Take Up the Bat, Peace-Loving Peoples of the World

Way back in 1945, George Orwell observed that international sports were "an unfailing cause of ill-will." He went on to say:

I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didn't know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles.

(The '36 Games, of course, were the Berlin Olympics which Hitler strove to convert into a showcase for Aryan racial superiority. The Black track star Jesse Owens interfered with those plans.)

Orwell's rule may be right in most cases (thank God Americans don't care about soccer--imagine the kind of riots we'd have if Arsenal or Manchester United were playing a US team with the soccer equivalent of Oakland Raider fans). But it's pleasant to note that there are exceptions. Apparently "cricket diplomacy" has been generating a hopeful thawing of relations between India and Pakistan.

Recent "test matches" (why are they called that? what exactly is being tested?) between the two countries produced enormous flows of tourism across the border and many shows of friendship in both directions--sharing of picnic lunches, Paki cricket fans waving Indian flags and vice versa, etc. Pakistani President Musharraf is weighing an invitation from Indian Prime Minister Singh to attend upcoming matches in Calcutta and Bangalore as part of the ongoing peace process.

Of course, the reason that cricket diplomacy leads to friendship while any attempt at football diplomacy would only lead to violence and war lies in the nature of cricket itself. Although I've never been to a cricket match, everything I've ever read about it (including Orwell's own fond recollections of the sport, with which he says he conducted "a sort of hopeless love affair" until around age 18) makes it sound like an even slower, more ruminative, more pastoral version of baseball. How on earth could any activity so soporific be expected to inflame anyone's passions, nationalistic or otherwise?

As with so many topics, the seer George Carlin said it best long ago in his classic routine about the differences between baseball and football. (If you aren't familiar with it, you owe it to yourself to read it here now, although hearing Carlin deliver it is even funnier.) In lilting tones, Carlin observes, "Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park--the baseball park!" Then his voice becomes stern: "But football is played in War Memorial Stadium."

He goes on dissect the violent military symbolism of football, contrasting it with the pastoral, pacifistic--frankly, all but gay--imagery of baseball. No wonder Lincoln, our greatest gay president, liked baseball. (There's an old story that Abe was in the on-deck circle when the official delegation arrived from Chicago to inform him that he had been nominated for President on the Republican ticket in 1860. "You gentlemen will have to wait a moment," Lincoln supposedly told them. "I have to take my turn at bat.")

Anyway, it seems obvious that cricket (or more likely baseball, in this age of the one great superpower) is ideally suited for adoption as the global sport, since it's so unlikely to disturb world peace. This is why the Lords of Baseball (to use Dick Young's famous epithet for the billionaires who run the sport as their plaything) ought to settle the steroid issue as soon as possible and turn their attention instead to organizing an annual tournament featuring teams from around the globe.

Before I die I want to watch the US champion Mets take on challengers from Japan, Mexico, Australia--who knows, maybe even Russia and India--in a true World Series. Wouldn't that be fun?--And no riots, either. Just happy fans slumbering peacefully in their bleacher seats.

One other diplomatic note. I was in the car with Mary-Jo this week when an NPR newscaster reported that China had freed Muslim dissident Rebiya Kadeer in anticipation of Condoleezza Rice's upcoming visit. The reporter added, "China has a history of releasing political prisoners shortly before visits by senior American officials."

Me: "That's great. We ought to send senior American officials over to China more often."

Mary-Jo: "And let them stay over there a while. The longer the better."