‘Pinkwashing’ Was Just the Beginning
Why I won’t be watching the World Series this year.
The Fall Classic has become utterly unwatchable. As a fan I hate to finally admit that, but it’s true. It’s been increasingly difficult over the last several years to keep patience with the perennial appearance of big market teams, the achingly slow pace of four-hour games with very little offense, and the increasingly confused and garbled ramblings of Tim McCarver. But all of this hasn’t been enough to put me off the Series yet.
What’s made the Series impossible for me to watch this year is that it’s become more of a showcase for the Awareness Industrial Complex than for the best baseball in the world.
Here’s a partial list of the things MLB wants to make you aware of: cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, skin cancer, ALS, autism, returning veterans, wounded warriors, the greatness of Jackie Robinson, the greatness of Roberto Clemente, the greatness of Mariano Rivera, gay kids and kids getting bullied, kids playing baseball in inner cities, kids at the Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs in inner cities, building Habitat for Humanity homes in inner cities, the Boston Childrens’ Hospital, the Boston Marathon bombing, and Superstorm Sandy.
To drive the point home, MLB has ‘dedicated’ each game of this World Series to one or more particular cause, elevating the on-field pomp and circumstance to a fever pitch. Of course this comes after a full season of 30 teams playing 162 games each, with every team sponsoring its own charities and causes and often promoting the pet causes of individual players as well.
I don’t mean to suggest that any of these causes are unworthy of the league’s support or attention, but the game is only so long. There’s only one ceremonial first pitch. There’s (usually) only 27 outs to make on each side. MLB has its games packed so full of awareness now that even Ken Rosenthal’s bow ties are a charitable cause. Yes, the 15 seconds he spends reporting from the clubhouse has its own charity banner at the bottom of the screen.
I am an adult who lives in the world of adults. I was fully “aware” of all of these things before Baseball made them all causes célèbres. In fact, I’ve already got a pretty serious case of compassion fatigue over our country’s too-common mass shootings and natural disasters. Between NPR, the nonprofits in my inbox and mailbox, the friends raising funds for 10k runs or their kids’ schools and the dozens of Kickstarter links in my Twitter feed I literally can’t go an hour without someone asking me for money.
Sitting down in the evening to watch a game is meant to be an escape from all that.
But perhaps the most troublesome aspect of Baseball’s limitless compassion is the disingenuousness of it all. When that little girl in the commercial asks Frank Robinson if she can ‘be a hall of fwamer when I gwow up’ he ought to look her in the eye and say No, you’re a girl. Because that’s the way the world really works.
After several years of partnership with Stand Up to Cancer, I as a fan still don’t even know what that organization does exactly, only that it is funded in large part by people making charges with Mastercard. Likewise with Bank of America: they can’t just make a bulk donation to a veterans’ organization but instead donate incrementally each time someone uses the hashtag #troopthanks. Because what good is charity if it doesn’t buy you PR?
Also particularly disturbing is Baseball’s seemingly selective compassion after tragedies of a national scope. Because Boston has one of baseball’s best teams as well as one of its largest markets, the Boston Marathon bombing has received quite a bit of attention all season, and especially in the postseason.
Contrast this with the Oklahoma City bombing, which was much larger in scale, but did not occur in a baseball market and happened at a time when Baseball itself was at something of a nadir after the 1994 players’ strike. There was very little response. The post- 9/11 national compassion script hadn’t been written yet.
Likewise, the MLB gathered a tremendous response to the Joplin tornado, but very had relatively little to say after Hurricane Katrina.
Our National Game is painfully aware that the nation in which it takes place is sharply divided about a lot of things. Since 9/11, Baseball has made it its business to involve itself with things that are inherently political in the least political way possible. The League supports the troops while pretending that things like Guantanamo don’t exist. They honor the NYPD without as much as a nod to Stop-and-Frisk, and then honor Jackie Robinson without noticing that there are precious few black faces in the crowd at MLB parks across the country.
It was easy for the league to rise to the occasion after the Boston Marathon, where foreigners used bombs. The issue is cut-and-dried- the bad guys vs. the good guys, Us vs. Them. But when an American uses a gun to create mass havoc and kill as many as possible, the response is muted because guns are a hot-button issue and always have been.
This was even true when that mass havoc turned up right in MLB’s backyard after the Navy Yard shootings. The Nats’ game was canceled that day, and the stadium lots became staging areas, but afterward the response from the League and its national broadcasters was minimal.
So after three solid hours of having my awareness raised by Game 2 of the Series last night I’m probably going to skip watching the weekend’s games. And in the process I’ll continue becoming less of a baseball fan and more of just an Orioles fan.
Just thought that Major League Baseball should be aware.
