Setting the record straight

A friend of mine asked yesterday how I felt about Corey Lidle's death, as if I might be happy, since he was employed by the Yankees at the time of his death. I hate the Yankees, and take much pleasure in their every failure on the field. I honestly believe that baseball would be a better game if George Steinbrenner didn't exist, and that the six teams that have knocked them out of the playoffs the last six years have done a great service to the majority of Americans.

I do not, however, value their demise over human life.

Jill and I watched the end of Game 4 last Saturday at Foreplay in Portland, cheering with a handful of other patrons as Jeremy Bonderman destroyed the $200 million lineup I expected to see scoring twleve runs a game through the end of October. I spent the next hour calling anti-Yankee loved ones, revelling in another win for the good guys, and I'll spend the next twleve months relishing someone else's defense of their world championship. However, if I could go back to that moment, knowing that if the Tigers won, Corey Lidle would die, and if the Yankees won, he would live, the choice would have been easy. I would have walked away from the TV and crossed my fingers that a six-year-old boy would not grow up without a father.

Then I would have bought an A's hat and crossed them again.

While we're on the topic of baseball deaths, Buck O'Neil died last weekend. I don't find it particularly sad when a man in his nineties passes peacefully, but I cried. I don't think I cried for Buck O'Neil. Common wisdom says that, despite being forbidden from playing and coaching in the major leagues, not to mention choosing his own seat on a bus, O'Neil held no grudges against the ignorant majority that treated him like a lesser man. Once he was allowed into the major leagues as a coach, he was motivated not by revenge, but by opportunity. He seemed to enjoy every aspect of life, even the least pleasant ones.

I cried for Buck O'Neil not as a victim, but as a symbol of the small-minded hatred that kept millions of people from enjoying the basic human rights I've taken advantage of since birth. And I cried because my generation, despite our access to the many lessons of history, isn't doing much better. We still live in a world in which a referendum to keep gays from enjoying the basic rights (and responsibilities) of marriage is used as an incentive to bring the small-minded to the voting booth and re-elect an ethically-stunted warmonger.

Maybe the gay community needs a Jackie Robinson, a Rosa Parks, a Martin Luther King, Jr.- someone who can preach common sense to those who don't want to listen. Because I don't want to cry when Elton John dies.