After waiting all winter with much anticipation for the baseball season to start, I'm disappointed that recent events have diminished the joy I expected. It's hard to concentrate on the crack of the bat when state, national and world events conspire to divert my attention from the national pastime.
I live in Massachusetts, where Patriots' Day means Red Sox baseball at 11 a.m., followed by the Boston Marathon. At least that's what it used to mean. I'll never again be able to roll out of bed on this quirky, local holiday without a quick intake of breath and a flutter of apprehension, fearing that blood-spattered mayhem could erupt on what is usually a beautiful spring day.
Even before this cruel attack, though, matters that now seem minor in perspective crowded baseball from my consciousness. Consider: Political scandals blossom in the state Senate and Assembly, to no one's surprise, nearly everyone's amusement and U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's outrage; an apparent madman whips his lemming-like followers into a frenzy of hate directed at U.S. proposals to make the world safer and saner, and while Wayne LaPierre of the NRA is doing that, his fellow arms-rights advocate, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, threatens to attack America with nuclear weapons he insists he absolutely has the right to possess; Supreme Court justices grapple with recognizing human relationships that have been in existence since time immemorial; and giant sinkholes open up and swallow unwary people in their bedrooms.
None of that is really new, though — the drumbeats of these recurring events are just louder at the moment — and I could probably gloss over these examples of life as we unfortunately know it if they ended there.
But I was unlucky enough to stumble across a list of findings by an organization called Public Policy Polling that said, among other things, that 4 percent of the 1,247 registered American voters it surveyed said they believe that shape-shifting alien "lizard people" have taken on human form to control global political power. You could look it up.
I find it strange that anyone would actually admit such a belief, but I know that there is no accounting for last year's Bachmann-Perry-Santorum voters and their tea party brethren, who must surely have been the respondents.
For my own well-being, I try very hard not to dwell on such things and I instead take refuge in baseball, which trumps the fascination of the absurd for me even as the romance I once felt for the sport of my youth has faded as I grow older and more cynical.
Baseball is, I have come to realize, only a business and I am now very much a minority stakeholder. But it's a badly run business, and recent events have shown it to be even worse than I thought. For one thing, its workforce is full of drug abusers, one of whom, Alex Rodriguez, will make more money this year than the entire Houston Astros team, even though he's out of the lineup with an injury until probably midseason. In other incongruities, the Mets' highest-paid outfielder is Bobby Bonilla, who has been retired from baseball for 12 years, and the team's second-highest paid outfielder, Jason Bay, plays for the Seattle Mariners.
Who's on first, what's on second, show me the money is on third — and I'm stunned at home.
Even so, straying from the bizarro world of baseball, in which pampered millionaire workers are employed by billionaire team owners for the amusement of an economically depressed middle class, is dangerous. If I'm not preoccupied with hits, runs and errors I'm afraid I'll find it difficult to ignore the lunatic gun nuts, insane dictators, clueless jurists and tea party lizard people.
Baseball can overcome, at least for a while, the darker side of life. My refuge from the storm is a sunny baseball diamond, where the call "Play ball!" transports me to a world I understand and that I love.
Bill Federman is a Times Union editor. His email address is bfederman@timesunion.com.