In his recent opinion column “Remember what Sparky said,” Mark Figley drew upon the wisdom of Sparky Anderson to defend Donald Trump from his critics.
“During the Obama years,” writes Figley, “the refrain was heard from those on both the left and right that ‘elections have consequences.’ Simply put, those opposed to Obama’s policies needed to move on and suck it up. But as Reds’ Hall-of-Fame manager Sparky Anderson once said, ‘The world turns over on someone new every 24 hours.’ And it came to pass that Barack Obama’s eight-year reign would end.”
Let me offer another baseball analogy here — one that I think may be more apropos, given our current political predicament, than Figley’s.
Joe Nuxhall, one-time Reds pitcher and long-time Reds broadcaster, liked to tell a story about his days as a rookie. He once started a game and walked the first three batters to load the bases. Veteran first baseman Ted Kluszewski, intent on settling down the young lefthander, took a few strides toward the mound. Nuxhall, irritated at Kluszewski’s approach, yelled at him, “Get back to first base! I’ll do the pitching here!” To which Big Klu, without missing a beat, replied, “When you gonna start?”
A week or so ago Donald Trump was interviewed by a journalist who asked some questions that Trump did not like. At the end of the interview Trump observed, “I’m the president, you’re not.”
What Trump was saying to the journalist, in so many words, was “Go away. I’ll do the governing here!”
To which the journalist, as well as the American people as a whole, would have been perfectly justifed in replying, “When you gonna start?”
Kelly Anspaugh, Ada
