Imagine if we had baseball on 4th of July
I’m sitting on my couch. It’s Sunday, July 5th. It’s about 1 Pm. I am brutally hung over. It’s 94 degrees outside. All I want to do is fall asleep on the couch to mundane meaningless sports while I crush a bag of Cooler Ranch. This would be true for any particular hot summer Sunday hangover, but we are in the middle of a global pandemic and are about to eclipse 4 months since our last American professional sporting event. (Golf is a game not a sport). Oh and by the way we just spent the three day weekend celebrating America’s Birthday. And where was America’s past time? Fucking up their summer camp, scrambling as their players opt out like flies.
The reason this has weighed so heavily on me is because of the “what if” scenario. Baseball, The MLB, had at one point basically promised to be playing on July 4th. And the country cheered. Hip, hip, hooray. Baseball, a dieing game in America will provide us with an escape we have all been searching for. The game we have forgotten about that has been surpassed by its competitors after a century of defining who Americans are will once again lead us as a nation with some semblance of hope.
Remember after 911 in Yankee stadium and the President throwing out the first pitch. I get chills just thinking about it. David Ortiz’s famous “our fucking city” speech after the Boston Marathon bombing. That will forever live in your mind. Baseball, in its darkest hour had the opportunity to take center stage on the America’s birthday and attempt to help heal the nation that birthed her. Instead, they shrugged a shoulder and pissed on our shoes while drinking Corona free champaign out of golden cleats looking at us like we owe them something. All over what?!
No one really even knows. Money is the easy answer, but it’s like when you get in a fight with your wife, you don’t talk for 2 days and forget what the fight was actually about because it was really over years of built up animosity you’ve been pushing down and pushing down and pushing down until one day you’re given the opportunity to lash out, then pride and spite take hold and you’ll never relinquish the fake “lead” you’ve built up in your head. You let the dishes pile up and only walk the dog if it’s accompanied with a passive aggressive, snide, shit head little comment; watch TV in separate rooms, make dinner, but the way you God Damn like it; and then one day you’re sitting on the couch, hung over, 30 pounds over weight, wanting to watch the game, but the world is burning and handful divas let the lawyers make decisions so I’m stuck watching “A League of Their Own” while I bleed Budweiser out my eyeballs on the fucking Sunday of 4th OF JULY WEEKEND!
Baseball, You’re dead to me.
- R. McPhee