After writing a series of articles and making a series of videos about the fight for real health reform, from a Florida perspective, I recently took a little end-of-Summer break to catch my breath and cleanse the old mental palate before coming back for more.
For me, Sports - Baseball, to be specific - New York Yankees Baseball, to be honest - has always helped that way, providing a refreshing and restorative change of cerebral scenery.
As Fate would have it, flying from Florida to NYC, visiting the impressive new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, and watching the Yanks play 3 games in 3 days against 3 different opponents proved to be both great escape, and apt allegory.
Quick note to all you head-shaking Red Sox fans and assorted other Yankee-haters: Give me a break, I was born and raised for the first 12 years of my life about a mile and a half away from Yankee Stadium. It's a clichà ©, sure, but it's in my blood.
Also in my blood, passed down from politically informed and involved immigrant grandparents, to my activist/unionist mother, to my brothers and me, and to our children, is an acute awareness of the ongoing social struggle of working families for a better life.
So not so strangely enough, I left the Bronx after the last of my three-game set, heading back to The Sunshine State with a cloud of baseball and health reform thoughts swirling together in my noggin.
Excited lifer of a Yankee fan that I am, I can't help but have World Series dreams after seeing The Good, The Bad. And The Ugly aspects of the team during my 3-game close-up look. As imperfect as they may have been on a number of levels, I still came away believing they could end up as the last team standing this year.
On the flight from LaGuardia to West Palm Beach, alternating between reading Sports & News recaps and forecasts, I couldn't avoid the analogous juxtaposition of the Yankees' 2009 battle to win a World Series for the first time since 2000, and a U.S. President's struggle to win a Big Victory for America's working wounded and middle-class families - also for the first time since 2000.
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