MOM, THE BASEBALL GUYS WON’T DISTRACT ME! [F, 8-28-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

I didn’t get to watch the Cincinnati Reds play on TV on W night, 8-26-20, because their game in Milwaukee against the Brewers was postponed. No, not weather. No, nobody tested positive for covid19. Because the Brewers refused to play!

There are plenty of reasons not to watch the Reds play, since their relief pitchers spell relief as “Rolaids,” [for fans] instead of “outs.” And since they misplaced their bats, and thus must go up to the plate and make batting-like swishing motions with their empty arms.

But not getting to see them because the other team refused to play? Why in the world would you refuse to play the Reds this year? In an already virus-shortened sentence, playing the Reds is any team’s dream.

The Reds, wisely, went along with the postponement, but not because they were trying to avoid another loss.

I love to watch baseball. I especially love to watch the Reds, even when they’re bad. It makes me think of Grandma Mac, from whom I inherited my love for the Reds. It’s one of my few distractions from the constant round of shootings and lootings, and political shenanigans and crimes. There are so few games this year. And many of them are postponed/cancelled because some player tested positive for the virus. I look forward to each game so much.

So why did the Brewers refuse to play? Precisely to keep me, and my ilk, from being distracted, the way we want to be, via baseball. Their Jewish outfielder, Ryan Braun, explained it: “The most impactful thing we can do is not play our baseball game, to not distract from what’s going on in the country.”

It would have been better if everyone in Wisconsin had just stayed home and watched baseball. A 17 year old white boy [man, for judicial purposes] murdered 3 people, with a gun, in Kenosha during BLM demonstrations, while praising the police and Donald Trump. In taking him into custody, police did not shoot him 7 times in the back, the way they do unarmed black men, even though he was armed with an automatic weapon. In fact, they didn’t even take him into custody. They let him go home and turn himself in there. Because…WLM.

So the Brewers and Reds don’t want me to have the satisfaction of distraction that baseball brings. That really irritates me. But, you know, if a bunch of baseball players, of all people, think we’ve got to take this seriously, apparently we do. They have credibility with a segment of society that nobody else does. Like me.

As much as I love watching baseball, to paraphrase that old camp chorus: I shall not be, I shall not be distracted, I shall not be, I shall not be distracted. Just like a tree that’s planted by the waters, I shall not be distracted.

John Robert McFarland