The madness that is Trump never seems to end. It is one stupid thing followed by one scandalous thing by one outrageous thing. A continuing cycle of unethical and dangerous behavior that stupefies and terrorizes any with a moral and intellectual center.
And then there is baseball.
Baseball has always been a way to forget. A way to care deeply about something that does not really matter but matters anyway.
I follow a number of teams.
It is the curse of my life that the two teams I loved most growing up were from Oakland: the Oakland Raiders and the Oakland As.
It was my inborn contrariness I suppose that led me to pick the two teams across the bay from the two teams my parents rooted for. It was probably also my instinctive eye for the tragic. For the story of both Oakland teams of my youth was tragedy.
The owner of my beloved Raiders, Al Davis, picked the team up and moved them to LA and then back again. Now they are headed for Sin City.
The owner of the As, Charlie Finley, sold off his players after three consecutive World Series Championships to the evil Yankees.
For mere money my first true loves were sold away.
And so now I follow four baseball teams and over time one football team that can never be sold away because the community owns it.
In baseball I follow the Cubs, of course, and have since 1981 when I first saw my first in-person Major League game at Wrigley Field. It was love at first sight.
I follow the Astros who helped me get through a long summer of living in Houston.
I follow the Twins who play in the town where I have lived now for 31 years. And I follow the Giants, my mother’s team and the cross-bay competition to the team that betrayed me.
When you follow four teams, you almost always have a good day. One of your four teams is bound to win. Sometimes all four do and those are the best days of all.
Trump is to me like Al Davis and Charlie Finley, a man who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. He is further proof that running anything important like you run a business is to ruin it. Finally he is merely another businessman who is going to find that there is a special hell for those who crush dreams for something as unimportant as money.