I am as far from politically plugged in as it gets, but I am already sick of this government shutdown crap.  Now, how can I rant about it here on The Stain, ah, easy, cause it reminds me a ton of the 1994 baseball strike.

Flashback to August of 1994, me, having just turned 9, had lived up to my word of several years prior and went on my first flight sans parents.  I flew out to the East coast to spend a week and a half with my grandfather and great-grandfather.  I had long looked forward to my first game at Fenway Park, but something happened, baseball suddenly shut down, and Fenway Park was not hosting any more baseball games that year.

Earlier, that spring, I had read a book for my 3^rd grade book report about Ken Griffey Jr., and I was watching a historical season come to an end with him sitting at 40 home runs, on pace to set the single season home run record had they played the final 51 games of the season.

It was the first time since World War II there was no World Series.  Something we all take for granted was taken away from us, all because people whose salaries are paid for by people like you and me, couldn’t get together and come to a mutual decision.

Sound familiar?  Yup, a bunch of people in Washington, who have jobs because they have been elected to do said job, can’t sit down and figure out a budget.  So, places people travel across the country to visit, be it a national park or a monument in D.C. are closed, just as Fenway Park was closed 19 years ago.  The son of a military man can’t go to the doctor because military health insurance has been suspended, something that nobody thought would go away, just as nobody thought we would go without a World Series leading into the 1994 baseball season.

Baseball hit a major low in the seasons following the 1994 work stoppage, and it took two men taking performance enhancing drugs, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, to get the public interest back to baseball.  Let’s just hope it doesn’t take drastic measures like that to get the government running again.

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