I have been a Boston Red sox fan for over seventy years,
through thick and thin, through years and years of world series drought, through
Bucky Dent and Bill Buckner, Through Ted Williams’ middle finger, and on and
on. I almost caught a Ted Williams home
run in 1957, but that’s another story.
The Red Sox backing of Black Lives Matter, with a great big
billboard, and much of major league baseball genuflecting to the Black Lives
Matter movement, a Marxist group which is engaged in destroying the history,
culture and heritage of our country, is the final straw to drive me away from
the Red Sox, and from MLB in general.
On the surface, this acquiescence to the BLM mob by the Red
Sox, MLB and sports in general, is justified by swallowing the koolaid, and
accepting that BLM are a valid movement for racial and social justice,
addressing the terrible, but anecdotal, killing of several high-profile Black
Americans. Indeed, BLM hide behind the
mantle of social justice, but the writings and pronouncements of their leaders,
and their violence in the streets, belies any beneficent civil rights
goals. They equate racism with
capitalism, and want to destroy our American, capitalist based, civilization.
Being a pragmatist, it is apparent to me, that the Red Sox,
and sports in general, have done their cost/benefit analyses, and decided to
proactively back the Black Lives Matter movement, notwithstanding its Marxist
aims, rather than risk a financial backlash, or worse, from the current “woke”
cancel culture.
Well, if this results in glorifying and genuflecting to
Marxists/socialists/anarchists, who want to destroy our country, they have lost
me, and many other Americans like me, as fans. The same goes for the NFL NBA and NHL, if they
start kneeling to the mob. Manchester
United, here I come (maybe?)
Humans once
bludgeoned each other with clubs. The
Romans became more “civilized” and changed the “sport” to gladiators and
lions. Medieval knights became gentler,
did away with the lions, and battered each other with lances and maces. All to the roar of the crowd.
We moderns have
evolved too. The baseball game we watch
is no longer around a dead ball and dead bat, on a sometimes muddy field, with
Ty Cobb coming in high with sharpened spikes, or Roger Hornsby hustling his way
to the second high batting average ever (Ty Cobb was first).
Ty Cobb’s and Roger
Hornsby’s maximum salaries in the 1920’s were $25.000. Babe Ruth made $70,000 in 1929. Ted Williams made $100,000 in the 1950’s to
the consternation of Red Sox fans. Carl Yastrzemski made $167,000 in
1971. Stephen Strasburg made over
$36,000,000 in 2019.
Our real gladiator
sport, NFL football, probably comes closest to the gladiators in the Roman
Coliseum. It’s big, black (for the most
part), millionaires, taking a knee and disrespecting the colors, and pounding
their over protected bodies. No more
leather helmets and shoulder pads for them.
Our milquetoast culture requires protective pods.
So the ersatz
cardboard cutout figures and simulated crowd noise my be the harbinger of the
next iteration of “sports”. Perhaps
played on massive flat screens by manipulating life-like ersatz competitors
with appropriate (non-profane), grunts and exhortations.
Ray Gruszecki
July 29, 2020
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