September 2, 2010
DEMOCRACY OF THE DEAD:
The conservative love affair with baseball (Caroline May, 9/02/10, The Daily Caller )
Fred Schwarz, of the National Review, theorizes that a major reason the game appeals to the conservative psyche is that it does not change. Where football and basketball have altered some of their rules over time to increase the intensity of their games, the distance from home plate to first base will always be ninety feet and a foul ball will always be a foul ball.“[B]aseball has more of a laws-and-not-men vibe, in the sense that penalties or fouls or violations called by officials play a much smaller role in baseball than they do in football, basketball, or hockey (balks are the only thing that springs to mind),” Schwarz told The Daily Caller. “Among other things, this leaves less room for administrative overrides of the basic rules, such as allowing the top players four or five steps before taking a shot in the NBA. And statistics provide a more complete description of the game in baseball than they do in other sports, which appeals to the Charles Murray types.”
According to conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, conservatives love baseball because “it is so damn slow.” He said that the image of baseball as the game of conservatives is, however, half reality, half imagery.
“Bill Buckley once said his mission in life was to stop the world. Well, modern conservatives don’t want to stop it, they just want to slow it down and the perfect model is baseball."
In baseball, Babe Ruth and Albert Pujols are peers, irrespective of the years separating them.
