It Ain't Dodgeball, Folks!

I love baseball.  I have ever since I was a boy.  And I'm an ardent fan of the Red Sox.  So I look forward to those occasions when a Red Sox game is broadcast on a national network.  And this weekend featured two such broadcasts.  Saturday afternoon's game featured a fine outing by pitcher John Lackey and some excellent fielding by Dustin Pedroia.  And they won! 

Sunday night we shifted over to ESPN--and a night game.  I settled in expecting another good game, and was sorely disappointed.  Not so much because of the outcome (the Yankees won, 9-6), but rather because of the showed baseball at its worst.

If you are not a baseball fan you may not know that Alex Rodriguez, A-Rod, has been found guilty of using performance enhancing drugs and then trying to cover it up.  He has been given a 211 game suspension.  But due to a technicality, he is allowed to still play while he goes through the appeals process.  There is a great deal of controversy about it among sports fans.  Even some Yankees fans feel it would be best if he did not play.  But he is playing.  And Sunday, at the top of the second inning, when he got up to bat, he faced four consecutive pitches thrown by Ryan Dempster that seemed designed to hit him.  The fourth one did.  Dempster claims he didn't do it on purpose, but many folks doubt that is the case, including the ESPN announcers for the game.

That's bad enough--but what disturbs me even more was (and is) the reaction of the fans at Fenway Park.  They cheered.  First they booed him when A-Rod when he got up to bat, and then when he got hit, they cheered.  I agree, A-Rod shouldn't be playing.  I am saddened that he and others have besmirched the game I love, but that doesn't excuse Dempster's behavior, if he did indeed hit him intentionally, nor does it excuse the behavior of the fans.

I don't normally address sports on this blog, but some things transcend the world of games and play.  For our games reflect larger societal attitudes.  As the cameras panned across the stands on Sunday night, I couldn't help but notice just how many children were in the crowd.  Which is great.  I remember well cheering at Fenway for one of my boyhood heroes, Carl Yazstremski.  And the Red Sox helped me learn some important lessons about perseverance and hope.  All those years of losing, yet still carrying on!  I can't help but wonder what lesson those children were learning as their Dads and Moms booed and cheered. 

We fans are fond of saying baseball needs to clean up its act.  And so it does.  But maybe we do too.