The Great American Pastime!

 The Great American Pastime..

It used to be Baseball, or so I am told. The great American pastime. People would relax in the summer Sun, watching their teams play…kids and all. In parks and little league fields and baseball fields across America. In stadiums big and small. Parents would yell at the umpires, fans would root for their teams. In the end, some would lose and some would win. Some would walk home miffed at the bad calls, the payers left on the bases. The winning team would cherish their hitter that got the homerun, the pitcher that got the strikeouts…they would go back to homes and restaurants and bars and continue their game talk. They would discuss the day’s happenings some more into the night. By morning though it would matter a little less. The humdrum of daily life, the church, the office.. the Sunday dinner or Monday morning coffee would take over, with some office talk nevertheless. And so it would go, year after year, through the summer months, from little league to majors.. across the plains and the prairies. On the coasts. Part and parcel of the land of the free. The great American pastime of Baseball.

It ain’t any more. It’s been crowded out. Soccer, Lacrosse, year round Basketball and Video Games and Television and Netflix and Hulu and year round election cycles and and two jobs and drive from suburbs and Tiktok and Facebook posts and Twitter feeds and on and on. Where is the time? Where is the mental space to indulge in the relaxed pace of an afternoon in the park. Oh some people still do. Some kids play and there are their families and some hardcore fans that still carry the baseball banner high. But, they are few and far between. Definitely not at the scale of earlier times. Not by far. As an American pastime, It has been displaced by something else. 

But, by what? What is it that all of us indulge in with the same gusto and drive in our frazzled lives of today. What is it that gets our juices flowing with the same urgency. What is it that has become even more a part of our daily discourse and has got integrated into the American way of life as Baseball was in the days of yore. That which everyone in the family does, even automatically sometimes. Some even do it professionally even while others  mess around with it in their amateurish ways. Does something as pervasive and as deeply entrenched , as Baseball was, still exist. My contention is that you can bet your bottom dollar that it does exists. I will get to it. The new great American pastime is very much there. It’s just not Baseball, that’s all.

For us to get good at something we must do it a lot. And we do. This new passion of ours. We do it a lot. And everyone indulges. From the President to the janitor. From the Uber driver on to the TV host. The Mom and the Dad and the kids. It is so democratic that way. And we do it so well now, we expect to get paid for it almost. Some in fact do. 

It’s called “Upset”. The one that has left all other pastimes in the dust. The fine art of being Upset. From the neighbors to the politicians. From the kids to their teachers. The political leader is supremely upset at the other political leader who wants to destroy the country, just not in the way that he would prefer. Half the country is upset at the previous President and the other party and parts of the media and Covid and China. The other half is upset the current President and immigration and trillion dollar bailout to failing states. The TV host is upset at the one party and even the viewers. Inspire of all the harangues and admonishments and sensationalism, the ratings keep going down and not up. Black people are upset at white people and the police. White people are upset at them being white or at black people. Asians and Indians are upset that no one cares about them because they have not been upset. Poor people are upset at the rich for not paying their fair share. Rich people are upset at poor people for not paying anything. Middle class is upset at paying for both. Teachers are upset for not getting paid enough and not getting their due. Parents are upset at their kids for screen time. Kids are upset at parents because they can. The drivers on the roads are upset at other drivers for being on their cell phones. Readers are upset at media houses for distorting the truth. Media houses are upset at readers not paying for the content. Business are upset for being shut down due to Covid. Governments are upset at business wanting to spread Covid. The great American pastime of upset is in full swing. Form coast to coast, from mountains to the prairies. Democrats are upset at Republicans, for more reasons than I can list. Republicans are upset at Democrats for all those and then some. We are an upset nation and we play upset so well now. We are almost at each other’s throats at the first chance we get.

Where we really excel at playing Upset is the biggest of all arenas ever invented. A fifty thousand people Baseball arena wouldn’t hold a candle to it. The greatest playground ever conceived for this game of Upset we play. The giant limitless endless arena of social media. There is more Upset being played there than we can shake a stick at. Sometimes the players are known to each other. Sometime they play incognito. But boy do they play Upset well. With the forwards and fake news and drumbeat of one agenda or another. With trolling and insults and innuendos and direct hits. We watch it being played on Youtube and tv when we are not playing ourselves. We watch TV hosts play can you believe he/she said this or thought that or looked at someone a certain way. 

The invisible uniform of this game is a black judgement robe. We don it from morning to evening slashing, hacking, judging, yelling, scoffing, demeaning whoever gets in our view. It’s a habit, that has taken a while to form. But by now we do it flawlessly and effortlessly day in day out. You know the fun part of it… We are even upset at Baseball players and their coaches and their team for them getting paid too much or too little or what have you. It is amazing, once you get good at something, how many places you can deploy that skill.

But most of all, and most consequentially we are upset at ourselves. The scoreboard is very clear. The number of people that are depressed and those involved in mental self flagellation is at historic highs. It does not take long for upset to transition from hobby to habit to disease. From kids to adults, men and women, gay people and straight people, religious people and atheists and everyone in between. Psychologists are now getting Upset at too many upset people. And we are all Upset at the Upset people with guns. We never know around which corner, it becomes deadly for any of us.

Sadly we have made ourselves a nation of Upsets that is getting less and less done and blaming every one else and every other nation more and more. I exaggerate some for effect. But not by much. 

You know the truth. You live here too.!

Heck I am getting upset at not being upset enough about this.