Once again we have the pleasure of one of Scott Turner's missives.
Ostensibly an opportunity to promote his Thursday night pub quiz at Rocky Sullivan's in Red Hook, Turner always manages to communicate so much more. As always, Greetings from Scott Turner is brought to you by Miss Wit, Red Hook's t-shirt queen.
It's very early Wednesday morning, and once again the American League has defeated the National League in baseball's All-Star Game. Its alternate moniker, charmingly filched from Shakespeare, used to be The Midsummer Night's Classic — back when it actually was.
Since the '70s, though, baseball's mismanagement of most things
baseball has reduced the game to a desperate, shrill, uninspired mess
of mismatched uniforms (cool) and misconstrued priorities (exceedingly
uncool).
The All-Star Game was born in Chicago, in 1933. When
baseball had two truly separate leagues, the All-Star Game was a fierce
affair — league pride actually a) existed and b) fueled the energy of
the yearly contest. Players played to win. But under current
commissioner and former Milwaukee used-car salesman Bud Selig,
the All-Star Game has lost its way. So bad had it become that Selig
was forced to halt the game with the score tied a few years ago.
Selig's solution for the recent All-Star morass was to award
home-field advantage to the league whose team won the game. The
American League's no-longer-just-recent dominance means that AL teams
always have an edge in the World Series. The last time they lost the
All-Star Game was in 1996, halfway through the Clinton administration.
In a recent poll, fans let Selig know it's a dopey idea. Bud Selig has
never met a contrivance he's confused for innovation, fans' powerless
tolerance for genuine excitement.
Last night's game, though, went much further into the frenetic
pursuit of relevancy.. Baseball's in a tough spot — steroid scandals,
new stadiums with empty expensive seats beamed everywhere on
television, and continued competition from thousands of other pastimes
besides the National one.
What does baseball do? They hype a campaign linking baseball with community service called "This Is Beyond Baseball."
By urging fans to go "beyond baseball" and do good deeds, they're
insisting that baseball is the pass-Go/Collect $200 starting point of
all good deeds.
According to MLB.com, "it began with the thunderous hooves of the famous Budweiser Clydesdales
roaring around the full perimeter warning track starting at the
right-field foul pole. Then came the introduction of the All-Stars
Among Us, the individuals who drew more than 750,000 votes by fans as
those most deserving of representing their local MLB clubs due to a
singular act of public service and generosity."
Drink to the Heroes!
In other words, a blatant Budweiser plug in a stadium named for the Anheiser-Busch
company featuring people representing not themselves, their campaigns
or communities, but the baseball teams they live closest too. Driving
home the point, they took the field not in their own clothing or shirts
and jackets of the organizations their hard work has created — but
officially-licensed team jerseys.
A video showing the five living U.S. presidents and a few plucky Americans doing things like driving cancer kids to far away chemo sessions said it loud and clear: charity, kindness and community are uniquely American.
"As a sport," President Obama opines in the pre-game video, "baseball has always embodied
the values that make America great. … Together, let's strive to make
America a model for other nations. And in the meantime, enjoy the game."
Model American tosses one in the dirt…
Jingoism
has a new face — we no longer police the world. Now, we moralize it.
Well, we did that before, in grand geopolitical broadsides. Now,
though, even random acts of kindness have been franchised by the
stars-and-stripes.
What did baseball itself think of its hugfest? "Over the top. Unbelievable," said Tim Brosnan, Major League Baseball's
executive vice president of business. "It was overwhelming. You saw
history.
"No major sport has ever taken its biggest marketing platform and
dedicated it to the 30 people in local communities. This is the first
major sport to do it, and we did it with the cooperation of the
president of the United States."
If a little humility goes a long way, we probably pull up short of the goal on an absolutely zero dollop.
During last night's interminable pre-game ceremonies, baseball might as well have channelled Sally Field and screamed "you like me, you really like me!!"
Which
are community heroes, and which are simply baseball heroes. If the
lines are blurred, baseball has you right where it wants you.
Look…it's
great that there are so many people in this country putting others
before themselves. They knit caps for cancer patients…raise money
for cerebral palsy research…customize care packages for soldiers far
away. That's great, wonderful.
What's not so wonderful is Major League Baseball exploiting
these good people to sell its product. It's not enough to simply honor
them. They have to constantly, insistently, crassly tie them to
synergistic orgies of beer sponsors, weekly magazines, military
flyovers, and the money-printing merchandise of each and every MLB team.
In
fact, how much easier would these 30 peoples lives be if their cities
hadn't collectively squandered tens of billions of dollars on the
teams' stadiums over the years. Or if people had money to donate
instead of spending hundreds of dollars each time their family makes it
to a major-league game?
Baseball teams — and certainly other sports' clubs (see Ratner, Nets, p.r. expenditures, Brooklyn)
have learned to spend a little to rip-off a lot. In this case, an
on-line contest, thirty baseball jerseys, some local donations and
contributions — that's all it takes to open the public coffers
whenever Bud Selig's people need a helping hand.
It's The New Midsummer Night's Classic, custom-designed and logo-adorned for the age we live in.