An Outside View: Just a Bunch of Bull

Politics. Scandal. Angry debate. Emotional rhetoric. Finger pointing. Grandstanding. And finally an apology. An apt description of the General Assembly’s debate over how to spend lottery proceeds you might think. Although that’s sad but true, it also describes the latest Baseball Hall of Fame debacle. By now, you have surely heard about the Baseball Hall of Fame canceling a celebration of the 15th anniversary of the release of the baseball movie, Bull Durham, which starred Timothy Robbins and Susan Sarandon. The reason given by Hall of Fame president Dale Petroskey was Robbins’ and Sarandon’s outspoken criticism of President Bush and the war in Iraq. His logic was that such criticism undermined our troops who were over there fighting the war. If you are scoring with me at home, mark this one as an “E” on Petroskey. Reaction was swift and predictable. The Hollywood crowd and liberals around the country cried “Foul.” They screamed about First Amendment rights. They exaggerated the threat of “black lists” and McCarthyism. To hear them tell it, we were in a time warp and reliving the 1950’s and the Red Scare all over again. Before dealing with the baseball side of this issue, let’s set the record straight. This is not a freedom of speech issue. When people like Robbins and Sarandon use their celebrity status to speak out on issues, they must be prepared to accept the consequences of their words. The framers of our Constitution offered no guarantees as to how people must react to that free speech. Private citizens, including Mr. Petroskey, are entitled to respond to such free speech in any lawful manner they choose. That includes uninviting Mr. Robbins to Cooperstown. Their right to free association is equally as strong as his right to speak his mind. Just out of curiosity, I wonder where Mr. Robbins and his liberal friends were when Jimmy the Greek and Al Campanis exercised their right to free speech. Petoskey, like a shortstop who boots a ball then throws it away, made two errors on one play. First, why should there even be a salute to Bull Durham? As movies go it was okay at best. A classic it wasn’t. I guess I shouldn’t’ be surprised that the Hall celebrates mediocrity considering the number of .260 and .270 hitters that have been enshrined while one of the game’s greatest players, Pete Rose, is left on the outside looking in. The Hall of Fame is about real baseball, not the kind on the silver screen. Baseball players have the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and actors have the Walk of Fame in Hollywood. There’s no reason to mix the two in my book. The second error was creating this furor by politicizing the great game of baseball. It is our national pastime and it belongs to all of the people, not just those who support the war in Iraq. By trying to keep politics out of Cooperstown, Petroskey achieved just the opposite. He put baseball’s politics on the front pages of our nation’s newspapers and on the six o’clock news. Even people who disagree with Robbins question Petoskey’s logic, especially when you consider that he has invited well-known Republicans to speak on politics at other Hall of Fame functions. It seems he’s not so much against mixing politics and baseball after all. That is as long as it is the right politics. Robbins countered that he did not know that baseball is a Republican sport. I had never really thought about it in those terms but maybe it is a Republican sport. The game is ultra conservative and resists any sort of change. And it’s no secret that the Republican Party is the party of the rich. When you look at players’ salaries that are in the upper stratosphere somewhere, surely they are Republicans and lining up in support of President Bush’s tax cuts that benefit the wealthy. The team owners are multimillionaires who believe in taking from the little guy, the fan, and giving to the rich, namely themselves. At least one owner, former Texas Rangers owner George Bush, used baseball as a launching pad to the Presidency of the United States and yes he is a Republican. And now we discover that even the Hall of Fame is headed up by a Republican. Those pesky pachyderms are stealing our national pastime. It must be a well-conceived conspiracy. There needs to be an investigation.