Editorial: Wink, wink, nudge, nudge
Published 12:00 am Friday, March 14, 2008
Inside baseball.
It was a offensive strategy developed by the Baltimore Orioles in the 1890s. It employs tactics to keep the ball in the infield. Batters use walks, bunts, base hits, stolen bases and other means to advance their runners. Home runs and deep flies are not part of the strategy.
Today, people call that strategy small ball &8212; the opposite of long ball.
And the term inside baseball has come to mean something entirely different. Inside baseball is now a metaphor that describes the insider aspect of politics.
Sports reporters often were able to cover their beats in areas not accessible to fans &8212; locker rooms, coaches&8217; offices. Sometimes the sports reporters were so inside the coverage was out of touch with fan perspectives of what happens on the field.
The term inside baseball migrated to news coverage to describe how politicians would discuss items out of the public view, then leave the public clueless about the background machinations of the items. (Such as in today&8217;s political cartoon.)
Parliamentary procedure is designed not only for the users but for the viewers, too. Orderly and easy-to-grasp debate is key for the public to understand what happens.
So when your city council, school board or county board approves an item and there seems to have been little or no public discourse at any previous meeting, you can bet there is inside baseball going on.
What&8217;s strange is so many candidates pledge to improve dialogue and make their entity more public, then once they are in the public view, the scrutiny scares them toward inside baseball.
Now and then a different sort of leader comes along who welcomes greater sunshine. It doesn&8217;t always please fellow politicians, but that leader always receives a warm response from the general public. It&8217;s too bad more don&8217;t shoot for that goal. Besides, it&8217;s better for a leader to clearly put forth opinions on issues &8212; in other words, to lead.