The National Pasttime

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When I was in college, I wanted to be a sportscaster. I watched any sport I could get -- Basketball, Football, Hockey, NASCAR, Olympic sports, you name it. 

But once I realized that sportscasting or sports-writing wasn't for me, I pretty much dropped them all except for Football (sometimes), figure skating and gymnastics (very occasionally) and my first love (sports-wise) Baseball. I'm a dyed in the wool, card carrying Mets fanatic, but I love to watch baseball of all sorts (MLB, of course, college baseball, minor league baseball, World Baseball Classic, even replays and Little League). 

So what's left sports-wise regularly (as opposed to "I'm bored and nothing's on TV") is Football (which is once a week) and Baseball. 

But lately, the left is taking over everything and politicizing sports. It started with Colin Kaepernick. I wrote a blog post on that on a different blog. I have to be honest, I never thought Mr. Kaepernick was a very good quarterback. And as his value was dropping in the football world, he decided to appeal to the lowest common denominator in the millennial world -- the "entitled", the ungrateful, the young people who are removed enough from their family's immigration to this country that they have no idea what their ancestors left behind, why they endured terrible hardships (often being stripped of money and dignity). But for some reasons, the only people that leftists think have suffered are people with dark skin. 

With the schools teaching students to hate their country and their parents, children are not learning to be grateful. Too many parents have no idea what their children are learning. Too many children (who are now growing or have grown) think that the world owes them. They are too self-centered. They never learned how to help others. They never learned that taking care of yourself or others is very rewarding, sometimes emotionally rewarding, sometimes financially rewarding. They never heard their parents say "money doesn't grow on trees" and they never had to do chores to earn their allowances. They never had a paper route (a job once held mostly by boys) or a babysitting job (a job once held mostly by teenage girls). They never learned that in order to buy things you need to earn money. 

So when they learn about Socialism, it clicks with them (particularly if they aren't learning the history of Capitalism and Marxism). They don't know that socialism has failed wherever it has been tried. They don't know that Capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty". They don't know that Socialism/Communism/Marxism is a ponzi scheme where most people lose everything. 

Dennis Prager's "Prager U" has many videos about socialism including this one . They helped me see what socialism really is. Until then, I thought socialism meant that the government would get you a job in your field and pay you what you needed to live. But that's not what socialism is. Socialism is a system where the government owns and controls the "means of production". They own the companies. 

When people own the companies, they make money by pleasing their customers. If they make things their customers want, they make sales. If they make too many, more than people will buy, they lose money. The government, on the other hand, doesn't have this motivation. So they end up making to much of some things and too little of others (like toilet paper). And, because the "customers" aren't paying, they end up waiting on lines for any product they need. 

So back to sports. This year, there was so much politics in sports that I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I wasn't exactly boycotting, I just wasn't in the mood. I watched the Mets (my favorite team) but nothing else and I didn't watch the post-season. And I just don't feel like watching football this year. Seeing people "take a knee" for anything other than running out the clock feels wrong to me. To me, this year at least, sports is not my escape, not my way to enjoy something that in the scheme of things doesn't mean much. It took on a dark, evil tinge and I just couldn't watch it. When politics invades entertainment (which is supposed to make you feel good), entertainment no longer entertains. 

BTW, Baseball was the one sport that mostly avoided that. And that is why I at least partially stayed with it, despite how miserably the Mets did this year.