Baseball Begins

Just prior to the beginning of the pandemic-shortened MLB season, I happened to start watching the baseball-themed comedy series Brockmire, and was taken with this quote from the third episode:

“So let’s not make baseball out to be any more important than it really is.  It’s just a diversion that keeps us from pondering our own personal hells.”

I love this, and while I’d never admit that I when I watch a ballgame I’m avoiding my own personal demons, I must confess that I’ve missed the diversion of baseball.  I’ve missed having that little no-think something to look forward to at the end of the day, or – lately - in the middle of a frightfully unscheduled weekend.  A little light that says, “Hey, even if you’ve got nothing else going on, baseball starts at 1:20,” as it did yesterday. 

I grabbed a Pabst from the refrigerator (because it’s $7.99 for a 12-pack and it’s good on a hot summer’s day, that’s why), lay down on the couch, petted my pooch, and listened to Bob Uecker call the game for his fiftieth-straight season.  Perfect. The diversion and it’s accompanying mid-day nap were lovely pastimes indeed right until Peralta gave up four runs in fourth and basically ensured that the Cubs would take two of three from the Brewers to start the season.  At that moment it was baseball frustration as usual.  I turned the TV off and went back to work.

Ah, but there’s another game tonight, another diversion, another glimmer of hope.  And that’s one of the beauties of baseball.

And while I don’t exactly hold out a lot of hope for the Brewers during this season like no other, or for the baseball season in general in light of the horrific number of COVID-19 cases reported each day, I can imagine the following scenario:  after a lifetime of making a silent prayer (okay, sometimes not so silent) to let my Brewers win a World Series title (just one – I’m not being greedy), I can imagine the All-Powerful Creator up in the sky saying, “You want a World Series Title; I’ll give you one,” and THIS will be the year I’m granted my request.  This asterisk-marred joke of a season.  THIS will be the year the Milwaukee Brewers win a championship.  Craig Counsell and his crew will come home to Milwaukee for a parade down Wisconsin Avenue on a chilly November afternoon, and fans will come out in droves to celebrate the stunning achievement of the city’s first title since the erstwhile Braves in 1957, and I will be one of those delusional fans. But I and all of my cheesehead brethren will know…we’ll know that none of it counts.  Nothing counts in what is basically a 60-game exhibition.  And God will say, “Hey, what do you want?  I gave you a World Series.”

Because never once in all my years of praying did I specify, “Please God, let the Brewers win a World Series in my lifetime, but only if it’s a legitimate 162-game regular season.”

Dummy me: I forgot to include the proviso.

Is "Defund" the Best Word Choice?

Words have meanings.  If the words you’re using mean something other than the message you’re trying to convey then you’re likely going to anger and confuse people.  If I were an umpire at a baseball game and cried “Safe!” when a runner slid into home plate, the runner would have every reason to believe that he was, in fact, safe.  But if I were to qualify my remark and say, “When I say safe, I actually mean you were really close to being safe, but you’re actually out,” a shouting match would ensue.

Similarly, a word being used in the recent racial protests is leading to anger and confusion: defund. 

Here is what I know.  Defund doesn’t mean reallocate or restructure.  It means to stop funding.  I’ve been told otherwise by several people, but saying it doesn’t make it so.  I scanned the internet for definitions just in case I was missing something, and here’s what I found.

From merriam-webster.com:
to withdraw funding from.

From Dictionary.Cambridge.org:
to stop providing the money to pay for something.

From TheFreeDictionary.com:
to stop the flow of funds to.

These definitions are consistent and clear.  So why are people telling me that it doesn’t mean what I think it means?  Matthew Yglasias provides part of the answer at Vox.org, whose article does a nice job of explaining the phrase “defund the police.”  He writes that although “in congressional budget-speak, to ‘defund’ something normally means to reduce appropriations to zero dollars, thus eliminating it” that in practice “the ‘defund’ slogan dances ambiguously between abolition-type schemes and just saying officials should spend less money on policing at the margins.”

But if you’re trying to convince people to support your cause, ambiguity is the last thing you want.  I personally wish protesters would change the slogan, but I guess “Reallocate a portion of resources from the police to mental health initiatives” is a bit cumbersome.  My fear is this: a movement that has very legitimate concerns and goals is unable to attract a large number of voters because “defund” doesn’t mean what they want it to mean.  Perhaps a different tactic is in order. 

Or, more likely, perhaps in a year the word “defund” will have an additional definition added when searching online dictionaries:

Defund:
1)  to stop the flow of funds to.
2)  to take a portion of funds from.