You can’t have a slow burn without an ignition

Phil Gurnee ♦ January 29, 2020 ♦ Leave a comment

The Houston Astro cheating scandal probably cheated Dodger fans and their players of the 2017 World Championship which would be a big deal for any team but especially for the Dodger fans and organization. The fans haven’t celebrated a World Championship since 1988. Clayton Kershaw deserves better, his legacy deserves better. I get it. I understand the frustration.  I’ve been here for the whole 32 years. Every game, every postseason heartbreak.

I had been hesitate to say anything when the news broke because I wasn’t sure the Dodgers hadn’t also been cheating.  In the beginning, there was little Dodger comment and that felt weird for me until we learned that MLB had specifically asked the Dodgers not to comment on the scandal.

I will admit to being confused by my lack of caring about it. I talked with Dodger Twitter and they were quite upset and some couldn’t understand why I wasn’t. As I said before I simply felt it was premature to be angry when we might find out the Dodgers had tried to cheat as well.  The Dodgers try to win on the margins, pushing all rules to the limits so it seemed they might have tried to push these rules to the limits.

As time has passed, many prominent Dodgers, ones who I trust have spoken out, and have made it clear they were not cheating. I expected to start a slow burn but there was simply no ignition.

Houston issued horrible apologies, basically saying they didn’t know they were cheating. Very annoying, but still no ignition.

When Dodgers President Andrew Friedman recently spoke about how dismayed he was that Houston never even apologized,  it once again proved how small the Houston Astro organization was but still no ignition.

At this point, I don’t think I’ll ever have the emotional reaction that you’d expect from this situation. It isn’t like I don’t have a volatile temper.  Or maybe I should say, it isn’t like I didn’t have a volatile temper. I used to get upset over the silliest things.

Houston players and fans have to live with the fact they needed to cheat to win a Championship. Dodger fans have to live with the fact they will never be recompensed for their emotional loss of 2017. Will I boo Houston players who were part of the scandal? you bet. But that is about all I can emotionally conjure up for this. I don’t need this to eat me up inside,  not with everything else happening around us.

This is but a game we love,  and it simply isn’t that important when our world is decaying faster than dead fish in the sun.

In a year, we may not have the world we took for granted. Our Democracy and way of life will be voted on in ten months, and there is no guarantee that we will even have fair voting, or that the votes will matter if the wannabe Dictator doesn’t want to leave. In a normal admin,  if he loses the vote, he leaves, but nothing about the admin has been normal and since prison for him and his family is in the future if he leaves the presidency I can’t see him letting go without trying to turn our country against each other. We have already seen how far his enablers will go and that is where almost all of my thoughts are on right now.

I’m still going to be the Dodger fan, the Clipper fan, but with my eye on November, I know, it is just killing time until I find out which direction our republic tilts.

We can change the future, but we can’t change the past, and if this weekend taught us anything, it should be to live in the present and not dwell on the past.