Paul Kengor: Another year without baseball

An astute reader with a keen memory recently emailed to ask if I had carried on my boycott of Major League Baseball from 2021 into 2022.

Readers will recall that what set me off was the egregious politicization of baseball by an ideological MLB commissioner, Rob Manfred. Manfred had shamelessly shoehorned partisan politics into America’s national pastime. Siding with Stacey Abrams and the Democrats, he toed the party line that framed Georgia’s new 2021 election-integrity laws as (to quote Joe Biden, presidential “unifier”) “Jim Crow on steroids.”

Manfred thus yanked the All-Star Game out of Atlanta. It was an outrageous partisan-ideological decision with no place in professional sports. In response, I decided not to watch a single game for the remainder of the 2021 season, on TV or at the ballpark.

My choice pained me, because I love baseball, but Manfred left me and countless other fans no other option. As I wrote last October, in a piece titled “My year without baseball,” we can’t allow ourselves to be patsies and pawns to ideologues poisoning everything with politics and canceling whoever and whatever they disagree with. In this case, canceling an entire city and state — Atlanta and Georgia. Enough is enough. No more.

When sports go woke, they can go broke. They’re not getting my money.

What especially struck me in 2021 was an email from a reader promising that I wouldn’t regret my decision. He said I would learn to live without baseball.

Well, the reader was right. I carried out my boycott through all of 2021, with much less pain than I anticipated. But would I continue into 2022?

I must say that I had my doubts. Surely, like a patsy, I’d be crawling back to the ballpark with my tail between my legs, just as Rob Manfred and his woke New Yorkers at MLB’s Manhattan offices knew I would, casting a look of pathetic derision at the unprincipled sucker they figured I would be.

And yet, an unexpected thing happened in 2022: Not only did I never venture to a ballpark, but I never turned the TV channel to a baseball game even once. I learned to live without it.

Cynics might say this was easy given the Pittsburgh Pirates’ dreadful incompetence. Who would want to watch a miserable team in the process of agonizingly dropping 100 games? (I swear I had to look up the number of losses before typing it here, though I had heard the Pirates were pushing 100.)

But remember, I love baseball generally, with or without the Bucs. I didn’t turn on a single game with any team. I knew, of course, that Aaron Judge chased Roger Maris’ single-season home run record, but I never tuned in for even a highlight on ESPN.

And beyond Aaron Judge, I haven’t flipped the channel to any playoff games, even when stuck in hotels, where I typically entertain my lonesome by watching October baseball.

So, the Trib reader was correct. I’ve learned to live without baseball.

Major League Baseball’s commissioner is supposed to be an ambassador for his sport, drawing fans. In my case, Rob Manfred succeeded in alienating a lifetime fan. I wonder how many others he managed to chase away from America’s national pastime.