It’s 5:13 in the morning, and I was thinking about something that I have thought about many times before, but never exactly found the right way to articulate it. I was thinking about being an American and original sin.

wow. I’ll take “Loaded Statements” for $200, Alex.

I am doing something that I often do at this time of night. I am watching SportsNight on TV (or rather on TiVO, the next best thing to sliced bread.) SportsNight is not a nightly sports recap news show (and is not 2 words, no matter what you might think) but rather a 30 minute sitcom that ran on ABC a few years ago ABOUT a nightly sports recap news show. It was written by Aaron Sorkin, who writes the West Wing, who wrote A Few Good Men, The American President, Malice, and a few other things here and there, and whom most of those who know me know is a hero of mine as a writer. (He’s a master of dialogue for intelligent people in the way the Quentein Tarantino in his day was a master of dialouge for “cool” people.) During it’s run, one critic said of SportsNight that, “This season’s best new drama is a half hour comedy.” It is entirely too smart for the lowest common denominator in America, but try this for a second. Watch the West Wing on NBC on Wednesday night, and have a good time laughing at the one or two of the REALLY well written scenes in that very well written DRAMA that are funny, comic relief type stuff. Then you’ll get the SportsNight vibe. Or watch it late night on Comedy Central, which is what I am doing now.

In the particular episode I am watching, the cast of the “sports show” are reporting a story on an old Negro Leauge pitcher who was greatly talented, but “no body noticed him because he played on the same team as Gibson and Jackie.” In the story line, this man, having retired years earlier and living in Los Angeles at age 75 or so with a family that loved him, was pulled from his car during a carjacking and beaten to death. What saddened me is that the show is talking about a purely distilled example of the American Original Sin. I have lamented here in recent days about the troubles with baseball, and talked about how it is breaking my heart. Baseball is truly American in my opinion. Racism against African-Americans is also, unfortunately, very American. I understand what bigotry and hatred are like, but this particular example, shown to me in the heat of a summer that should be about running out ground balls and not walking out on strike, is particularly poignant. I hate it that I can’t be talented enough to play ball. I hate it that the people who run the buisiness and the chosen talented few can’t find a way to let us adore and adminre them in the sweltering late season heat of the pennant race. I hate it that great athletes and greater men were honored with an athletic endeavour that ended in a tie. But mostly, I hate it that we will always see some of the greatest players in history as less, that some players will always be minor leaguers.

After all, the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd should be in everyone’s heart. My favorite moment in baseball history is watching Hank break the record in the midst of death threats thicker than butter, and the two men who took the field to run the bases with him were white.