Baseball and politics should not mix

Published 4:27 pm Tuesday, April 6, 2021

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I have a more-than-passing interest in politics. I can’t remember when I didn’t know who held just about all of the important elected and appointed positions that affected me.

Campaign season and the high dudgeon it causes has always been fun. I enjoy the overblown rhetoric and the overwrought hand-wringing.

But when people talk to me about the time we spend together in this column, they routinely ask me why I don’t write more about politics.

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Today my politically-minded friends get their wish. Today, we are going to talk politics.

And I’m going to do something that makes a lot of local politicians angry, I’m going to disturb the narrative about a piece of legislation by telling the facts about it. That’s never popular with the political class.

The Georgia legislature passed a law requiring that people who want to cast a mail-in ballot have to prove they are who they say they are. And that proof is pretty easy to come by. It can be done with a driver’s license or with a free state I.D. That seems to make good sense to me. But we live in an age that no reasonable approach is beyond attack.

First, let’s all admit that Georgia is no bastion of conservative thought. Not only did it play a crucial role in putting Joe Biden in the White House, but it then elected two progressive Democrats to the United States Senate, thus completing the Democratic takeover of our elected branches of government.

So, what sort of reaction did this new law get? This, you ain’t gonna believe.

The three networks that we used to think of as our national networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC looked for creative ways to call the Georgia legislature a bunch of racists.

President Biden went full nuclear and called the new law Jim Crowe on steroids. He also said that the new law required Georgia polls to be closed just as working people got off work at 5 o’clock. And the claimed that it made giving water to people waiting in line illegal.

The problem is that none of that was true.

Georgians can still vote from 7:00 am until 7:00 pm, and if they are in line at 7:00 pm they get to vote. The only thing that illegal about water is that politicians can’t pass water out to people in line.

Trust me, there is little worse than politicians interfering with polling places on voting day. During the last local election cycle one candidate had small children running up to people as they were going in to vote.

And haven’t we all seen groups who pass out pre-marked ballots to tell you how to vote just in case you are too dumb to figure it out for yourself.

Delta Airlines fell in line with this new politically-correct version of the facts. They couldn’t wait to genuflect in the direction of Washington. However, in their haste to get in line with the politically correct crowd, they forgot that they forbid anyone from getting on board one of their jets without identification. Not only will you not be allowed on their airplane, you might just wind up in jail.

Worse yet was what baseball did. Georgia was scheduled to host both the All-Star game the major league baseball draft this year. No more. Bowing to political pressure, baseball pulled both of those from Georgia.

For what? More than forty states require that a person who wants to vote has to show some form of identification.

What’s wrong with that?

If a voter wants to get into an automobile and drive to vote, he has to have a form of ID. We call that a driver’s license. Try to get medical attention without identification.

Try to get something done at a government office without identification. Not happening.

You can’t even check a book out of a library without a library card, yet it is racist to require someone to show identification before they vote?

It is interesting to see how the rest of the world sees this. Go to YouTube and check out Sky News Australia. They regularly make fun of our foolish press corps. And I think theirs is the right approach.

I haven’t watched a lot of baseball in the last few years. But, as you know, when professional football players took a knee during our national anthem, I took a pass on their games.

I was beginning to jones for some summer sports, and baseball was just the ticket. I’m not so sure now. Politics and sports should not be mixed. When they tried, the television ratings for both professional football and professional basketball went into the tank.

Hey pro baseball—were you not paying any attention at all?

Hey Georgia, how is supporting the new left working out for you?

Greg Abbott it the governor of Texas. When he was asked to throw out the first pitch for the Texas Rangers baseball opener, not only did he decline, but he also told them that Texas would not be seeking to have the All-Star Game.

That’s a governor I can get behind.