The Fog of War
https://oztypewriter.blogspot.com/2015/10/on-death-of-grantland-us-sportswriters.html
CHICAGO (April 20, 1939 or 2022) - Time Warp!?! Who can tell?
April 17, 1939 has come and gone. The wonderful spectacle that is Opening Day didn’t happen. The Reds Johnny Van der Meer never fired that opening speedball to the Pirates Lloyd Waner waiting anxiously at the plate for the first pitch of the 1939 Season.
But wait, I can go on the internet to baseballreference.com and view the entire box score.
The internet?
Ok, before I go too far down this rabbit hole of parallel universes, I must step out of my role as sports columnist for the mythical State Street Tribune. I wanted desperately to stay in that persona throughout the spring, summer and fall. I wanted to recreate the 1939 baseball season through the magic of Dave Koch Sports’ Action Baseball game. I wanted to not only capture the delights of baseball, but to capture the historical happenings of the world as it was in 1939.
Then came a war.
Of course, I was anticipating this on September 1, 1939. There would be no headlines about baseball for the rest of the season. Nazi Germany invaded Poland on that date, and World War II had officially begun. Lesser known to Americans, on September 17, 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the East.
But it wasn’t that war that has disrupted this baseball/history writing project. On February 24, 2022, my journey into another time took a strange turn in the time warp. The history of then became the reality of today.
As if history were repeating itself right before my very eyes, Russia suddenly and visciously attacked and invaded Ukraine. Perhaps if I was living in the United States this project may have proceeded. Afterall, this war, as were World Wars I and II, was half a world away.
I could have invoked the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, which he wrote to Major League Baseball Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis in 1942 — the so-called “Green-Light Letter.”
In part, Roosevelt wrote:
I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going. There will be fewer people unemployed, and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before. And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before.
Baseball provides a recreation which does not last over two hours or two hours and a half, and which can be got for very little cost. And, incidentally, I hope that night games can be extended because it gives an opportunity to the day shift to see a game occasionally.
However, I am not in the United States. I live and work as a teacher and missionary in Poland. Overnight, we became refugee relief workers. Most of the readers are aware that there have been over 4 million Ukrainians who have fled the war-torn country. Roughly 3 million have come to Poland. Our schools and churches instantly turned into places to sleep and get meals.
Not only that, but I have been involved as part of a network that is getting relief aid (medicines, food, bedding) inside Ukraine to some of the millions who have been displaced. I serve on a committee that decides on distribution priorities for the money that hundreds of people in America have donated to the relief effort. You can donate here. My wife and I host 3 refugees who are living semi-permanently in our home.
I share this, not for any kind of pat on the back, but to explain that I no longer have enough time to continue this project. I grieve this loss in my plans, but the grief lasts only a second. When I look at the faces of those who have lost homes and loved ones, my loss is microscopic in comparison.
So, I bid you all farewell from the mist (or is it in the midst) of time. I look forward to meeting again next February when the pitchers and catchers report for spring training and the Fog of War is hopefully a distant past. Or in the case of 1939, still a few months into the future.
