Biden Insults Atlanta Brave Fans, Again
Remember when baseball used to be a game, played for Major League bragging rights or the joy of school competition? Ever since 1947, when the Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson broke the color line and proved that all could play, baseball was America’s past-time.
There are occasional flashes of that gloried past. These days, Yankees fans grow quiet, and stand in reverential anticipation whenever Aaron Judge comes to bat in hopes of breaking Roger Maris’ 61-homerun record for the season. Six decades ago, Maris beat Babe Ruth’s 60 home-run season record. MoneyBall, the practice of studying records to see what percentage of the time the ball will land on what quadrant of the field has given statistics a bad name. But for the soul, there is comfort, and glory, in the historic resonance of these records. Here Comes the Judge, we whisper, just like the Babe.
But like everything else it touches, politics has hurt baseball. As I wrote in an earlier piece, Major League Baseball’s decision to wrest the All Star Game from Atlanta in the summer of 2021 because Georgia passed a bill requiring voters to show ID in order to vote was a blow to many black-owned businesses in the city, and a boon to the white-owned ones in Denver, where the league moved the game. The team’s comeuppance was to make the playoffs in the fall, and then win the World Series, assuring legions of fans trooping to Atlanta, box office profits and bottom-line help to local businesses. When he showed up last fall to present the team with their World Series trophy, Major League Commissioner Bob Manfred was booed.
Yesterday, at the White House, when team chairman Terry McGuirk told Biden the Braves had played an extra-innings game last night, winning 8-7 in the 11th inning and getting in much later than anticipated, Biden replied with his usual word salad, saying, “I slept in the guest room.”
So it was left to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to unscramble his words. What the president meant to say, she suggested that same day, was that the team should have “a conversation” about its name, and its fan-favorite tomahawk chop. “We believe that it’s important to have this conversation, you know, and Native American and indigenous voices, they should be at the center of this conversation.”
The Washington Commanders (aka Redskins) and Cleveland Guardians (aka Indians) have already caved to the cancel culture mob, cashiering their own history for virtue signalling. Podcaster Megyn Kelly told Bill Maher recently that she took her children out of 'hard-left' private schools because her son, 8, was subjected to a 'three week trans-education experiment' and her kindergartner had to write an essay on problems with the Cleveland Indians' mascot. Does a 5-year-old know how to spell Cleveland?
As if this weren’t enough of an insult, the White House rebuffed the request of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution — the city’s top newspaper — for two extra seats at the event. Only the newspaper’s sports reporter was admitted to the East Room, which boasts 3,000 square feet of room. So, apparently no room for metro and opinion.
Maybe the people who run the White House — Dem operatives all — have given up on Georgia for the 2022 elections. Or maybe they are confident they will win.
Either way, the big loser is baseball.
All Rise for the Judge.