Doc's Morning Line: We need to be more engaged as a country

In a minute, I’ll Stick to Sports. If sports is all you prefer to read in This Space, that’s certainly OK by me. TML is about lots of things other than sports. Feel free to choose from the buffet. Scroll down a page or so. Sports is on the menu down there. Consider this the TML heads-up, not unlike the TV networks telling you when they’re about to air something graphic. This isn’t graphic. At least not visually.

I’ll give everyone a second. Now, then. . .

A reader named Nancy Karlen took after me last week, after the column I’d written on Colin Kaepernick. Here’s some of her e-mail:

If persons on the left paid more attention to even more distant American history, perhaps we would not be devolving into a piss poor elitist society where values of America’s past are consider (sic) naïve by folks like yourself.

Well, Nancy, peacefully protesting is about as “distant history’’ as America gets. We were pretty much born as a nation because of it. To all those distant “persons on the left’’ good on ya.

“Values of America’s past.’’ That’s an interesting phrase. How might you define those “values’’? Rallying together in a time of crisis? Or rallying together to deny basic rights to American citizens? We did both in your “distant’’ past, Nancy.

I’m not sure what is meant by “elitist society’’. If it means a country run by rich people, well, I think you’ll find the wealthy lean right, not left. And I’m not sure what that has to do with peaceful protest.

Finally, Nancy wrote, “you were a more engaging writer years ago.’’

Perhaps. And the world as a whole was a more engaging place.

I don’t create the reality. I reflect it.

It’s been a mean couple of weeks. Buffalo and Uvalde. Locally, Tommy Pham slapping Joc Pederson over a fantasy football beef. The gun murders and the fantasy idiocy are connected by the anger that covers us like a shroud.

I think it’s weird that people who love to hate on Kaepernick haven’t gone ballistic over the Cleveland Browns paying the sun and moon to Deshaun Watson. I think it’s beyond hypocritical for Republican politicians to express sorrow at the gun murders while a House bill on better background checks can’t even get a hearing in the Senate.

I think it’s sickening that Rob Portman has taken more than $3 million over the years in NRA money, according to the New York Times.

Sports touches on all of this, because sports is us. On Friday, when the Giants were in town to play the Reds, SF manager Gabe Kapler said he would remain in the clubhouse during the Anthem, to express his displeasure over the way the country is going now, with the recent gun murders being the latest example. (Kapler would modify his stance, appearing on the field for the Anthem on Monday, Memorial Day.)

Did anyone lose their stuff over Kapler’s protest? Not that I could tell.

I don’t understand why in many states it’s easier to get a driver’s license than a gun permit, if you even need a gun permit. I don’t understand why some who cite the sanctity of life as reason to oppose a woman’s right to choose also oppose any efforts at rational gun legislation. Is there a hierarchy to sanctity of life?

Please explain those rankings.

I don’t understand why stricter laws and better mental health care can’t both be part of a solution to gun murders. I don’t understand why anyone would oppose a ban on selling AR-15-style rifles and hollow-point bullets to the general public. I don’t understand a country where an 18-year-old can legally buy a killing machine but not a beer.

I understand the humor in Pham’s over-the-top outrage. For lots of people, fantasy sports are more important than the real version. (Including yours truly, who has frequently cursed the names of Marcus Semien and Teoscar Hernandez, tragically underachieving players on my fantasy roster.) I understand, too, why Pham would get physical about it. What he did was just a manifestation of our general national anger. We find reasons to be mad now.

(Pham served a three-game suspension for the slap, costing him between $111,000 and $138,000, depending on the account you read. If he really wants to be angry about something, that’ll qualify.)

I applaud Gabe Kapler and Steve Kerr and any other sports figure who believes there are things more important than sports, even as sports are what pays them. Ultimately, our way of life won’t depend on who wins a baseball or basketball game. Or whether Colin Kaepernick takes a knee. These folks have a powerful platform. Good on ‘em for taking advantage.

If you want to view life through a narrow prism, have at it. Sports are sports and real life is real life and never the twain shall meet. I disagree. Doesn’t make me right or righteous. Just lucky to be able to express myself freely. Same as you.

Here’s to a more “engaging’’ country.

Now, then. . .

IN BASEBALL, YOU DON’T KNOW NOTHIN’. . . The Club is 13-9 since 3-22. The Reds just took two of three from a good Giants team. It should have taken all three. For the 2nd time in a couple weeks, the Reds lost a game in which their starting pitcher entered the 7th inning with a no-hitter.

We dogged on Tyler Mahle in This Space a week ago. Big ups to him today. Mahle frustrates because he’s thisclose to being a top-of-the-rotation pitcher. Meantime, the sudden emergence of Overton and (possibly) Ashcraft is at once encouraging and perplexing. Their performances have been pleasing, yes. But given the Reds painful lack of decent starting pitching, especially before Castillo came back, why weren’t these guys given daylight until recently?

Certainly, Overton and Ashcraft could have improved upon Gutierrez and Sanmartin.

While it’s been fun to watch, it shouldn’t (and very likely won’t) deter them from dealing a couple months from now. Castillo, Mahle, Minor, Moustakas, Pham, even Drury. Only Castillo and possibly Mahle will get a lot in return, but if you’re the Reds and you’re rebuilding, go big or go home.

THEY’RE AT FENWAY tonight, which elicit the inevitable Ballparks Question: Which are your favorites? The knee-jerks go to Fenway and Wrigley, but truth is they’re both expensive and uncomfortable and have sightlines blocked by support beams. If your experience doesn’t have to include a big dose of history, maybe you choose in this order, like I do:

1. Oracle Park, San Francisco

2. Dodger Stadium, LA

3. Camden Yards, Baltimore

4. Minute Maid Field, Houston

No PNC Park, Doc?

Nope. I refuse to acknowledge that the worst owner in pro sports gets to live rent-free in a playpen that nice.

I like Minute Maid because it’s surprisingly cozy and interesting. Camden was the original brick-and-wrought-iron and it’s in a great spot for restaurants, right on the harbor. Dodger Stadium is Dodger Stadium. Oracle is PNC with a Bay. And a reliably good team.

THANKS TO MY PAL MILFORD TODD for hosting yet another epic party, with bourbon as its theme. Among other talents, Todd is a bourbon savant. He hosted a tasting Saturday that included six pours, each stronger than the last. We started with a New Riff at, I think, 109 proof and ended with a Woodford that checked in at 128. I liked the Weller Full Proof (114 proof is pretty damned full) which was fool-proof.

Todd also had several flavors of moonshine that tasted scarily good, very much like fruit juice. Think grainy alcohol parties in college (Hairy Buffalo, we called them.) It was always fun to see the freshmen at their first grain party. You try to tell them to take it easy. They never listen. One minute they’re saying, “It tastes like Kool-Aid’’ the next they’re lying in the grass, praying to any god that will listen.

I had about a thimble-ful of peach ‘shine. It was dangerously great.

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . A Mobster suggested this one. Great, great tune. And oh so appropriate as we approach the summer of 2022.

We've got to find a way/to bring some understanding here today.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: After Buffalo, Uvalde shootings, more engagement needed | Opinion