POPULISM'S GRAND OLD GAME

摘要

CELEBRATED film director Frank Capra was a pivotal architect of the feel-good movie genre now known as populism, which cherishes the people, families, second chances, and traditional American icons like small town pastoral life and baseball. However, populism's beginnings are tied to the birth of the U.S. and the country's seminal comedy type—the crackerbarrel hero, a father figure of benevolent common sense. The crackerbarrel populist lives in a methodical, one-thing-at-a-time linear world where conflict eventually will be worked out because life still is perceived to be rational. This old-fashioned American mindset is equally applicable to baseball. As political columnist and baseball author George Will has noted: "Baseball suits the character of this democratic nation. Democracy is government by persuasion. That means it requires patience. That means it involves a lot of compromise.... Baseball is the game of the long season, where small incremental differences decide who wins and who loses."