The American Conservative
In idle hours one muses on what might have been had we taken forks in the road that led down more peaceful paths.
âI hate the American Empire,â declared the novelist-patriot Gore Vidal, âand I love the Old Republic.â
Whether the remnant can recover the latter from the rotting husk of the former is an open question, but in idle hours one muses on what might have been had we taken forks in the road that led down more peaceful paths. Chronology be damned, these include:
George W. Bush selected commissioner of Major League Baseball in 1998. He was a horrendous president, perhaps every bit as bad as Woodrow Wilson, but in matters baseball, the Butcher of Baghdad was on the side of the angels, and I donât mean the Anaheim ballclub. As an owner of the Texas Rangers, he was pro-grass, anti-dome, and anti-playoff expansion. From this admirable traditionalist streak, so entirely lacking in his catastrophic presidency, we can infer that today MLB Commissioner Bush would be anti-robot umps, anti-soul-crushing analytics, and anti-extermination of minor league teams.
