No Ties in Baseball?

July 10, 2002

by Dennis Lombard

To hear our local sports wags tell it, baseball screwed up again!

The pageantry and excitement of the annual All-Star Game (July 9) at Miller Field in Milwaukee was despoiled by dumb old Commissioner Bud Selig, who decided late into the night to call the game a 7-7 tie after 11 innings.

Never mind that the All-Star managers had dutifully gotten all teams’ representatives into action for their fans, as well as protected the health and safety of everybody’s star talent, and had run out of pitchers, indeed had no more replacement players to call upon to finish the contest in the wee hours. Everybody was tired, and tomorrow was another day, to rest up and get ready to resume the REAL season. The players themselves reflect that this is a FUN night free from the competitive grind – and all should have come to enjoy!

It had been a great show with a spectacular catch by Tirii Hunter on a Barry Bonds almost-homer in the first inning. See how they laughed and hugged, the hitter and the robber center fielder after that play! And remindful of the time Babe Ruth playfully pointed toward the outfield fence once and put the next pitch out there. Bonds later provided an "instant replay" to prove the first homer was no fluke. "Enjoy" was the byword of the stars that night under the wide open retractable dome under the stars.

And there was an even more spectacular pre-game show celebrating the game’s 30 greatest moments of history, and a tear-filled tribute once again to the greatest hitter of all time, the recently departed Ted Williams. All in all, it was worth the price of admission, though I watched on free satellite TV.

Our sports writers, very much NOT in the tradition of the once great sports writers who loved the games and unashamedly puffed them for the fun of it, were spitting and fuming. A quick check of the writers at some other major papers accessible on the Internet this morning proves out that our sports writers are not immune to the negativity and deterioration of the working press these days. Neither were the fans well behaved after the decision to go home ... which is another story.

However, leave these sports experts go unchecked and they themselves will manage to fan the flames of the baseball labor dispute into a game-threatening strike – and then sit around and grumble, "We told you so!"

I truly believe that the press no longer just reports the news but is so megalomaniac that it wants to make the news - even in the sports arena. I’ve been watching the much more serious situation in the Middle East with the same sort of impression... oh how incomplete is their reporting of what’s really happening, such as:

– Not having a clue that Israel is at war with an enemy sworn to destroy them and push them into the sea;

– Acting like Arafat is really a freely elected and chosen leader of a Palestinian people;

-- failing to comprehend or report that Palestinians are far more diverse in opinion and stripe. We get regular reports from Christians in both Palestine territory and in Israel with much different viewpoints which never get reported. Did you know there were Palestinians praying for peace? And not to Allah either.

Imagine the press trying to convince us that all Americans are angry Democrats who believe Gore really won the election; we know better than that. Or that our president is responsible for all those corporate accounting lapses in his mere 18 months in office; we should know better than that. Or that all Catholic priests are bad people; of course they are not. Yet such shallow reporting, or rather shading of the truth, has filled the press in recent months and years.

Every report from Dan Rather on what the president did each day is shaded with the assumption that his every action is political, that he has something to hide, or that he is merely giving us some knee-jerk reaction to the latest diatribes of the disloyal opposition in Congress. Speaking of which, when are they ever going to call Tom Daschle to task for his blatant early run for the presidency in war time? It’s getting so that I want to grab the remote and turn off the sound every time his unstatesmanlike sound bites get full play on CBS, NBC, or ABC.

In similar fashion all of the coverage of the All-Star Game, on TV last night and in this morning’s papers, was laced with belaboring of the game’s struggle over labor and contract matters and the danger of a season-ending strike. It hasn’t happened, and I sure hope it doesn’t, optimist that I am. Maybe I don’t belong in this business? But many of my fellow journalists sound like they can’t wait for the blood and guts to begin!

Never mind letting me just sit back after a hard day at the office with some popcorn and relaxing and watching some outstanding ball players romp around the field and make great plays with uncommon playfulness.

God save the press from its deepening biases, its lust for controversy, its playing to the mob, and its blindness to all that is good in our struggling nation and world.

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© 2002 Home Times Family Newspaper

Dennis Lombard has been a community newspaper editor since 1972, and is currently editor and publisher of Home Times Family Newspaper, a traditional conservative monthly which he founded in 1990. He resides in Lake Worth, Florida with his wife, Mary, and they have seven children, 13 grandchildren, and one great-grandson. Home Times, soon going weekly, serves Palm Beach and Martin Counties in Florida and the nation by mail subscription, covering world, national, and local people and issues, home and family, arts and entertainment, and religion, all with a traditional conservative worldview. For a free copy call toll-free: 888-439-3509 or go to http://www.hometimes.org.

Send the author an E mail at Lombard@ConservativeTruth.org.

For more of Dennis' articles, visit his archives.