Remember, This Isn’t a Show, It Doesn’t Have to Go On

Forget about baseball. People are dying.

Who cares when they continue the World Series? Who cares if they continue it? Don’t worry about a Godforsaken World Series when bridges are collapsing, when buildings are on fire, when bodies are being dragged into trauma centers and morgues. San Francisco and Oakland are not fighting for a trophy. They are fighting for their lives.

When President Kennedy was assassinated, they went ahead and played professional football, because they said the he would have wanted it that way. When young Israelis were slaughtered at Munich, they went ahead with the Olympic Games. When President Reagan was shot in the street, they went ahead with the college basketball championship game, because they said he would want it that way.

Well, stop wanting it that way. Stop wondering how this earthquake is going to affect San Francisco’s pitching rotation. Quit talking about life going on, about business as usual, about what a terrible thing this is that just as the Giants and Athletics finally get to meet in a Bay Bridge World Series, the bridge splits in two. This isn’t about the World Series going on. This is the world going on.

Have some respect. Have some compassion. Stop being a sports fan, for once in your life. Be a human being.

In 1942, the Rose Bowl was moved from Southern California to North Carolina because of fears of a World War II invasion on the West Coast, after Pearl Harbor. What does it take for people to come to their senses--another World War? Northern California will be digging out from under this for weeks, for months, for years. Families are being devastated, children turned into orphans, businesses burned to the ground. And you want to play baseball today? You want to play bloody baseball ?

We do not even so much mind whether the World Series resumes as we do where it resumes. Move it to Los Angeles, to San Diego, to Seattle. Anybody on the Giants who complains about losing home-field advantage, take them outside and slap them twice across the face. Ask them if they think the mourners of the earthquake’s dead give a damn whether they play the Athletics at Dodger Stadium instead of Candlestick Park.

Think. Think hard. Think about it happening to you. Think about some nearby college happily playing a football game while a hurricane has leveled your home and frightened your children and left your neighbors without electricity and windows. That’s what happened last month to people in South Carolina. They turned on their television sets and saw local college kids playing football, spectators laughing.

This is a living nightmare, this earthquake. This isn’t some bothersome inconvenience. We do not care one tiny bit whether building inspectors declare Candlestick Park structurally sound after examining the cracks in the cement. We couldn’t care less whether the light fixtures escaped damage or whether no aftershocks are expected. Have some respect.

You say other public companies open for business the next day even during catastrophic conditions? Listen, not many businesses invite ticket-buyers to weave through the rubble of people’s lives so they can cheer at the top of their lungs and guzzle beer and make comic faces at television cameras. To go ahead with a World Series baseball game today in San Francisco would be grotesque beyond belief.

This is no time for entertainment.

There are few silver linings to be found at a time when a sporting event is interrupted by a natural disaster, except to thank God that 63,000 people from all walks of life, crammed into a stadium, were not more grimly affected Tuesday than they were.

Why the gods chose to strike down San Francisco with another quake at the exact time the World Series returned to that great city, we can only shake our heads and wonder. Ours is not to reason why.

But, we can reason now. We can reason that there is restoration to do, rebuilding, regrouping, recovery--that this is no time to be talking about pitching, but to be talking about pitching in. Some of the Giants and A’s couldn’t resist making jokes about the earthquake being an omen, about being a message from above that their team is going to shake things up. Black humor abounds at times such as these.

There are times, however, to have a little good taste and common sense, and most of all there are times to have a heart. The World Series can wait a few days, at the very least. It should be taken elsewhere, out of the line of fire. Nobody should dare equate this measly thing with “bad luck,” as if baseball related to the quality of human life. San Francisco has already lost. So has Oakland, San Jose, Santa Cruz. To hell with baseball.

Once in a while, we are called upon to act responsibly. If the people who run baseball decide to go ahead and play baseball, then shame on them, shame on them forever. It would not be the first time. It had better be the last.