Each year that the Cubs make a run at the playoffs, we see famous Cubs' fans become more and more visible, as the cameras take the time to search the crowd for fans that might find a simple trip to the ballpark as too much of a hassle, during a losing season. Some are always there. Bill Murray, John Cusack, and Vince Vaughn are varyingly common fixtures at Wrigley Field, and very good actors. Another Cubs fan, whose work I'm not so fond of, is George Will.
George Will is the Pulitzer-winning conservative columnist who can now be seen on ABC's This Week each Sunday. He frequently quotes Milton Friedman, whose economic idealogy has been the basis for conservative undermining of government. He's a regular addition at Cato's functions, a libertarian institution that advocates "free-for-all" markets. This is Will's politics.
Ken Burns' famous Baseball series on PBS contains input from many people who are not ball players, owners, etc. Some are just important, recognizable people, whose lives can be traced by baseball. One of those people is George Will, professional conservative.
But in the Baseball documentary, Will is not doing his job, discussing politics. He's just a baseball fan. He's talking about something he cares about. When he does, when he's forced by his love for the game to reconsider his ideology, his views are very different:
"55, 56 (now 75) million people pay to get into ballparks every year. Not one of them buys a ticket to see an owner. I happen to be a semi-Marxist in this field, I believe in the labor theory of value. The players are the labor, they create the economic value. They ought to get the lion's share of the rewards."
Politics is, you see, simply Will's job. Baseball is his passion. When one advocates for Friedman's economic ideologies, he advocates for market manipulation, advantaged to the strong and wealthy. That would mean that as far as his business is concerned, he should want his favorite team's pitcher, one strike from throwing a perfect game, to be given an advantage. The market's "benefit of the doubt" given to the stronger on that day. Not so for baseball.
In a salute to umpire Bruce Froemming this last August, he laudes Froemming's integrity... Integrity that cost Milt Pappas a perfect game in 1972. In what Will love's he is for umpiring, which would translate to regulation in the political world.
I would never advocate for George Will as President of the United States. I don't believe that governing, or our systems of doing so, are his true love. But I would like to ask him, this one time in probably the least flattering tone one could have imagined, to please buy the Cubs? It is the team he loves, in the game he loves, and he would nourish it to make it successful. Because that is what you do when you love something.
Perhaps a round through baseball, for those conservatives who love it (not Bush, keep him away), could change the way they think, as well. Teamwork, personal sacrifice, fair play, trades agreed upon by both parties, and the most important measure of your trip to the field being that you return home, are good values. It's time that conservatives learn them, and if they already know them, carry them over to other parts of their lives.
1 comment:
Maybe George Will realizes something you don't about the difference between politics and baseball. In politics, there's nothing so important at stake :)
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