Carl’s “not promising” comment in re: just made me heartsick — and no baseball fan outside of Ohio should be feeling heartsick when Game 1 of the World Series is going on.

In all honesty, it was hope-against-hope during the whole process of trying to talk some sense to Ottawa city councillors and staffers about why pro baseball deserves to keep going. It’s not you, Miles Wolff, it’s Ottawa, where there is a certain element that takes almost sadistic, self-justifying pride in trashing anything that people might enjoy.

By the way, here’s a funny take from south of the border on the state of the game in our country. It totally gets it wrong, but if you’ve followed the inaction from the city, you’d understand why:

“It left me wondering, while the pro ranks have diminished, what is the state of the game itself up in Canada? Do they even still play it up there? Or is the country so hockey mad that they a) haven’t really noticed that all the pro baseball teams have gone south and b) don’t play much baseball on the youth level any more?”
– Foster’s (N.H.) Daily Democrat, Oct. 24

It’s too funny by half if that’s the impression that’s been left south of the border by this politicians in this city and this country and their refusal to stand by a game, which a record number of Canadians are playing professionally. (More Canadians play baseball in the NCAA than in hockey.) Meantime, Baseball Canada would have had desperately needed new bigs at Lynx Stadium, but apparently that’s not a priority, even though we actually did better in baseball at the last Olympics than we did in men’s ice hockey. (You could look it up.)

So thanks, everyone at City Hall, for letting down everyone.