Baseball and Bail
Baseball is the new testing ground for suspending constitutional rights. In a volatile yet mostly harmless inquisition, many professional baseball players are being treated like the inmates at Guantanamo Bay or any other secret detention facility we are supposed to ignore as good Americans. The climate has changed from a dreamy Mediterranean summer democracy to a frigid Siberian winter of fascism. Those brought before an official, either legislative or judicial, are presumed guilty until innocent. And this doesn’t seem to bug but a handful of radicals. The people who want to preserve baseball by disallowing instant replay and steroid raging demi-gods have found an ally with those who believe foreigners are not enemy combatants based on American Intelligence and little proof.
Maybe a good way to solve both of these problems would be to allow those who are held without trial or bail to enjoy one of America’s past times. Yes, there must be enough detainees to field a decent league of five or six teams. It would be a shorter season, but a great way to monitor the treatment of prisoners and hopefully curb the potential amount of steroids being injected by our American baseball players.
If America is to survive we need to adopt values we have long ignored: the transparency of trials, the joy of seeing grown men hit a ball with a piece of wood, the confidence of an umpire or judge to make the correct call based upon the evidence presented before them. And this is a call that can only be made at home plate because the game is on the line.
