OK, so maybe I'm laying the diamond celebration on a little thick, but if you want yet another way in which baseball is superior to, say, the federal government?
Today, April 15, both federal and state governments (most of them, anyway) impose their deadline for you to give them money you worked for, which they will then use for several purposes. Some of those purposes, like national defense or the interstate highway system, are useful, needed and well done. More of them are needed but done very poorly and a large plurality are not needed, not useful and done poorly in ways only a massive bureaucracy could manage. For example, we spend money each year to have a spokesperson for the Vice-President of the United States in order to keep Joe Biden from making an even bigger joke of the office than it is, and Joe goes off on a regular basis and renders that spokesperson moot. And probably quite frustrated.
But on April 15, baseball celebrates Jackie Robinson Day, in honor of the man whose dignity and courage under tremendous pressure not only broke the "color barrier" existing in Major League Baseball in 1947, it kept it broken. Robinson's number, 42, has been officially retired by every major league team, after the last person wearing it via a grandfather clause, Mariano Rivera, retired from play in 2013. No other ballplayer has that honor. You tell me which is better.
Although the growing trend among major league teams to all wear 42 on April 15 probably confuses the heck out of Vice-President Biden.
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