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Bush League

By David PlotzPosted Wednesday, April 4, 2001, at 3:00 AM ET

Illustration by Robert NeubeckerIt's the opening week of baseball season, which means it must be time for George Will and his ilk to spew about the pristine majesty of "our national pastime." This year's bloviation is even worse than usual, because it includes hoo-ha from a newly prominent and all-too-powerful fan: President George W. Bush.

The president announced last week that he is undertaking a four-year campaign "to help revitalize America's pastime." He will visit minor- and major-league ballparks and even drop by a Little League game now and then. And he is turning the South Lawn of the White House into a tee-ball field. Starting in a few weeks, school kids from across the country will play in what the Wall Street Journal describes as a "lengthy series" of tee-ball games. The kids will be coached by—I am not making this up—Cabinet officials and other top aides. Celebrities will be trucked in to sing the national anthem. (Tee-ball is notable for being the only American sport more tedious than baseball.)

The tee-ball scheme reeks of banana republic politics. It's embarrassing to have the leader of the free world whiling away his days watching tot tee-ball and exhorting Manager/Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to put in a pinch-hitter. (It conjures up images of Idi Amin or some other tin-pot dictator ordering his ministers to wrestle for him.)

But the baseball initiative is not merely embarrassing. It's wrong. It runs counter to the president's own avowed belief in free markets. The president shouldn't use the power of his office—not to mention tax dollars, which will fund the tee-ball tourney—to undertake a public relations campaign for his favorite sport. Let baseball rise or fall on its own. If Americans don't like squandering four perfectly good hours watching nine men stand around in a field, then it's not the president's job to tell them they should. ("Do you really want a bunch of government bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., telling you what sport you should watch?") Bush has assigned the baseball revival to his White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. This is fitting. It will take divine intervention to make baseball supplant basketball and football in the American consciousness, and even God's best effort might not be enough unless Mark McGwire can hit 80 dingers this year.

The Bush baseball initiative also constitutes an ugly conflict of interest. Imagine that the president launched a special, four-year public relations campaign on behalf of the oil industry, placed government-sponsored oil wells on the South Lawn, and ordered the White House to draw its power from oil plants instead of hydroelectric ones. The press would go crazy. Rival coal, hydroelectric, nuclear, and alternative power industries would be justifiably incensed at the presidential meddling.

Bush has put out an unassailable front: bucolic photos of tots whaling at a tee-ball in the backyard of the White House, warm crackerjack shots of the president catching a day game at Wrigley. But this only masks the essential sleaziness of what he is doing, namely, giving an enormous favor to the industry that gave him his fortune. In 1989, Bush got a sweetheart deal to purchase a chunk of the Texas Rangers for $600,000. After he ran the team for a few years, he sold out for $15 million. Now he's paying back Bud Selig and crew with a PR campaign that favors their multibillion-dollar sports industry over equally worthy rivals (football, basketball, hockey …).

The NFL, NBA, and NHL don't dare gripe about the presidential baseball initiative. If they did, President Bush could smile his lopsided grin and say, "C'mon fellas, it's only a game." But he's got $14.4 million that says it's big business, not a game. Baseball doesn't need presidential largess and doesn't deserve it.

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David Plotz is Slate's editor. He is the author of The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank. You can e-mail him at .
COMMENTS

Reader Comments From The Fray:


[Notes from the Fray Editor: The Fray team grew up under a different political and sports regime, and so is fascinated to find that according to many, many posters the tee-ball is a direct substitute for another activity, the one the previous President was famous for. Apparently there are no other possibilities for Presidential freetime; it's one or the other, and you can then decide (of course, along political lines) which you would rather the leader of the free world spent his time on. If you think you will be offended by a post comparing tee-ball with, well, the other activity, then do not click here.

 Never tell The Fray something is the most tedious anything: they'll think of something worse (vote-recounting). Lisa P wonders about the people who criticize the article: "Perhaps you were the people on the tee-ball team who bullied and made fun of any other kid who wasn't exactly like you."

Following on from WillV's thoughts below, Baba Booey has another idea for a sacred icon David Plotz could attack: "Mothers are overrated, too, what with all that teaching us right from wrong stuff and making us put on our sweaters when it's cold outside".

Is Charlie Heath making it up when he writes (below) recommending Nurdleyball? We don't care, because the line "never let three players from the tennis team join the lacrosse goalie, lest a Nurdleyball dynasty might emerge" transcends the whole question.]


Frankly, Mr. Plotz, I preferred the good old days, when the premises were used for sleep-away and assignations purposes. At least those occupations were "grown-up", compared to the silly kids' games for which the place will be used during [this] Administration.

--Irving D. Cohen

(To reply, click here.)


As much as I find Plotz's article to be overly harsh, cynical, and conspiratorial, I have to admit that the guy isn't afraid to court controversy. He caught hell for taking on the pandas and now he's taking on baseball and tee-ball.

When will he begin attacking the sugar and fat content of apple pie?

--WillV

(To reply, click here.)


Nurdleyball is a variation on tee-ball, with three bases, and four people per team. Sawed off bats are used, along with a rubberized baseball. Coaching is minimal, so the cabinet secretaries could stick to their professional work, rather than risking embarrassment. Or, the cabinet secretaries could risk embarrassment by fielding a team. They could probably fit about two or three Nurdleyball fields onto a single little-league sized baseball field. This might bring up an oft-noted phenomenon when well-endowed tennis players are up to bat, in which outfields serve double-duty, and fielders, on occasion, might need to locate themselves in trees or (gasp) on the White House roof.

Nurdleyball is just about the perfect game for a small liberal-arts high school, though, so it might have been more appropriate for the Clinton era, in retrospect. One note: never let three players from the tennis team join the lacrosse goalie, lest a Nurdleyball dynasty might emerge

--Charlie Heath

(To reply, click here.)

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