#112 Pigball

We were talking around the station the other day. Bobby was waxing philosophical about the “Stitch and Pitch” night our local baseball heroes were putting on. He seemed convinced that this sort of promotion thing wasn’t going on at Yankee Stadium. Because THEY HAVE A TEAM! See, the theory is this, with winning teams, people go to the baseball park to WATCH BASEBALL! Now, I’m no baseball fan. I know, and I don’t particularly like apple pie of hot dogs either, but the folks I know who are, are real fans. They stick with the team through thick and thin— mostly thin—and so are entitled to get a little testy when it comes to talking about the Mariners. By the way, apparently our most recent ex-Mariner star, Bret Boone, is not doing so well at his new location, adding new meaning to the term out in the boonies.
Anyhow, when you make a lot of money it doesn’t necessarily follow that you can’t play baseball. It only seems that way. Maybe it’s true that the Yankees have been able to buy their championship teams, but every time they don’t win the World Series it’s pretty clear to me that high salary or no, you still got to know what to do with that little round thingy. Baseball is like any other field of employment. People rise to their level of incompetence. That’s why I like watching minor league baseball, the guys still hustle on and off the field. Plus, you not only get more action, the tickets are cheaper, so what’s not to like? And you gotta love a team that’s named after a mountain and a beer.
Still, “Pitch and Stitch,” wherein people come to the game and knit while whiling away the innings, seems like a lot better enterprise than one I heard of the other day. The Puyallup Police force is having a fundraiser called Paint a Cop. Kind of a spin-off of the old Pig Bowl football routine. This one encourages you to field a paintball team and compete with the Puyallup Police Paintball team. For charity of course. What’s wrong with this picture? First of all I hope they’re good. One of my sons is into paintball and it ain’t no crawl-through-the-woods sniper sort of sport anymore. It’s scramble and dash. Squirt out from behind barriers and snap shoot. Pop up suddenly and rain a blistering stream of paintballs on your enemy. It is for kids, and young adults who don’t mind having their upper torso covered with welts. No Kevlar vests in this game. And some of these kids are dead shots too—from the hip, from the shoulder, on the run—and the new guns they have spray like ouzis on crank. I hope the police team has been practicing, cause if one of these teenage teams wants to enter the fray they’ll lend up looking like Van Gogh’s cleaning rag.
But what really bothers me is the message. Paintball guns are— and look like—guns. Is it really a good idea to encourage people to fire weapons at the police? I mean, video games like Grand Theft Auto are bad enough. Do we want to get teenagers out in the real world and start shooting down cops?
America, ya gotta love it.