Tag: baseball

Categories
general freedom international affairs

Two Strikes and You’re Out, MLB

baseball, China

Major League Baseball has renewed its contract with a Chinese telecommunications company with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

Professional baseball thus avoids the fate of the National Basketball Association, ejected from Chinese airwaves for a year after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey voiced support for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

This doesn’t mean that the folks running MLB lack a moral compass.

It could be just a skewed one.

One day after Chinese state media confirmed that American baseball games would continue to be shown on Tencent’s streaming platform, MLB yanked its All-Star game from Atlanta, Georgia. The idea? To protest the state’s new election reform.

Baseball Commissioner Robert Manfred would have us believe that demonstrating “our values as a sport” requires 

  1. cutting deals with the tyrannical and murderous government of China while simultaneously 
  2. noisily punishing Georgia because friends of slack voting rules dislike the voter ID requirements and other provisions of Georgia’s new election law designed to limit the potential for fraud.

MLB’s press release does not bother to explain what is wrong with the law except to say that the league “opposes restrictions to the ballot box.” 

All restrictions?

MLB officials ignored the Epoch Times’s inquiry about “how continuing business with China demonstrates its values considering the recent U.S. recognition of a genocide being carried out by the CCP against the Uyghur Muslims.”

Hmm. Chinazi dictatorship or Georgia election reform: Which is worse? 

I guess for those with a skewed moral compass, that’s a tough one.

But for the rest of us the question answers itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom individual achievement

Motherhood, Baseball & Life

baseball, mom, mother's day,

“Baseball is life,” say fans, meaning not merely that “the rest is just details,” but also that there are broader lessons to be gleaned from the game.

Yesterday, on Mother’s Day, I told my mom how big a fan of hers I am, and the two of us Detroit Tigers fans mulled over the latest brouhaha. A man in the cheap seats caught the homerun ball hit by Albert Pujols . . . and wouldn’t “give it back.”

That hit and resulting run gave the Los Angeles Angels and former St. Louis Cardinals slugger his 2,000th lifetime “run batted in,” or RBI, putting him in a very exclusive club: fifth on the all-time RBI list.* 

Law student Ely Hydes, who caught it, claims stadium security and team representatives descended, pressuring him to give them the ball in exchange for, say, a picture with Pujols and some autographed swag. Hydes, a Tigers fan, wanted to think about it, however. He left. 

The Twitterverse erupted. 

The charge?

Selfishness — for not turning over a baseball “that would mean so much more” to Pujols. 

At EconLog, David Henderson was having none of it: “[E]ven to suggest that Hydes, a law student in debt, is immoral for not giving some of his wealth to a very wealthy man, is breathtaking.” That baseball is likely worth at least $25,000 and could fetch more. 

Asked by reporters, Pujols was clear: “[Hydes] has the right to keep it. The ball went in the stands, so I would never fight anybody to give anything back.”

“Pujols’s attitude is admirable,” notes Henderson. “He defended a stranger’s property rights.”

As diehard Tigers fans, Mom and I still take issue. The Angels won that game 13-0. Following tradition, Hydes should have thrown the opposing team’s homerun back onto the field.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Almost emblematic of our national pastime, there is disagreement over whether Pujols moved into third or fifth place. Major League Baseball says third, because RBIs weren’t officially counted until 1920. Babe Ruth batted in over 200 runs prior to that, and the Chicago Colts’ poor Cap Anson retired after the 1897 season. Thankfully, Baseball-Reference calculated those previously unaccounted for RBIs. Here’s the all-time list:

  1. Hank Aaron (2,297)
  2. Babe Ruth (2,214)
  3. Alex Rodriguez (2,086)
  4. Cap Anson (2,075)
  5. Albert Pujols (2,000)

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insider corruption

The Old Ball Game

Those New York Yankees did it again. I’d love to have seen them win their 27th World Series crown. But, well, the tickets are terribly expensive. For those who don’t buy season tickets, the average ticket price is $750. For Game 6 in New York, that average soared to $900.

But a few people pay a fraction of those amounts.

Major League Baseball’s lobbying office makes special tickets available to members of Congress at the face value of the tickets, many hundreds of dollars less than the price you’d pay. This deal is not for run-of-the-mill Americans, mind you, but for folks with clout, members of the inner politburo of America.

Bribery! Who said that?

Silly us, it’s all perfectly legal. The league and teams are selling the tickets at the price it says on the ticket, not giving them away.

But as Melanie Sloan, with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, put it, ‘Anytime you have access to something that regular people don’t have, it should be considered a gift. Regular people can’t call the Major League Baseball office and get tickets.’

Vice President Joe Biden went to one of the games in Philly along with his wife, Jill. As VP, he’s not even covered by the gift ban, but he was nice enough to pay $325 each for the two tickets worth $1,500.

Is this a great country or what?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom too much government

Wait Until Next Year

Enjoy the Major League Baseball playoffs. Me? I’ll be crying in my beer. Except that I don’t even drink beer . . . it messes with my sinuses.

I had very high hopes that the Detroit Tigers would make it to the playoffs, perchance to the World Series. In first place in the Central Division throughout June, July, August and September, the Tigers tied for first at season’s end with the Minnesota Twins. So after 162 games, it took one more to anoint the division champion. That 163rd game went back and forth for twelve innings. But we lost.

Boo and hoo. Not everyone can be a winner. Except, maybe, in another sense.

The corporate-government complex that has taken over baseball and most of professional sports has milked billions from taxpayers. Everyone pays for stadiums even as players and owners rake in extraordinary rewards.

We could all win if this subsidy system were stopped. The fans, especially, could rejoice, savoring in good conscience the game’s important lessons: The ethic of always working your very hardest, doing your best, never giving up.

It’s entertainment and solid lessons about life that I can share, even now, with my kids. This summer we had the opportunity to travel to Detroit to see one game. And then, sitting on our couch, we watched on TV until the final pitch, hooping and hollering enough to make my wife shake her head.

After the game, we complained about missed calls and blind umpires, reminding ourselves that there’s always next year.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.