In 15 years of rec baseball, travel baseball, high school baseball, college baseball, there was always an unspoken rule that parents never discussed politics. I have great friends from baseball, who I might not like so much if we had. In fact, that is what makes baseball great, that it brings together people of very different backgrounds and ideas, all in the love of this game. There was always plenty of other stuff to talk about. I remember one memorable conversation in a bar, after the last game of the summer, mainly about raising boys. Everyone here has had that conversation, I bet. To me, that is why baseball = America. Maybe it is what we are losing in this spring and summer without baseball.