AND YOU THINK IT'S POLITICS, RELIGION, OR BASEBALL? -- I THINK NOT!

By Edwin Cooney

For as far back as I can remember, it’s been observed that baseball is America’s “National Pastime.”  Since I like baseball, I’ve always gladly bought that idea.  Lately, however, I’ve concluded that America’s real pastime is something far more applicable to human nature than baseball or perhaps even democracy itself.

With the 2012 November elections only 31 days away, Americans are doing what they like to do better than anything else except to eat.  Not only are they good at this, they thoroughly enjoy it.  More than that, they insist upon it. For example, which do people prefer?

Geico or State Farm Insurance?

Football or baseball?

Wendy’s or Denny’s?

Steak or pasta?

Beer or wine?

And finally, Obama or Romney? It goes on and on.

Two events this last week, the almost unbelievable success of the Oakland Athletics and the first of three presidential debates, brought this phenomenon to my attention.

Last Wednesday afternoon, thanks to a very good friend of mine, I attended the 162^nd game on the American League schedule of the Oakland Athletics along with 36,076 other souls. What came through to me -- loud and clear -- in my seat behind first base (aside from the cheers of delight when the A's defeated the mighty Texas Rangers to take sole possession of first place in the AL West for the first and only time it really counted in the schedule) was how much the success of a professional baseball team really and truly mattered to millions of people.  Many of those fans wore green and gold jackets, sweatshirts, and hats with A's colors and logos on them.  Some fans wore A's charms and buttons, waved A's programs and pennants, rang cowbells, tooted horns, and shouted until they were hoarse:  “Let’s go Oakland” or “Let’s go A's.”  For many fans, during that three hour plus time period, no civic or personal concern mattered nearly as much as an A's victory on the field of play. Aside from that, whether the A's really have the talent to go on to win the World Series this October was less important than what these fans hoped will happen.  Whatever the talents of the Rangers, Tigers, Orioles or Yankees was quite beside the point in comparison to likelihood or even reality.

Later that night, fifty or seventy or whatever million people sat down in front of their television sets to watch President Barack Obama take on former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in the first of three debates that could well determine who will be responsible for peace and well-being over the next four years in America and in the world.  While some may have worn Obama/Biden or Romney/Ryan campaign buttons at the various debate parties held around the nation, it is likely that there was less cheering for either contestant in comparison to what I heard earlier that day at the Oakland- Alameda County Coliseum.

Like sports franchises, political candidates (especially since 1840 when William Henry Harrison became the third oldest man to serve as president) have become the focus of political parades and “circuses.”  In 1840, the aristocratic Harrison, whose father Benjamin Harrison was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and whose grandson Benjamin Harrison (“Little Ben”) would also become president, was billed as the “log cabin and hard-cider candidate.”  However, rather than a log cabin, William Henry Harrison was born on a Virginia plantation on Tuesday, February 9, 1773.  His worth to the people was tied to his military victory over the Shawnee Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe on Monday, November 11, 1811 when he was Governor of Indiana Territory.  The cry in the fall of 1840 was “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.”

At the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum last Wednesday, nothing mattered in comparison to an A's victory.  At debate parties held all over the country, little mattered but what each candidate could do for the people -- and for many there wasn’t enough said about that by either candidate.  Competitive sports and politics, clever commercials for everything from restaurants and insurance companies to pharmaceutical products and beyond, point to America’s real “pastime.”

As I see it, America’s real “pastime” isn’t really baseball or any other sport. It isn't about politics, entertainment, religion or even money.  Like the time, the weather or your spouse’s mood, America’s real “pastime” is ever changing.  The only way to really know what it is precisely to take control of it would be to accurately measure it.  The problem is that it’s like trying to hold mercury in your hand or eat chicken broth with a fork. America’s real pastime is our immediate and continuing need for personal and collective gratification.

As vain and decadent as that may seem on the surface, it may well be that our national fickleness is the vital element in our American character that will keep us forever free!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY