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Selig made the right choice
Sports Illustrated's Stephen Cannella checks in with his baseball thoughts every week throughout the season on CNNSI.com. Baseball has a long history of overestimating its importance in the face of tumultuous world events. In May 1918, with owners struggling to decide whether they should continue the season while World War I raged in Europe, National League president John Tener argued that the games should go on by saying, "I tell you that baseball is the very watchword of democracy. There is no other sport or business or anything under heaven which exerts the leveling influence that baseball does. Neither the public school nor the church can approach it. Baseball is unique. England is a democratic country, but it lacks the finishing touch of baseball." Such statements sound patriotic and poetic in sepia-toned Ken Burns documentaries and W.P. Kinsella novels. They sound ludicrous in the wake of tragedies like the ones that occurred Tuesday in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Tener's argument was overruled -- owners, facing increasing public criticism and falling attendance figures, truncated the 1918 season by a month. Commissioner Bud Selig wisely made a similar decision this week in the face of pressure from some fans, players and perhaps the government to keep playing . This weekend's entire slate of contests was postponed, bringing the week's total of lost games to 91. The six-day hiatus in the schedule is the longest non-labor related interruption in a season since 1918. The missed games will be made up during the first week of October, meaning the start of the postseason will be delayed and the World Series will likely spill over into November for the first time. Selig's decision -- which came late Thursday afternoon, after several teams were already en route to their scheduled weekend destinations -- was understandably difficult. Pennant races have been affected, hugely popular record assaults such as Barry Bonds' home run chase are now on hold. But all that matters little while bodies are still being pulled from rubble in New York and Washington. As Selig said, "The more I thought about it, the more I couldn't rationalize starting before Monday." Much has been made of the country's need to resume life as we knew it before Tuesday morning, to not allow the terrorists who attacked us the satisfaction of knowing they stopped our society in its tracks. To some, playing baseball games this weekend would have been a signal to the world of our society's ability to endure the horrific losses suffered this week. But the fact is we have been stopped in our tracks, and rightly so. The fabric of the lives of families and friends of those who died at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in that field in Pennsylvania was unfairly torn apart. It's appropriate that the rest of us grieve along with them, inappropriate to worry about such inconsequentialities as home runs and pitching changes. Baseball, like all sports, will eventually provide a welcome and healthy diversion from the events that have had us all glued to our televisions this week. But this weekend would have been too soon. Sports Illustrated staff writer Stephen Cannella covers the baseball beat for
the magazine. Touching Base appears every week on CNNSI.com.
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