COURIER LIFE,14 JULY 31-AUGUST 6, 2020
OPINION
Leave the politics out of
our National Pastime
After September 11, 2001,
Major League Baseball
returned to New York
City and united the country
after deadly terrorist attacks.
Now, after a four-month delay
due to the pandemic, baseball
has returned again. However,
rather than uniting us again
during a time of adversity, it
has added to the divisiveness
in our country.
Most Americans look to
baseball, or any sport, as an
opportunity to root for their
favorite team with fellow fans.
During those few hours of
watching a game, we put on
hold family and work problems,
and even differences
in politics. Not anymore, and
my sense is interest in many
sports will decline as a result.
Indeed, although I normally
would have watched a
few Yankee games already, I
have not watched one pitch.
On opening day, when fans
were yearning for those magical
words — “Play ball!” — we
had to endure protest and political
statements before players
even took the fi eld for the
games.
At the opening game for
MLB in Washington, the Yankees
and Nationals teams both
knelt along the foul lines holding
a black ribbon. In addition,
players throughout the League
continue to kneel during the
National Anthem. Some also
wore “Black Lives Matter”
patches on their uniforms and
t-shirts at batting practice.
Adding to the mix of sports
and politics was the local Democrats’
reaction to reports that
President Donald Trump
would throw the fi rst pitch at
Yankee stadium on August 15.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said the
Yankees were “on the wrong
side of history and morality”
and inviting “hatred to their
pitcher’s mound.”
Bronx Borough President
Ruben Diaz Jr. accused the
Yankees of “pandering to an
unapologetic white supremacist
like Donald Trump.”
Reports of whether or not
the Yankees organization
arranged for the POTUS to
throw the fi rst pitch aside, can
you imagine the reaction if
Republicans had condemned
an MLB team for inviting former
President Barack Obama
to throw out the fi rst pitch at a
baseball game?
We should all unite for
baseball and for the president
throwing out a fi rst pitch for
the national pastime — especially
during this tough time
for our country.
Who can forget Game 3 of
the 2001 World Series when
President George W. Bush
threw out the fi rst pitch at
‘Baseball’s Cathedral,’ Yankee
Stadium? Less than two
months after the Twin Towers
fell, President Bush was
greeted by deafening cheers
and thundering chants of
“USA, USA, USA.”
Oh, how times have
changed.
Now, our president is
openly called a racist and
white supremacist by elected
offi cials for simply continuing
a tradition of throwing out
fi rst pitches that began with
William Howard Taft on April
14, 1910. Just as bad, fans now
have to endure political statements
from their teams rather
than just cheering them on.
Bob Capano has worked
for Brooklyn Republican and
Democrat elected officials,
and has been an adjunct political
science professor for
over 15 years. Follow him on
twitter @bobcapano.
THE RIGHT
VIEW
Bob Capano
Coronavirus and climate change
The coronavirus pandemic
is a rather good
analogy for global climate
change, because it’s a
global thing you can’t see that
will kill millions, there are
clear ways to alter our lives to
prevent it, and there are millions
of people intent on not
changing their lifestyle at all
and denying reality about how
it works. It’s not a good analogy
because solving climate
change will take decades and
mostly impacts our youngest,
while coronavirus is an immediate
threat which targets
the elderly most severely. But
differences are why you have
analogies.
Like climate change, some
places are dealing with coronavirus
quite impressively
and others seem to be doing
worse than nothing. In both
these cases, New York’s response
has been substantially
worse than most of the
rest of the rich world, while
substantially better than
most of America’s. Coronavirus
means we have to adapt
huge portions of our life, but
many of the changes we make
can revert in a year or two.
Climate change means we
have to make a number of big
changes more slowly but permanently.
So today I’m just going to
write about transportation
under coronavirus: how we
get around. The subways and
the buses used to be the lifeblood
of this city, and they
are still vital. However, they
no longer run twenty-four
hours and many privileged
people, including myself, are
currently afraid to ride them.
There is no currently-public
plan to ensure the trains
and buses are safe and soon
back to running twenty-four
hours.
A lot of people are taking
hired cars--taxis and Ubers
and green cabs--around the
city. This appears mostly safe
but is not foolproof and is expensive
and bad for the environment.
Also, crucially, in a
city as dense as New York we
can’t all get around by car.
We’d be in Third World traffi c
jams all the time.
Planes are terrible for the
environment and almost no
one is fl ying now. Nevertheless,
the industry remains
heavily subsidized and to
keep their “slots” at desirable
hub airports, the airlines
continue to run almost totally
empty fl ights, which are quite
wasteful of oil.
I ride a bike, which is extremely
cheap and convenient
and pollution-free. I urge everyone
in almost every state
of physical health to take up
bike-riding, though I grant
that it does leave you more
at the mercy of the elements
than the other choices.
I’m not a total radical
here. I accept that we’re still
going to need and to own private
cars. We need to focus on
making most of them electric
and the rest of them fuel-effi -
cient. But we need to accept
that most short trips are better
without cars, that we need
to better share cars with each
other, and that we need to
share the road better with the
non-cars. Next week I think
I’ll discuss “mobility startups.”
I certainly don’t trust
all of them.
Nick Rizzo is a Democratic
District Leader representing
the 50th Assembly District and
a political consultant who lives
in Greenpoint. Follow him on
Twitter @NickRizzo.
WORDS OF
RIZZDOM
Nick Rizzo