Jann Wenner writes in his biography “Like a Rolling Stone” (2022) about developing wisdom as we age without becoming cynical. Achieving healthy skepticism and discernment are superb and useful traits across a lifetime, but brain-dead cynicism is just too dark, cheap, and intellectually lazy - at least for my taste.
Of course, Wenner, the Rolling Stone Magazine founder and longtime editor, lacked considerable wisdom, grace, and smarts when he cynically said last year that the rock-star interviewees in another of his books, “The Masters” (2023) were all white men because there were no women or people of color “articulate” enough to have made his cut. Good grief!
This got me thinking about Lily. I sat next to this (I’m guessing) seven-year-old girl and her dad recently at a St. Louis Cardinals v. Houston Astros spring training game in Jupiter, FL. Lily was having a great time at her first game. Her eyes lit up when the Astros’ Jose Altuve, among other players, signed her baseball. She grinned broadly when dad caught a t-shirt heaved into the stands by a Cards’ staff member between innings. She had a hot dog as dad put his arm around her and she asked him questions about baseball.
Yes, baseball certainly has many challenges. It has been a sport in decline. This was less-than-eloquently expressed by an ignoramus calling into a radio sports-talk show in Boston recently who proclaimed that, “Baseball sucks. They're all idiots.” Of course, ignorant broadsided rants are the stuff of sports talk radio and too much of politics these days with cynics often ascribing all ills to the unnamed “they” and “them.”
For sure, baseball has been deteriorating relative to football, soccer, basketball, and MMA in the U.S. for some clear reasons such as an aging demographic, slowness of play and, therein, length of games. MLB attendance has been trending down for years, but 66 million people still attended games in 2023 according to Statista. The annual value of MLB broadcast deals tops $2 billion across many prominent networks, also according to Statista. Overall, MLB revenue exceeds $11 billion according to Forbes, and Steve Cohen bought the New York Mets for $2.4 billion in 2020. Baseball doesn't sound dead to me. Plus, Theo Epstein’s reforms (e.g., pitch clock, no shifts) have definitely improved the on-field product. Those who mindlessly condemn baseball are missing the point. It wasn’t dead to Lily and her dad that day. It didn’t suck for them and the millions who still attend games or enjoy them on television.
The cynics are highly and instantly opinionated - and often wrong - about so many things. They believe that a wide swath of everything sucks and is dead or dying. It must be a painfully difficult, self-limiting way to lead life. With discernment and healthy skepticism, we can certainly be nobody’s fool, admit that problems exist, suggest effective solutions, work for incremental progress, and choose to see the positives without such sweeping, angry condemnations. It’s part of a healthy mindset.
Of course, none of this applies to how we must react to truly bad people who merit our deepest cynicism and condemnation - criminals who’ve committed heinous acts, corrupt authoritarians and fascists, and assorted con-artists and grifters who spread lies, mock civilizational norms, and work in ways that are immoral, unethical, illegal, and destructive.
As we age, let's otherwise fight the predilection for angry, "get off my lawn" cynicism and those in public life who create and merchandise it. It's just too easy a trap. Maybe we can avoid that trap on occasion by choosing to see things through Lily's eyes.
Image courtesy of Inner Wellness.