On warm August night last week I sat on concrete bleachers, watching two teams playing softball as I waited for our team to take the field for the nine o’clock late game.  In the distance, dark clouds rolled across the sky, punctuated by an occasional flash of lightening. If the storm moved closer, rain would certainly follow and our game would not take place, but that didn’t happen. The storm clouds skirted to the east of us and by the time we took the field, the lightening was no longer to be seen. The miserable, sweat-inducing high humidity was replaced by cooler air and a lower temperature. It was a perfect night to play ball.

I’ve enjoyed playing softball this year, reveling in the freedom that our tyrant governor has grudgingly allowed us to have. For a year I watched aghast as he shut down the whole state, being unlike Governor Ron DeSantis, who understands freedom and responsibility of personal decisions. For a year we were instructed to stay in our houses.  Businesses were closed and many will never reopen, having been driven into bankruptcy by the overreach of a governor who apparently hasn’t got the brains of a good size flea.  You don’t close down an entire state for a virus which has a survival rate of ninety-nine percent of all who catch it.   As a physician, you would think that Governor Ralph Northam would understand this, but then again, this man is a pediatrician who advocated allowing an unwanted child to be born and then to let the mother and doctors decide whether or not it should be allowed to live. A pediatrician! While pro-lifers were horrified at such a display of wanton indifference, for the majority of Virginians, it was just a protracted yawn at another article in the news. Oh, by the way, what was the score of the Washington Redskins game?

A civilized nation, a civilized state, would have been up in arms at such a statement of depraved indifference. The capital in Richmond should have seen a vast army of people chanting in anger for the resignation of such a morally depraved individual.  But we go about our business.  Middle-class luxury has led to indifference.  Who wants to risk jail to participate in a protest when you have a nice million dollar house, a Lexus in the driveway, and a seventy-two inch plasma TV on which you can watch and root for the Redskins.  Those who do not like my use of this team name can go fly a kite. They are, and always will be to me, the Redskins. A nation which gets angry over the use of a name, which was actually intended to honor their coach, William Henry “Lone Star” Dietz, who was believed to be part Sioux, and yet is indifferent to the killing of millions of unborn children every year, is a nation that is on its last legs. The majority of people are caught up in living their lives and not taking any risks which might cause them to be placed in prison by tyrannical governors who are more interested in votes than morality.

Only someone willingly blind could not see that not only do we have enemies outside the gates, but those in our very government who are determined to destroy this country and replace it with their idea of a happy Socialist Utopia or a Muslim paradise. The unfortunate thing is that so many have not learned from history this fact:, you can listen to the false and empty promises of politicians and vote in Socialism, but as one political wag said, you have to shoot your way out. The unmarked graves of millions are a mute testimony to how Socialist politicians treat their people once they gain full power over an unarmed populace.  It is not pretty.

I don’t know how to explain it to someone who has never played baseball. Like Shoeless Joe said in Field of Dreams, the smell of the glove, the sharp pop as a well-thrown ball hits your glove during warm-up, the crack of the bat and watching the ball rise into the evening sky, it is something that, once you have played the game and fallen in love with it, never leaves you. There is a feeling I can’t quite explain. It is as if you are connected to all the good of life when you play. Baseball is quintessentially the American sport.

Ray: I bet it’s good to be playing again, huh?

Shoeless Joe: Getting thrown out of baseball was like having part of me amputated. I’ve heard that old men wake up and scratch itchy legs that have been dust for over fifty years. That was me. I’d wake up at night with the smell of the ball park in my nose, the cool of the grass on my feet . . . The thrill of the grass.

Shoeless Joe: Man, I did love this game. I’d have played for food money. It was the game . . . The sounds, the smells. Did you ever hold a ball or a glove to your face?

Ray: Yeah.

Shoeless Joe: I used to love traveling on the trains from town to town. The hotels . . . brass spittoons in the lobbies, brass beds in the rooms. It was the crowd, rising to their feet when the ball was hit deep. Shoot, I’d play for nothing!

Ray, 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. They’ll arrive at your door as 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.” They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it. For it is money they have and peace they lack.

And they’ll walk out to the bleachers, and sit in shirt-sleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game, and it’ll 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.

People will come, Ray.

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 part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.

Ohhhhhhhh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.

Yes. All that once was good.  Not perfect. No, America has never been perfect, but when you compare the freedoms we have had, the way we lived as a unified country, the advantages we had when compared to so many other other countries in the world, yes, America was good. It was a good place to live. This is why so many, like my grandparents, came to America to seek a new life and new opportunities. Few people have left America to go find freedom and opportunity elsewhere. Imperfect as we have been as a nation, we have been for two centuries the shining city on the hill, a beacon of light and freedom to all who could make it here.

To get a sense of where we are headed, if the rich elites who rule over us behind the curtain have their way, take an hour off to watch the classic movie, “1984.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCZBnUt6rZ0  at YouTube is the best version to watch. It is so because as a black and white movie, the dreary grey tones best express the bleakness of life under tyranny and lies. There is never mention of sports or hobbies. The main character, Winston, goes to work and goes home.  He must move furtively through his apartment to read banned material because the ever-seeing eye of Oceania watches his every move from the table upon which it sits. Much the same as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, certain ideas of  “unacceptable speech” and thought are banned, and should one be caught thinking these things, they are reprogrammed.  This is what happens to Winston when he is caught daring to freely love another human being and questioning with her the rule of Big Brother in their lives. There is little joy in his life, little knowledge beyond what he is spoon-fed by the rulers of Oceania. Absolute, unthinking obedience is expected.  In every tyranny, those who will not comply are dealt with severely. One hundred million deaths in the 20th century give mute testimony to this, yet half of our country somehow is enamored by the idea of a Socialist paradise. It is as if Josef Stalin and Soviet Russia never existed.

One of the hallmarks of tyrants, whether Socialist or just plain old psychopaths, is the destruction of the culture they overtake. This overhaul of our culture is gaining ground as monuments to history are torn down, old moralities are trashed, and Muslim immigrants call for Sharia law to be the law of the states where they live. From certain people there is a visceral hatred of America that screams from the streets as those there watch the fires they have set burn down whole city blocks. I have no doubt that American baseball will have to go, along with football and all forms of  amusement which are distinctly American in their history and creation. That is the reason that as I stared at the field on Thursday night, I wondered when America will play its last baseball game.

It may be sooner than we think.