I like my country like I like my sports

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By: Karl Frank Jr.

“Let the players play!” is the old adage, and it is a good one.  As a matter of fact, I like it.  I like it a lot.  Especially in baseball.  A good game is designed like a well-written novel.  The suspense and anticipation of every pitch, nod, wink, and stolen base can keep a true sport fan on the edge of their seat until the climactic final out.  And while there is no one way to write a novel, or play a baseball game, there is a general set of rules and regulations that everyone agrees to play by.  These rules did not appear in a magical rule book by some invisible hand overnight.  The rules of the game evolved over a period of a hundred years, and even longer if you delve in to the history of any sport that involves a ball and a stick.  If it was not for these rules that everyone agrees on before the first pitch is thrown, and the umpires to enforce them, the game that we have come to know and love would not exist –- the same applies to my country, the United States of America….

There are few things more sweet than the swing of Ken Griffey Jr.’s bat.  In 2008, he started the season seven home runs short of 600, and his last home run, number 599, had been on May 31.  The drama and anticipation of that 600th blast was on every baseball fan’s mind until finally, on June 10, 2008, this pure athlete took the Marlin’s Mark Hendrickson over the wall for his place in the history books.

One has to wonder what Griffey’s numbers would look like if he had not spent all of that time on the bench with nagging injuries – but even still, 600 hundred home runs is something that only 6 of over 16,000 former Major League Baseball players had ever managed before.  That moment in time was a feat of personal greatness by any athletic standard.

However, Griffey’s greatness did not mystically appear out of nowhere.  It was not his inborn natural talents that made him a household name in America with millions of dollars in his bank account and a place in the record books.  Instead, he was a man with a passion for the game that thrived in a system that was devised for him and others to succeed within.  To better illustrate this point, read what Sir Isaac Newton wrote of the French philosopher Descartes, “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”  Griffey was a giant standing on the shoulders of the giants before him, including a man named Ken Griffey Sr.

Yet, the system that Griffey has thrived in is not perfect, and it has never been perfect.  Individual players and sometimes even whole teams have attempted to swipe the legs right from under the giants of Alexander Cartright and his “Knickerbocker Rules,” Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Stan “The Man” Musial, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, and more.  The 1919 White Sox, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Hal Chase, and the 1877 Louisville Greys, just to name a few, are black eyes on the history of baseball, and in many cases, almost brought down the game all together.

“So what!” you might say.  It is just a game.  Well true, it is just a game.  But it is a game that millions of fans watch every year.  In my home town of St. Louis, three million people occasionally walk through those gates to watch men play catch and hit baseballs.  Does anyone believe for one second that if the sport was anything goes; no rules, no umpires, no equipment regulations, that anyone would pay anywhere from $10 to $2600 for a ticket to watch – most less three million people?

Griffey may have lived as a man capable of hitting 600 home runs in something called the Major Leagues, but without a fair playing field, and fair expectations from the league, the owners, the umpires, the players, and most of all, the fans, a capable man is all he would have ever been.

Now, a baseball purist may say, “Keep your politics out of my game!” so I will keep it short, but this game of baseball is a perfect metaphor for what has made the United States of America the greatest country in the world.  It is not the individual, or the people, or the politicians, or the businesses, or the charities, etcetera…it is the imperfect, yet fantastic system of the United States of America that has allowed for the greatness of its citizens.  Like Griffey, the previously mentioned individual entities may have been capable of greatness, but if they were born, or chartered, or licensed, or elected in Pakistan, their chances of reaching greatness would have been nearly non-existent.

The great system, built from the beginning on a capitalist economy, where ingenuity and achievement can thrive, combined with a socially minded genius of a government document call the Constitution of the United States, where everyone (in theory) is afforded the right to work and live on a equal playing field in order to assist them in their pursuit of happiness, have worked together over the last couple of centuries to make the USA the best country in the history of the planet.

Sure, we have had our black eyes.  None more prevalent than the last thirty years of greed and corruption, but they have been plentiful.  From the colonial merchants who ignored business regulations; to the Alien and Sedition act of 1798, to the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the 19th century, to the Tea-pot Dome Scandal, to Watergate, and the Iran-Contra affair, and the financial sector and corporate take-over of the country in the last 25 to 30 years.  But, the system, our Constitution and form of government, was devised in such a way that it could mature along with the society under which it governs.

The foundation was provided.  The checks and balances were put in to place.  The structure of government was set forth.  When weaknesses were discovered, when hypocrisies confronted, when the good, honest, and sometimes less fortunate people were found to be abused and controlled by too strong of a corrupt and greedy concentrated power, the holes in the system exploited by the cheaters were plugged by the people of the system and our great country continued to thrive.

It is very true that capitalism on an equal playing field works from the position of supply, demand, and pricing, but it is only compassionate capitalism and federal republican governance that provides for the allowance of right and wrong, good and evil on a country-wide, systemic basis, with the definition of right and wrong, good and evil always left to the devices of the electorate, the people, and the times.  (An example of the changing definition of slavery can be found in our own history books.  Consider how slavery was once considered a moral right allowed by God to those who had the ability to enslave.  Some may still believe that, but we have an electorate and a federal government in the 21st Century that says otherwise.)

So yes, I like my country like I like my sports.  I like a level playing field, where the wind blows out and in for both teams at some point in the game; where a ball is a ball and a strike is a strike; where everyone has the ability and opportunity to succeed if they decide to put forth the necessary effort; where those who aspire for greatness and wealth still have that ability when they work for this goal by honest and ethical means, or suffering the consequences if they venture down the low and dirty road.

I like a country and a sport where a home run by Ken Griffey Jr., Albert Pujols, and Hank Aaron means more to the fans than a home run by Alex Rodriquez and Barry Bonds; where a dollar of profit made by Costco means more to our country than a dollar made at the expense of honest people by Senator Phil Gramm, the many misguided crooks on Wall Street, and the board room of AIG — where it is the honest people who suffer the consequences of their greedy, cheating ways.

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