NPR is talking about the baseball steroid thing before Congress again.

Before Congress.

Okay, I don’t get this at ALL. Somebody, explain to me. It’s baseball. I could have sworn we were at war with somebody, and there was some humanitarian crisis somewhere, and I vaguely recall hearing something about oil topping $56 a barrel. And Congress is worried about…baseball.

I don’t do sports. If baseball stopped tomorrow, I wouldn’t much care. Now, I am fully willing to grant that there are people who care deeply about baseball. And that is fine. More power to ’em. Me, I care deeply about wombats, but I do not expect Congress to take the matter up. Congress, I have generally assumed, has bigger fish to fry. With things that…y’know…affect the country, and stuff. Sure, lots of people get worked up about baseball. Lots of people got worked up about the Star Wars movies, too, but nobody called George Lucas before the Senate to demand to know why the prequels suck like a Hoover.*

WHY is Congress worried about baseball? What the heck? This baffles me utterly. Is there some historical doodad at work here that says “Hey, Congress is the ones who administers baseball matters?” This is the only explanation I can come up with. Otherwise, it’s like demanding the government hold hearings on whether or not somebody in Hollywood is a method actor, or whether Stephen King is using correct grammar. It’s entertainment. It’s not, y’know, important.

Is it completely out to lunch that I wanted my elected officials to deal with, oh, wars, and drilling for oil in caribou country, and tax reform and abortion rights, and, y’know, things that are not entirely frivolous? Am I missing some way in which baseball is crucial to the function of the nation? Why is this happening? I don’t mean just to whine about baseball here, although that’s obviously part of it, I’m genuinely curious–why the heck is Congress involved in such a thing? It just doesn’t make sense to me that the government gets involved in entertainment industry matters.

*Not that they shouldn’t have…

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