Initially, I thought today would just be another once-a-year bad day on the sporting calendar: The official opening of baseball season. Baseball's arrogance makes the military academies look benign. Baseball didn't integrate first — it was fourth, behind soccer (nearly half a century), hockey (two decades), and football (over a decade); basketball was "behind" only because professional basketball was just about a year old in 1947. Anyone who continues to claim that "hitting a baseball is the hardest skill in team sport" has never tried heading for goal — or, for that matter, in defense. Or saving a penalty (substantially lower percentage than even the "average" batting average). Or redirecting an ice-level shot from the point. And the less said about the "baseball field" and exclusion of (literally) all other activities, the better; that might begin getting into class and racial politics just a little bit too much for a fifty-fifth anniversary that's about a week from now.
So I'm grouchy about a sport that is little more than a communist plot to destroy the aerobic fitness and team ethic of America's youth. (Which I've been complaining about, in so many words, for nearly half a century.) But then…
…from the depths of the only city in America whose arrogance ordinarily surpasses baseball's…
Mr Donald J. Trump was invited to join half of the post-war governors of Illinois and become a convicted felon.1 Schade. Orangish hair… orangish skin… orangish jumpsuit… ya think he'll be in general population at Riker's?
All seriousness aside, though, what raises my eyebrow a bit is just how — well — tawdry it all is; and predictable; and demeaning to every good person who runs for office hoping to make a difference. Not the indictment, or the potential trial, or the potential conviction: The base motivation and sheer arrogance.
But at least it's no longer a completely bad day on the sporting calendar: Gladiator season has begun! Morituri te salutant! Pardon me while I go stock up on snacks…
- Half were actually convicted; most of the rest should have been, and the remainder either limited their corruption to morals (not law) or just weren't trying hard enough. And that's not even considering the legislature, the Chicago and Cook County governments, the judiciary and its own fine traditions. After a couple decades there, and after practicing law in Chicago (including before more than one judge who were hand-picked successors to those convicted in Greylord), and after having been in the federal government before that, I've encountered enough varieties of corrupt government officials to have a decent shot at recognizing them.