And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, "Editor Emeritus"

... that on this Memorial Day, I’d like to write a little bit about baseball.

There was a time when every little community had a “town” team and they often played on the holiday. As rural populations shrunk, so did baseball at that level. But I was a fan in those days, from mid-1940s into the 1950s in particular.

As a baseball fan, I altered my usual Sunday mid-day routine so I could watch the University of Iowa play Northwestern in the Big (whatever) tournament that noon. It was with some difficulty that I found out Iowa was in the finals. The Sunday papers did not have much info (one none at all) because Iowa had to play its way in via a night game Saturday night. I watched ten innings of that game then went to bed. Good thing, because it turned out to be the longest game in tournament history, lasting just three minutes short of five hours! But Iowa did win.

The final game was sort of anti-climatic with Iowa getting an early substantial lead then coasting to a 13-4 victory.

What made it interesting was that Iowa had to start a pitcher who had been pretty much a flop during the regular season, but he turned in an excellent seven inning performance.

Iowa is the only one of the state’s three major colleges with a baseball team. Both Iowa State and UNI dropped the sport several years ago, partly because of lack of interest and partly because the fed’s require equal numbers of sports for both... well, the two most common, at least... genders.

Length of games may play a part.

The Chicago Cubs, who have resorted to form this season after last year’s success, recently played a game, a complete game by their pitcher, in two hours and four minutes. Each team has only a handful of hits and things moved right along.

It’s still a great sport.

I noticed with interest the story about gun deaths in the United States. Only three states west of Iowa had more that two in the two years covered by the story. Texas was the outlier with more than 10. The rest of the high numbers came from eastern states, yet I would bet that the number of guns owned by residents of those western states is greater, the point being that it isn’t the gun, it’s the intent of the person with the gun.

As the National Rifle Association preaches: Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.