Faithful readers of this blog will note that I am a baseball fan and that I am also somewhat down on football.
The main problem I have with football is head injuries, which are leaving too many players permanently damaged and which are, as far as anyone knows, an unavoidable part of the game. Even legendary tough guy Brett Favre has said that if he had a son he probably would not have let him play the game. It’s that bad.
Layer on the NFL’s treatment of Colin Kaepernick for daring to raise important social issues, the support of many team owners for Donald Trump, the manic opposition of the NCAA and our own UW chancellor to paying the players what they’re worth, and even the inadequate compensation of NFL players compared to what their team owners are raking in, and I’ve had enough of it all. I’ve been forced to watch two games under social pressure. One was the awful Packers loss to the Washington Redskins — the “Redskins” for crying out loud — and there you go again, another reason to boycott football.
I admit that baseball is far from perfect. The owners are as money-grubbing as those in any other sport, they pay minor leaguers less than minimum wage, they’ve been slow to extend netting to protect fans from wicked line drive foul balls and, if you don’t like the Redskins, what can you say about the Cleveland Indians?
But death is not a routine part of the game, while another high school football player died just last week. Players are occasionally plunked by an inside pitch, but risk of life-altering injury is not a part of every play. Guys play through minor injuries but they also often sit out because they feel a little tightness in their shoulders. You gotta love that.
Football is essentially (somewhat) controlled violence. It’s war by other means. Baseball is a board game by other means.
Which brings me to my point. Every indication is that as a society (and especially in these parts) we’re much more into the violent game than the cerebral game. The Brewers are going through an exciting, improbable run at the World Series. As of this writing they’ve won 11 games in a row. They caught the dreaded Chicago Cubs at the very end of the season, beat them in a one-game playoff for the Central Division title and then swept Colorado to advance to the National League Championship Series.
Meanwhile, the Packers have been awful and the Badgers have been disappointing. And yet on the Monday after the Brewers’ sweep, the Wisconsin State Journal’s most popular stories had one on the Brewers, two about the Packers and one on the Badgers. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel — in the very home of the Brewers, no less — had one Brewers story trending against no less than five that were trending about the Packers’ dismal performance against the Lions.
And that’s been the consistent pattern since mid-summer when football training camps opened and the Brewers were in the thick of a playoff run. People were reading State Journal sports columnist Tom Oates’ tedious (he’s a good reporter and writer; I just found the details tedious) rundown of every damn position on the Badger football squad more than they were reading about actual, meaningful games being played, and usually won, by the Brewers.
So, if you’re a Madison liberal and also a sports fan, I have a question for you: What the heck’s the matter with you?!
Look, I’ve always tried to avoid being one of those liberals. You know, the ones who are quick to quote you the carbon footprint of that burger you just ordered. The ones who pretend to actually like kale. And so, I don’t take it lightly that here I am lecturing you about not feeling guilty enough about watching your favorite sport.
But the evidence is just so overwhelming that football is an extremely and increasingly violent game that exploits its players at every level while the professional game’s owners strongly favor reactionary politics. Outside of inside fastballs and the occasional hard slide into second base, baseball is not at all violent. And it exploits its players at only one level — the minor leagues. The game’s owners have not taken any recent positions against free speech or in favor of an incompetent would-be fascist president.
Ok, end of lecture. I eat burgers with impunity. I believe kale is a useless weed. And I love baseball. Go Crew!
