New in PJ Media:
Every fan thinks that there is something special about his favorite sports team, but in the case of the Oakland Athletics, since the early 1970s I’ve assumed that it was the flashy green and gold uniforms, the quaint nineteenth-century-vintage nickname, the long list of big personalities who have played for or managed the team, and so on. Only when I saw the video that started circulating Tuesday of the fan who ran out onto the field in Oakland, circled the bases and returned to the stands without anyone stopping him did I realize: the Oakland A’s are America. No, not America’s team. They’re not even Oakland’s team. I mean that the Athletics are a kind of parable of America over the last half-century. And that’s not a good sign.
You can even go back to 1968, the A’s first year in Oakland. Like the United States in comparison to the ancient nations of Europe and Asia, the A’s arrived relatively late on the scene, but they were a team that was going places. In the early Seventies, they won three straight world championships and became baseball’s dominant team, despite the pretensions of their chief rival, a team known as the Reds (whom they beat for their first title in 1972). The 1972 World Series, in fact, although it was presented as a hippies vs. squares culture war series at the time, was actually the perfect Cold War analogy: the mustachioed, vibrant, flamboyant, fighting, undisciplined team (Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Rollie Fingers) somehow prevailed against the staid, colorless, workmanlike Reds (Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench) who were widely assumed to be the superior assemblage.
But soon afterward, the A’s hit a wall, as the abolition of the reserve clause and the advent of free agency led to the untimely demise of the championship team. Yeah, think Vietnam. But that wasn’t the end for the Oakland Athletics. They rebounded to get to the World Series three years in a row again, although they only won it in the second of those three years, 1989. Just weeks before the Berlin Wall came down, they became world champions again, but since then, the A’s have had some fine teams but haven’t really done anything.
The U.S. hasn’t done much of anything since 1989, either. Yes, you can bring all your charts and graphs and talk to me about semiconductors and whatnot, but none of that changes the fact that what we have since 1989 are a couple of lengthy and failed military excursions into Iraq and Afghanistan, and above all, the steady advance of Marxism and statism after we all had thought that Communism had been defeated.
There is more. Read the rest here.
Pray Hard says
America and all of Western Civilization is in an islamocommunist malaise …
cornelius says
Like Robert, I was a huge baseball fan when I was a kid in the late 60s. Rediscovered my love for the game in the early 80s….lost interest in the late 90s….became newly fanatical around 2011….and have again lost interest just in the last 3 years. Much of it has to do with the relative success (or lack thereof) of the local franchise….(football, baseball, basketball or hockey, I’m a hometown fan only….could never root for another team).
I get the impression from Robert’s lamentations that he’s as depressed about the state of the country as I am. Momentarily heartened by the Bud Light fiasco….but overall, it doesn’t look good. Academia is not just a lost cause, it’s a monstrosity. And one by one, corporate America and the professional orgs have all been ‘captured’ (medicine seems to have particularly gone off the rails).
What is the answer? Keep fighting, keep your sense of humor, and when things look particularly bleak, revel in the love and gratitude you feel for family and close friends.
Emilie Green says
In the context of your article I noticed this – the fan ran the bases in reverse order. Not backwards in the style of Red Soxer Jimmy Piersall (1963, celebrating his 100th MLB home run), but as in an undoing of things.
America too is going backward,
What’s happening to America is the result of conspiracy, of a deliberate plan by global elites to place all nations under their thumb. The prize had always been the US. Europe long ago ensnared itself in collectivism and therefore was captured. But the US was different. Its constitution putatively limited government expansion without the consent of the governed. The document would do its job but only if the people who served in the government honored their oath of adherence (Article VI) and the people at large only chose people to whom the oath meant something.
Knock out that constitution and voila, the US too can be captured. And that’s what has happened. The Constitution has been knocked out by being utterly ignored. Proof? Look at the size of the fedgov behemoth. If the Constitution were obeyed as written, fedgov would be no more that one-tenth its present size.
Oakland has long been an area bent on collectivism. This came to my attention as I acquired political awareness back in the 1970s. The voters of Oakland had chosen a guy name Ron Dellums to represent them in Congress. Look him up and you’ll know why Oakland and America are where they are.
Emilie Green says
My goof. While Piersall did play for the Red Sox (1950, 1952-1958), on the day of his base-running celebration antic (June 23, 1963) he played for the NY Mets.
Clifford Fodor says
The only good news is the Second Coming of Jesus. The Bible predicted that the world will become more and more corrupt with violence everywhere at the end of the world.
somehistory says
“Texas Rangers remain only Major League Baseball team to resist hosting a Pride night despite annual pressure
The team has not hosted any sort of celebration of the kind since 2003.”
https://www.theblaze.com/news/texas-rangers-mlb-pride-night