The Cubs, Trumpism, and the Field of Dreams
by Tom Sullivan
Wrigley Field, Chicago, 7/30/2004, by Rick Dikeman CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
"When did they start putting a thousand days in a month?" one volunteer asked the other day. "I've never seen an election like this," is another frequent comment. Everybody wishes this election was over.
A friend sent this story yesterday about electioneering downtown:
While I was handing out sample ballots, some guy told me to go back to where I came from, even after I told him I was married to an American. I said maybe now he knows how Native Americans feel about white people taking over their country. He did come back an hour later to apologize and said that was why he had to stop watching so much Trump! I told him he had restored my faith in people by coming back to apologize.My friend is from Hong Kong (I think). She had just told someone that in all her years in England and the U.S., she had not experienced any sort of racism.
Then while I was recounting the story to [a friend's daughter] at a massage school waiting area, this couple confronted me when [she] left and obviously had eavesdropped on my conversation, to say they were voting for Trump and that illegal aliens should not be allowed in the country and dared to question if I was legal or not. The woman especially was quite ugly about it. Not to go on & on but it made me realize that Trump's talk has really emboldened all these racists to question people who are not the same as they are.
I mean, if anything, that song is a hugely affectionate song. It's a fatalist song (laughter) saying that they never win. But he was such a devoted fan. He always hoped for them to win, and there is no way to listen to that song and not have just a tremendous respect and affection for Steve Goodman and for baseball itself. It has all of these references in it that are very specific that any baseball fan would recognize and also just anybody who is used to running up against failure. And it does it in this baseball metaphor that is just utterly charming.The Cubs lost game four to Cleveland last night in Chicago. A smiling waitress there once told me, "They wouldn't be the Cubs if they didn't break our hearts."
MANN People will come, Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway, not knowing for sure why they're doing it, and arrive at your door, innocent as children, longing for the past. 'Of course we won't mind if you look around,' you'll say. 'It's only twenty dollars per person.' And they'll pass over the money without even looking at it. For it is money they have, and peace they lack. They'll walk out to the bleachers and sit in shirtsleeves in the perfect evening, or they'll find they have reserved seats somewhere in the grandstand or along one of the baselines -- wherever they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. They'll watch the game, and it will be as if they'd dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. MARK Listen to me. Tomorrow morning, when the bank opens, they will foreclose. MANN People will come, Ray. MARK You're broke, Ray. Sell now or lose everything. MANN The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an`army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game... it's a piece of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good. And that could be again. People will come. People will most definitely come.But it is not why people come to Trump rallies. The mood is much uglier.
... he could spot Republicans as they approached the polling place by the sour looks on their faces.Now, when training electioneers I advise them to treat their counterparts as opposing team members. You're out on the same field playing the same game in the same weather wearing different jerseys. Believe it or not, you share the same hobby. The unsportsmanlike conduct doesn't usually come from the other team's regulars, but from the bleacher bums.
"They're not coming to vote," he said. "They're coming to f--k someone!"