Be grateful that they ever were.

Image courtesy of Flickr/Rob Oo

You know the type. He might even be you. “I don’t get into politics.” “Both sides drive me nuts.” “Can’t we just watch the game?”

I’d prefer not to think about the state of the world right now. It’s not great! Civil unrest and a pandemic and natural disasters and a teetering economy and an incredibly divisive political climate. All of it exacerbated by unreliable narrators on your social media platform of choice, none of it with a solid end date that allows you or me or anyone to return to “normal.” A ballgame and a cold beer or two is a goddamn welcome relief.

On Thursday night, the best possible chance to distract yourself was a Twins/Tigers game. Granted, the game would have been played in front of cardboard cutouts with fake bubble hockey crowd noise because of one of those things you’d prefer to get away from. The teams took that option off the board when they decided not to play due to the seven bullets fired into Jacob Blake’s back in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

(If that sentence made you uncomfortable, the bullets felt worse.)

You might take issue with the Twins taking the night off. After all, you don’t get to take the day off when something upsets your political sensibilities. To which I can only offer the following baseball-centric response: tough hop. Or, if you’d rather: Facts don’t care about your feelings.

Labor doesn’t have much leverage in 2020. The Twins and Tigers have a measure of it. They’re using it. You’re welcome to disagree, or even walk away from the teams and the sport entirely.

The thing is, wherever you end up trying to escape the outside world, reality is going to push back. Hard. NASCAR? Nope. The movies? Yeah, no. Living in a cabin in the woods? Should probably check if they’re on fire or if the neighbors are building a helipad.

The luxury of turning off the news for three hours at the yard is just that. A luxury. That some of us had it for as long as we did is astonishing. Maybe we’ll get it back someday by doing the hard work necessary to earn it.

Maybe.

(Image license here.)