didn't follow the Cubs in 2003, but we all know about Mark Prior and Kerry Wood, and Dusty's propensity to leave Wood in too long cost the team a trip to the World Series, that and pitching to Alex Gonzalez with the pitcher on deck.

But the Reds. I watch the current postseason littered with former players from a dismantled team, a team that was good enough to win it all, just as this Nationals team is, and I feel the despair all over again. I watch them scattered across baseball fields other than the one in Cincinnati and I see the same kind of decisions being made here in Washington with the same kind of results, like batting Shin-Soo Choo leadoff against Francisco Liriano in the 2013 Wild Card game despite Choo's .215 average against lefthanders. Or keeping Cueto in with a 2-0 deficit, then 3-0, then when a fourth run scored putting in Hoover and Ondrusek instead of the best pitcher, Chapman, leading to two more runs. It was one of most grossly mismanaged postseason games in memory. Chapman was never used at all.

And he wasn't used for the tenth inning in Game 3 of the 2012 NLDS after a scoreless 15 pitch ninth. No, instead Dusty put in Jonathan Broxton, who promptly gave up three runs to lose the game. And he allowed Mat Latos to continue to pitch as he gave up six runs in the fifth inning of Game 5 of that series, as if there were going to be a game the next day. No, instead, the Reds went home after having a two games to none lead and the Giants went on to win the World Series.

That 2012 division series was a textbook case on how not to manage in the postseason.

This is a guy who famously said baserunners who got on by walks are "clogging up the bases." His disdain for on base percentage is well-known and caused conflict with his GM and with his OBP star Joey Votto. During his five years with the Reds, batters in the second spot in the order slashed .228/.281/.350.

Dusty Baker is one of the nicest, classiest people in baseball and probably on Earth. But class doesn't win championships. I am fed up with the bad decisions.

I am fed up with being disappointed.

So I don't want to watch tonight. I don't want to watch, but I will, because I am a fan of the great game of baseball, even if it is not a fan of me.

What do you do when you're sick of the internet?

Hall of Blame

The Hall of Fame has become a disgrace.

But it's an interesting case study in the creation of historical records.

Herodotus is widely credited with writing the first history book when he wrote about the wars between the Greeks and the Persians in The Histories, but it was Thucydides who wrote the first account of history in which an author attempted to verify facts. His History of the Peloponnesian War is the best account we have of Greece destroying itself (it's actually a pretty good read, too.) He described incessant warfare, greed and the concept of profits over people, people thinking they can interpret religion any way they want, yada yada...same shit that's happening in America as we see our nation fall.

The fact is, before Herodotus and Thucydides, no one ever thought of writing down what happened in their world, and when the two historians did write something down, there was nothing before them to show them how to write it. These were thoughts that had never been thought before, ideas never ideated, processes never processed.

For some people, the concept of this is too much for them - they can't imagine what it was like when it didn't occur to people to write things down. Even though it did occur to Thucydides, he still wrote as too many do today, without thoroughly reading and citing other documents, which is the foundation of all modern historical writing. He did quote a few books, and he interviewed people, which were novel ideas at the time, but although he was aware of the value of documentary evidence, he did not take full advantage of it. We are left with having to rely on what he wrote, with all his personal biases; therefore, we cannot take his text and his history as gospel.

When hotel owner Stephen Carlton Clark conceived the baseball Hall of Fame, the country was still reeling from the Great Depression, and Prohibition had wiped out the hops industry, devastating the local economy (who cares who you hurt as long as you're moral, amirite?) The civil-war-hero-Abner-Doubleday-invented-baseball-in-Cooperstown propaganda was essential to the cause (you know, the story Albert Spalding made up so the Spalding Company could sell baseball equipment?), and the baseball Hall of Fame was born. Clark and company decided to give the Baseball Writers Association of America the vote, because back then, baseball writers were scholars of a sort. You had to know how to write to be employed as a baseball writer, rather than simply purchasing a journalism (or worse, a communications) degree.

A free and fair press is essential to a stable democracy. You absolutely cannot be a stable country if you are oppressing journalists. This is not debatable. We are not living in the era of Thucydides. We have the researched and true historical records to back it up. We have seen oppression. We have seen what the most heinous of rulers have done to journalists who have done nothing but report the truth. Journalists who report the news should be held with a degree of reverence. I should mention that I hold journalists in the highest regard, as I have worked with journos from across the globe who are risking their lives to report the news. (I supported CPJ before Meryl Streep made it cool.) Journalist is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.

That being said, a sportswriter is not part of this class. Sports are entertainment. They don't matter.

Well, that's not true, either. Writing is part of the humanities, of humanity. Reading - the act of processing writing - is essential to a healthy human spirit, and healthy human spirits are necessary for stable communities. Writing is vital. It keeps our perspective in check. Perhaps it could be described as the guardian of our humanity. People who don't read aren't healthy people, and healthy people do unhealthy things. If you have a bunch of mentally ill people running around, they're going to do bad things, like shoot up schools and nightclubs or lynch people based on skin color or religious differences and other evils of that nature. As Herodotus said, If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it. Sports ARE important to a healthy community, and good sportswriting is important, just not in the same way as reporting global events.

This is the essence of why sportswriter egos drive me crazy. They're writing about sports, not saving the world. Yet many think that as journalists they are somehow better than others, more enlightened, that they are part of the fourth estate and therefore perform a vital democratic function. It's this kind of egoism that is destroying the sanctity of the Hall of Fame. Too many baseball writers make it about them and their "morals." The accomplishments of the players are secondary. Sometimes they are lost entirely. I can't stand it. I just can't stand the whole process. It's like watching pigeons fight over scraps of food, all puffed up, pretty feathers shining in the sun, when they're really just big poop bags. If you've ever been to Venice, you've been to St. Mark's Square, and you know about the pigeons and the big beautiful church, the sacred church, and how it's just covered with pigeon poop. The Hall of Fame selection process is like that.

St. Mark's - Not my photo, as mine were taken with a film camera and are not in a digital file.

I don't like this new "transparent" ballot process at all, because it just gives them another stage to self aggrandize. Oh look, here's MY ballot, and this is why EYE chose/did not choose these players.

Look, not every baseball writer is like this. I apologize to the good writers and those with whom I am friendly. But too many are, and they are, unfortunately, the loudest.

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks, said Herodotus. Barry Bonds was the best baseball player in history, and you're writing like Herodotus if you're ignoring everything but PED use.


What you're doing is basing everything on "what if." How many homers would Bonds have if he hadn't taken PEDs. How many strikeouts would Clemens have had he not taken PEDs. How much shorter would Barry's career have been had he not taken PEDs.

But you don't ask What if PEDs had been available in Babe Ruth's era? Would he have taken them? The answer is most likely yes.

What if Ruth had faced pitchers like Clemens? How many bases would Ty Cobb have stolen if he faced catchers like today? Would Walter Johnson have been a third or fourth starter if he played today? What if Honus Wagner had access to weight training and video like players today? How many more seasons would Sandy Koufax have pitched had Tommy John surgery been available to him, or Don Gullet, or Mark Fidrych. What if Bonds had faced the lower level of pitching that Ruth faced?

We don't even know if performance enhancing drugs are even performance enhancing. We can see they probably prolong careers, but if you're going to punish guys for that, then you should punish guys for getting Tommy John surgery, too, because that heals guys and prolongs their careers.

What PED HOF omissions really boil down to is keeping guys out for character flaws. If you're going to do that, you're going to have to take out most of the players, and sure as hell don't vote for that racist asshole Curt Schilling.

What started as a tourist site and a marketing gimmick has become a part of our nation's history, a history that we are supposed to hold sacred. It was sacred once. The hallowed Hall. But, like the country itself, narcissism has destroyed it.

What isn't sacred is profane by definition.

The fact is, Bud Selig, who permitted steroids for profits, is in the Hall. I hate double standards. I hate hypocrisy. I hate self-aggrandizing egos. I hate that these narcissists are willfully destroying my childhood memories because some players wanted to be the best they could be. These players weren't kicked out of baseball for their deeds. They went to court and there wasn't enough to punish them, either. So we're left with the biases of the sportswriters and their subjective opinions, without any documentary evidence to back up their thoughts. You might as well be telling me about the golden ants the size of foxes in Persia or the gold hoarding cyclopes and griffins that Herodotus wrote about.

I don't even care anymore. I'm not going to bother making a trip to Cooperstown until the best players are enshrined and the era of moralizing bullshit is over.

I might never make it there.

Herodotus was full of it, too.

Sandbagger

I began to play Little League in second grade. We were the green team, sponsored by a local landscaping service in Englewood, Ohio. As a girl, I had to play softball rather than baseball. I'm not sure what I thought of that back then. I think it's BS now.

I remember one moment of the tryouts - I was at second base and I missed a popup. Soon, one of the coaches moved me to the outfield. I asked, "is it because I missed that popup?" He laughed and assured me it was not.

He was telling the truth. I turned out to be one of the best players in the league. Maybe the best. When it was time to move up to the older league, everyone knew I would be the top pick. But I wanted to play on the best team, and they wanted me to play for them, too. That's why they told me to sandbag the tryouts.

I remember it pretty well, balls going through my legs, popups bouncing out of my glove, throws going well wide of the bases...at one point one of my future coaches ran by me and whispered, "don't make it so obvious."

It worked. The coach of the red team, who had the first pick, wondered what had happened to me, according to my new green team coaches, who told me about it after the draft. We never lost a game that year.

I played third base then, and pitched on occasion. When I got to junior high, we had no catcher, so I volunteered, never having played there before. Two years later, I was starting varsity as a freshman, catching one of the top pitchers in the state and winning our conference.

We had moved. The coach of the Northmont High School team was upset that her catcher of the future was playing at a rival school. If we had stayed at Northmont, I probably would have played in college, because she cared about her players and worked to get them on college teams. My high school coach did not.

I know the difference because my high school soccer coach did care, and I did visit colleges who were interested in having me play soccer for them because of his efforts. I hit .420 in league games and .360 something during my senior year - you'd think colleges would have been interested.

In the end, I guess things worked out, as I was able to study abroad for a year, which put me on a career path in international affairs. That wouldn't have happened had I been playing college sports. Every approaching spring during college, however, I contemplated walking on and trying out.

Funny, this thing called life.

New Year, New Blog Post

Of course, it won't last long, but I'm going to try to write a post a day, either on this blog or my other one, From Beirut to Jupiter. http://frombeiruttojupiter.blogspot.com

I'm not doing it for readers or revenue. I'm only doing it for myself, for the exercise of writing, so I can revisit the books I've started but never finished. Or something like that. I turn forty in a week, something that doesn't seem real to me. Except for a few more aches and pains and maybe something resembling cynicism, I don't feel that old. I know a lot more than I did ten years ago, but I think collective knowledge has gotten a lot less. So that's something. Or nothing.

When I turned thirty, there was no social media to distract me, just this blog and my other one under a different name. The Reds had won a World Series only sixteen seasons earlier, not twenty-six, which seems more respectable. We were in the midst of a disastrous presidency that has been forgotten in the last decade as we head towards one that will make Bush seem like George Washington or Abe Lincoln. I had yet to visit or live in Beirut then, and though I'd been working in the Mideast field for a few years, I had not yet developed a real expertise in the area. I went to protests as if they actually did anything, not yet understanding they were a waste of time. It's funny how naive you are at thirty. I suppose I will say the same thing about forty in another decade.

The Reds were in the midst of being dreadful back then, dreadful in a different way than they are now. I always had hope, though, not like now when I can only muster fleeting moments of "maybe they'll surprise us." At least the Storen signing was something. How many wins did that disaster of a pen cost us last year? Has to be ten. The difference between horrendous and respectable, anyway.

I have mentioned that Chris is sick and is on the liver transplant list. He was in the hospital for a week at the beginning of last month, as the toxins had built up in his brain to dangerous levels. It was only then that I really started to think about what death is and the utter devastation I will feel if he doesn't make it through the transplant. I've never really known anybody who died before, aside from two grandfathers when I was barely old enough to grasp the finality of it all, meaning college aged. I just didn't get it. Of course, I was sad when they died, but it was in a different way. Maybe because they were both so sudden and unexpected. I had a grandmother who passed, too, but she was older and I was away and I really didn't get that, either. I guess death just didn't seem real.

I was drawn to war when I learned what it was. Rather, peace. I was drawn to the end of wars, studied international relations in college, stayed in Europe a year, went to all the war museums and memorials and that kind of thing and just couldn't believe that it could even happen, like it was all just a movie. Sure, we had some civil war battlefields in Ohio, but they were just fields now, the blood long dried and forgotten, so when we went to the American Cemetery in Luxembourg and saw Patton's grave, it was really my first contact with something war related. My father had been a Marine but the only war he saw was what he started in his own home.  I ended up joining the US Army when its stated mission was as a peacekeeping force, not an invasion force. The Clinton years were a fabulous time for peace on he surface. You had the fall of the Berlin Wall and the USSR at the start of the decade and the Irish peace accords near the end, and though there were some spectacular failures in the middle (Rwanda being the worst,) for the most part the Clinton administration had taken some giant steps towards a more peaceful world. I suppose Death took a holiday somewhere in that decade. Even with my personal losses I never felt his full effects.

But the nineties ended and a violent decade began. I started working with Arab activists and I was introduced to Death. Like everyone I meet, I forgot his name and had to pretend like I knew it every time he was around. I have met many people who had suffered from his cruel hand. I saw the scars of war both physical and mental when I lived in Beirut and they remind you that history isn't something in the past but it is living, we are living it now, when even the word now is then and we can't know what will happen in the next second. Most likely we will forget it, but every now and then one second changes everything.

One second. One sip of beer and I was talking to the obnoxious guy next to me at the bar and nearly five years later he is in my living room that is also his. I lock the door because Death could be roaming the neighborhood and I finally understand that he is devastation. I made it nearly four decades before I remembered his name after hospital machines whispered it. I sat in that room every night in desperate angst only to come home to an empty house. That's when it was the worst.

And you know what I longed for in those nights, other than Chris's healthy return? Baseball. It was a genuine, desperate longing and a soul crushing absence. Baseball can be a crutch, a pill, a healer. But it just wasn't there.

Winter is the cousin of Death.

At least they were baseball fans

Read the other parts of this series:
Part 1: Baseball and Life during Wartime
Part 2: Baseball and Life during Peacetime
Part 3: Propaganda in the Twenties

The 1927 Yankees are considered by many to be the greatest baseball team of all time. (I would argue that a World Series between the 1976 Reds and the 1927 Yankees, adjusting for era differences, would result in a Reds win, but I could be biased.) Murderers Row were bashing baseballs and winning World Series at a rate never before seen, and America loved them.

It was an era of great baseball and terrible presidents. First it was Warren Harding who oversaw perhaps the most corrupt administration in US history until he dropped dead of a cerebral hemorrhage. Some speculate that his wife, fed up with his well-known womanizing, poisoned him. Harding put the federal government on a budget for the first time, which helped created the false economic prosperity of the twenties that culminated with the Great Depression. The Teapot Dome scandal, the defining event of his lethiferous presidency, leased Navy petroleum reserves to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall was convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies and became the first Cabinet member to go to prison. No one was ever convicted of paying the bribes. Oil corrupts. Big Oil corrupts absolutely.

If only the Nats had started their partnership with White House Historical Association sooner, we could have the full failure trio...

Next up came Calvin Coolidge, whose greatest sin was assembling a terrible cabinet of the wealthiest of men who put their own needs ahead of the needs of the country. Andrew Mellon reduced taxes on business and the wealthy five times during his eight years as Secretary of the Treasury, which continued us on a path towards the Great Depression. The Wall Street Journal wrote, "Never before, here or anywhere else has a government been so completely fused with business." The American right too often points to the Coolidge presidency as an exemplar of small-government conservatism, ignoring what happened next: the stock market crashed only eight months after he left office. Economic booms that are followed by economic disasters are not booms at all. They are like extending a spring, only to have it snap back to small again. It's not real prosperity. But you have to be able to view the world through the lens of time, where everything that happened before affects the now, and everything that happens now affects the future. There is too much shortsightedness and microcosmic decision-making among policy elites. Some people just don't understand that what happens now was set in motion months or years or decades or centuries ago.

Herbert Hoover followed Coolidge with more shortsightedness, maintaining the tax cutting policies of his predecessor and supporting a tariff act that greatly exacerbated the effects of the depression. The depression wasn't his fault, of course, but he failed to steer the country out of it, leading to FDR's landslide victory in 1932. He had refused to let the government intervene in fixing prices, manipulate the value of currency, or partake in deficit spending. After his defeat, he predicted the New Deal would lead to an American version of Iron Cross, First Class or Il Duce. Yeah, right.

The twenties were an era of complete and utter corruption, with Big Business controlling the reins of government. Heard that one before?

Perhaps the only redeeming quality of Harding and Hoover is that they were big baseball fans. Coolidge was no fan and appeared at ballgames only for political photo ops. Useless. As a Senator, Harding once organized an exhibition game between the Cubs and a semi-pro team in Marion, Ohio during the middle of the 1920 season. Hoover was a shortstop for Stanford until an injury ended his playing days. His frequented MLB games during his term as POTUS.

The twenties were, to put it in simple terms, crazy and shortsighted. Across the Atlantic, Germany was a mess. You had the Social Democrats, democrats, and Catholic centrists trying to govern while the socialists and conservatives were trying to overthrow them, both despising the fledgling democracy. The country suffered assassination after assassination by men on the extreme right, leading the government to institute anti-terrorism laws. Berlin ordered the dissolution of the militias running rampant in Bavaria and other regions, but when the government attempted to enforce the laws against terrorism, the Bavarian right, to which Iron Cross, First Class belonged, organized a conspiracy to overthrow the government. The Kapp Putsch failed to establish a rightwing autocratic government in 1920, and the Beer Hall Putsch failed to do the same thing three years later.

By 1923, the German mark was useless. Goaded by the big industrialists and landlords who stood to gain from the tumbling mark, the government purposely let the currency collapse despite financially ruining the masses of German citizens. The destruction of the currency enabled German Big Business to wipe out its debt. Yet the masses did not realize how much the industrial tycoons, the Army, and the State were benefiting from the ruin of the currency. Had they been paying attention, they may not have been so quick to elect a dictator.

Monetary policy across the globe was all over the place in the twenties, and none of it was very good. The US was well into its first decade of the Federal Reserve system, a mechanism for private banks to lend funds to one another, thus ensuring there is always a flow of money. In theory, anyway. The first incarnation had some problems, to put it mildly. Under Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover (the triumvirate of pre-Great Depression failure), the Federal Reserve deliberately ignored sound empirical policy framework. Instead of focusing on money stock, price level, and other quantity theory indicators, the Fed focused on market interest rates, member bank borrowing, and commercial paper eligible for rediscount. While statistical analysis in the twenties was primitive compared to today's standards, the fact that the Fed shunned such analysis is astounding, at least in hindsight. Of course, the Fed was created as a decentralized and non-interventionist system, but by the twenties, some economists were clamoring about stabilization. They advocated that the Federal Reserve Act be amended to make price stability the main responsibility of the Fed and that a centralized authority should unify the policy actions of the individual reserve banks. Their advice went unheeded...

Babe Ruth was the highest paid player for thirteen years straight, starting in 1922, when he made $52,000. He would peak at $80,000 in 1930 before dropping to $35,000 in 1934. You can see the impact the Great Depression had on player salaries. 

In 1930, the average American income was just under $2000. Ruth's salary was 40 times that and 2.4 times greater than the next highest, Rogers Hornsby, a gap that has not been reached since (Alex Rodriguez came close at 38%). Ruth put butts in seats, and Hornsby was a jerk, which may have hurt his salary a bit, but Ruth was one of the biggest stars in a country that was just coming to develop a culture of celebrity worship. When asked if he thought he deserved to be making more money than Hoover, Ruth said, “Why not? I had a better year than he did.”

When Ruth's salary dropped to $35,000 in 1934, the average American salary had dropped to $1600. A chicken in every pot? Not even close.

Sixty home runs! Sixty!

Before Babe Ruth hit 29 homers in 1919, the single season record was 27, set by the Cubs' Ned Williamson in 1884. I mean, if you consider hitting a ball over the wall at Chicago Lake Front Park (dimensions: 186", CF 300" and RF 196") a home run. MLB does, but can you imagine a ballpark that small? He hit 54 in 1920 and 59 in 1921 before suffering an injury shortened season in 1922, when he only hit 35. He hit 41 and 46 the next two seasons but in 1925, a serious intestinal issue caused by his lifestyle limited him to 98 games and 25 homers. “Day and night, broads and booze,” recounted teammate Joe Dugan. In 1926, he was back to form, slugging 46 homers before that magical 1927 season.

In 1926, a man by the name of Otto Hess died. He was a Swiss immigrant who became a Major League Pitcher - still the only Swiss-born MLB player. He had one good season. His name will rarely come up in a discussion about baseball, nor will it come up in a discussion about almost anything, unless you're talking about wild pitches. But he does have the distinction of being one of only five players to have fought in both the Spanish-American War and World War I. (The others were Ben Caffyn, Jacob Doyle, Arlie Pond, and John Grimes, who also fought in the Indian Wars. They deserve to be remembered.) Hess died after suffering for a decade with tuberculosis that he contracted while serving in France in World War I.

Rudolf Hess, of no relation, was born into a wealthy family of German merchants living in Egypt. Upon the start of World War I, he volunteered and became an officer in the same regiment as Iron Cross, First Class, but they never met. They did, however, suffer through the same battle that saw 2,900 German soldiers die over four days. He attended some of the early meetings when Iron Cross spoke, and reports surfaced about him asking "Was this thundering orator foolish or was he the Messiah?"

He went with Messiah, and wrote his thesis at University of Munich about his future fuhrer, entitled, "How Must the Man Be Constituted Who Will Lead Germany Back to Her Old Heights?" Translated into simpleton, that is: Make Germany Great Again.

Hess wrote, "Where all authority has vanished, only a man of the people can establish authority...The deeper the dictator was originally rooted in the broad masses, the better he understands how to treat them psychologically, the less the workers will distrust him, the more supporters he will win among these most energetic ranks of the people. He himself has nothing in common with the mass; like every great man he is all personality...When necessity commands, he does not shrink before bloodshed. Great questions are always decided by blood and iron...The lawgiver proceeds with terrible hardness...As the need arises, he can trample them [the people] with the boots of a grenadier..."

He himself has nothing in common with the mass...

Like every great man, he is all personality...

"Where the salvation of the nation is in question, he does not disdain utilizing the weapons of the adversary, demagogy, slogans, processions, etc."

Make My Country Great Again.

"Down with the traitors of the Fatherland! Down with the November criminals!" Such were the cries from the crowds of people who watched these rightwing demagogues give violent speeches against the national government.

Lock her up.

Propaganda. How easily the human mind is manipulated. How easily that is remedied, but the masses are too intellectually lazy to learn.

It continues to blow my mind that people CHOOSE dictatorships. These are people who either benefit directly from such regimes (money, power, or both) or those who really aren't all that bright and can't grasp the implications of such an arrangement. Most often it's the former convincing the latter to go along with it.

After the Beer Hall Putsch, Iron Cross, First Class went to trial and spent nine months in a jail for the privileged. The socialists who had also revolted at a different place, including Rosa Luxemburg, were executed without trial. That was the privilege of being rightwing in an anti-government climate, where conservatives defended the Kaiser and the war and held the economic power in the country. Their wealth subsidized their political parties and the press.

At the trial, Iron Cross, First Class was defiantly proud of his rebellion, stating, "I wanted to be the destroyer of Marxism." His hatred for democracy, Marxism, and Jews was captured in a book he wrote while in prison and had wanted to call "Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice." It sold 9,473 copies in 1925.

In 1930, the year Babe Ruth was paid $80,000 to play baseball, "My Struggle" sold 54,086 copies. By the time Iron Cross, First Class was elected by a grossly deceived population as Chancellor of Germany, the book sold a million copies, earning $300,000 dollars for its author in a time of global economic chaos.

To be continued...

Half a life ago

I was in college the last time the Indians were in the World Series. Remember that team? I can still name the whole lineup - Thome at first, Baerga at second, Vizquel at short, Fryman at third, Manny, Kenny, and Joey called Albert manning the outfield, Sandy behind the plate... Oh wait, Baerga and Belle were gone by then, and Fryman didn't come until the next year.

Funny how fragile memory is. I should have at least remembered that Matt Williams was at third.

Those were some great teams - five first place finishes in a row, culminating with a 1997 pennant. I was studying in Luxembourg that autumn, the junior year that changed everything. I didn't get to watch any of the playoffs, not that I can remember anyway, but we did get to see a few World Series games. Back then, we had to walk uphill both ways in the snow to get to a baseball game, and MLB.TV hadn't been invented yet.

We watched a couple of games at my host family's house. The games were condensed, so they lasted less than two hours. I tried not to find out the scores before watching, but sometimes a student would give it away. Kramer!

My host father is, well, a racist. He watched a game with us and I'll never forget his amusement at the fact that Devon White was a black guy with the last name White. It is, in fact, my strongest memory of the entire World Series. How strange is that?

Other games we watched at a local bar right next to our school. It was full of old, grumpy men and my housemate and I were two college girls demanding that an old, grumpy bartender play a foreign sport that nobody watched there on the single, small screen television in the corner of the bar. I think we watched two games in there under the unwelcoming eyes of the bar's aged patrons. But he let us watch.

The things you do for baseball.

I don't remember too much about the specifics of the Series, but I do remember the disappointment as the fake team with the rent-a-players and the evil owner poured onto the field in triumph. I had liked the Indians as the "other" Ohio team and had even seen a game at Municipal Stadium back when they were ripe for a comedy to be made about them. That Game 7 loss was tough.

A Cubs-Indians World Series is gonna be classic. Hopefully, Cleveland won't be on the losing end this time.

Z is for Zombie

Oh, the suffering! Droopy eyes, foggy brain, yawning mouth opening and closing like Chris Christie's refrigerator, swells of coffee useless against the ravages of sleep deprivation. But for what, I ask?

Ratings!

Ratings? How? When most of the weary country partakes in nocturnal routine, slumbering while the boys of summer are lumbering through a California autumn, how can ratings be more than a pipe dream conjured by the opiates of greed and bad decisions?

Three ay em, the wee hours, dreamland, a pipe dream for the diehard. The diehard is dying. While the powers that be have no problem starting the "lesser" teams at lesser times, we lesser people are to choose between the sacred advent of our chosen religion and the debilitating case of lesser sleep.

The woe of bias, of favoritism, a team of interest, yes, but not three hours into a new day, not even after 108 years (108 stitches)...why must we the people of baseball suffer so?

I hope the Cubs lose to spite MLB.

Refugee

I have spent most of my adult life working with democracy and peace activists. These include people who have been imprisoned, tortured, exiled, whose family and friends have been destroyed by dictators or war or both, whose lives have been wrecked and sometimes rebuilt and sometimes wrecked again. It's not a pretty world we live in, but it's one we can make better.

I was thinking about Jose Fernandez, as all of us have been, and marveling at what he went through to get here, a refugee from an oppressive regime who risked his life to immigrate to the United States, who traveled here illegally and ended up becoming an American citizen. His name was well-known to the baseball world, but maybe not to the casual fan, until fate put him on a late night boat ride. So many Cuban ballplayers have risked their lives for a sip of the American Dream. We let them, because they are good at sports, but many others are turned away. Things are getting easier since relations with Cuba are thawing, and ballplayers will soon be able to play baseball in the US without risking their lives. It has been incredible to witness this turn of events, to watch history unfold, and I look forward to visiting Cuba one day in the near future.

Why do we value the lives of sports figures more than others? What if Jose had been a doctor instead, or an engineer, or a teacher? Would we mourn him, praise his daring journey to this nation of immigrants, congratulate him on becoming a citizen? Or would we call him a rapist and murderer and call for tougher measures to prevent his kind from getting in?

Given that most Americans have never left the country, let alone visited a refugee camp, they can't even fathom the conditions in which millions of human beings find themselves today, through no fault of their own. More than 60 million people are displaced in this world, meaning they have escaped war or oppression and have no home to return to. Most of them live in refugee camps, which can be tent cities or actual buildings, depending on where in the world and who are the people. The lucky few establish permanent residency somewhere else or even citizenship.

One stunning example of this contrast can be found in Lebanon, where I spent about a year over a two year period working with civil society organizations. After the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians in the early twentieth century, many Armenians found refuge in Beirut. They established a refugee camp that today is just a Beirut neighborhood, albeit with Armenian flavor. The Palestinians did not fare so well during the establishment and expansion of Israel after World War II. They live in dilapidated structures and enjoy few basic rights like citizenship or employment in many professions, as they have been restricted to menial labor. Poverty is rampant; the camps are often the sites of violence and bloodshed. You can go to the Armenian neighborhood of Bourj Hammoud to the infamous Palestinian camps of Sabra and Chatilla in a few minutes by car, yet they are two different worlds. Lebanon also has a million Syrian refugees (the Lebanese population is only four million), as well as refugees from Iraq. And that's just a tiny swath of land barely visible on a world map.

If your heart breaks for Jose Fernandez, if you are sending your "thoughts and prayers" to him and his family, please take some time, too, to think about so many others who have been through something similar as he had and how so many meet tragic ends that go unheralded. Maybe Jose's senseless death can help us to remember them, perhaps finding one ray of light in all the darkness. What is a life, after all, if it does not beget good? Why did we care so deeply about his death, though few of us knew him in life? Because humanity is deep down our true nature. In these times when it seems as if we are surrounded by cruelty and evil, we recognized good in that smile, and even the hardest of hearts felt a stirring, a reminder that the world is flawed but can be good, is probably more good than not.

I have to wonder if more people would care about Syrian refugees if they were good at sports. Sadly, I think the answer is "yes." Let's change that. I have to believe we can.