So here we are at opening day of the new major league baseball season, where staying up late hopefully will be because your team is playing on the West Coast, rather than watching real-time war coverage.
It is with a wish for simpler times that when any reference is being made to a 22-year-old as being safe at home, it means the plate, rather than the need for it to mean the home front.
Whatever the feelings about the current war — pro or con, yea or nay, or somewhere in between — it seems the collective heart of this community and by extension, this nation, is properly weighed with concern, support and outright respect for those who have been sent to carry out the decision of our president and Congress.
The conversation about the wisdom of this war rightly needed to stop when the first foot crossed the Iraq border and, because we are a democracy, that conversation will rightly resume when the hostilities end and those who are there are out of harm’s way.
It will be then that we can fully embrace, with guiltless glee, the simpler ways and final judgments of the national pastime of baseball.
It seems so long ago that when an inside pitch thrown by a millionaire pitcher at the fists or head of a millionaire batter had some supposed message or, for that matter, some real significance in our sporting lives.
Given the backdrop of our current reality, it will be a while for that feeling of full enjoyment to return.
However, until such time, we will be thankful for the occasional oasis it provides as we await the news of the safe return of our troops.
I believe that, in this one instance, Met and Philly fans will join me in a heartfelt "Go, Yanks."
Joe Wedick
former councilman
Keyport