Peter King is the latest public figure to volunteer to try to get American kids back following baseball. A curious character to charge with such a noble task. Once thrown out of a Belfast courtroom by a judge for being an “obvious collaborator with the IRA”, he’s a pro-life, conservative Republican whose appointment as Grand Marshal at the 1985 St Patrick’s Day Parade in New York prompted Garret FitzGerald’s government to boycott the event because of his links to “Irish terrorism”.
Representing a district on Long Island in the United States Congress for 28 years, King has compared Gerry Adams to George Washington, refused to “morally blame” the IRA for civilian casualties in attacks on military installations and been investigated as a security risk by his own government. At the height of the Troubles, he made regular fact-finding trips to West Belfast that, as somebody with ancestors from Limerick and Inisbofin, he compared to “spiritual awakenings”. He drank deep in The Felons Club on the Falls Road, stayed in the home of a senior IRA figure, and sang from the hymn sheet.
“To those Americans who say they support freedom fighters,” he declared, “let them come to Belfast and proclaim their support for the brave men and women of the Irish Republican Army.”
Having taken full credit for the subsequent peace accord (he did broker Adams’ first meeting with president Bill Clinton), King has now decided to revitalise the waning national pastime. Arguably an even more impossible gig than pacifying Ulster. The snail’s pace of the pastoral game has slowed down ridiculously, even as attention spans have dwindled rapidly, younger fans deserting it in such droves that a group of former players have established “Save The Game”, a grassroots organisation determined to get rules amended, teams less reliant on home runs, and young fans back in the seats.
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“I was talking with some of the guys and it bothered them how the game is now just the long ball,” said King after agreeing to lend his considerable political weight to the new movement. “And it takes so long to play the game, with all the pitching changes. We fear as we go forward, the NBA and the NFL are going to pass baseball. There’s more action. I hate to sound like my grandfather. I don’t know how many young kids talk about the Mets and the Yankees these days. We need to get the families involved.”
It’s worrying that King doesn’t realise the NBA and NFL have already passed baseball, not least because of its problems attracting young people. Just seven per cent of fans are under 18, and, in any New York classroom these days, you will find as many Spanish or English soccer shirts as Yankees or Mets jerseys. Mike Trout, the biggest star in the major leagues, is paid $35m per year by the Los Angeles Angels. He is arguably one of the best players ever, and, yet, is anonymous enough to walk around Disneyland unrecognised.
It’s been calculated that the average baseball fan today is a 57-year-old white dude, an irascible character bemoaning the erosion of long-held sporting traditions and caterwauling about the creeping disappearance of the country he grew up in. Even if he’s 20 years older, few people embody that troglodyte demographic better than King, an arch bloviator who railed against former president Mary Robinson receiving the Medal of Freedom from Obama because she dared to point out the fallibility of George Bush’s foreign policy.
For all his romantic lamenting of the Brooklyn Dodgers breaking New York hearts by departing for California, a retired politico with a regular reactionary cameo on right-wing talk radio may not be best qualified to preach the virtues of bat and ball to those who have long since turned away from the game. The sport has been dying in African-American neighbourhoods for decades and King, rabidly opposed to Black Lives Matter, is hardly the man to address that decline. He famously denounced Beyoncé’s Super Bowl XLVII half-time show as pro-Black Panther and anti-cop, and, when some New York Jets took the knee during the national anthem before an NFL game, he compared their protest to the unfurling of a Nazi salute.
Muslim communities aren’t going to be very receptive to the initiatives of somebody who declared there are too many mosques in the United States either. During his stint as chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, a body dealing with the threat of terrorism, King was accused of persecuting the Islamic faith and he reacted rather testily when critics pointed out the extent of his own previous support of the IRA, not to mention his enthusiastic fundraising for Noraid, back in the day.
Baseball die-hards can only hope he brings the same dogged commitment to speeding up the infield action as he once did to battling the deportation from New York to Belfast of Joe Doherty, a Crumlin Road Prison escapee who had been convicted in absentia of the murder of Captain Herbert Westmacott of the SAS.
“I think if the effort is made, we can get people thinking about baseball again,” said King. “It’s still the best sport, with the best weather. You get to the ballpark, watch batting practice, grab a hot dog and a Coke. It lends itself to talking during the game. It’s still a smart person’s game.”
The very exceptionalism that has it where it is today.
