Foul Territory

This week, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig wrested control of the Los Angeles Dodgers from owner Frank McCourt because of the team's shaky finances occasioned by the latter's messy divorce.

There are many Southern Californians who can't connect with the Dodgers anymore. Indeed, season ticket sales have plunged. The stadium, inconveniently located and poorly designed, has grown old before its time. Its restrooms are vile. Parking and refreshments are priced exorbitantly. Worst of all, the fans have grown crude to the point of wanton violence, as we saw on opening day.

Perhaps the time has come for the Dodgers to find a new stadium, a new owner, and perhaps even a new city. Down the road in Anaheim people watch the Angels in a cleaner and better designed venue that is convenient to the freeway. Parking costs half what the Dodgers charge. Refreshments are far more varied and prices are fair. Most of all, the ambiance is cheerful and family friendly.

If the Dodgers can not provide a safe and clean stadium for an outing at a reasonable price, then both the team and the city might be better off without each other.

Baseball Players Practicing by Thomas Eakins, 1875. I find an industriousness and a brooding quiet in many of Eakins' works. Here, only a handful of spectators, barely sketched, presents no distraction to the players. The crowds will return with their adulation, but in this moment, late in the season and after the game, as evidenced by the yellow turf and long shadows, the athletes are joined in wordless diligence. Click on the picture for a closer look.

The Art of Healing

Permit an analogy. When Thomas Eakins painted The Gross Clinic, he meant it as a tribute to the advent of corrective surgery. The canvas is of heroic dimensions and the composition is classical, with the doctor attending and lecturing in a halo of light. Dr. Gross doesn't merely hold a scalpel in his bloodied hand, but the future of medicine.

Looking at this scene today, however, we are more likely to recoil, like the woman on the left. The physicians are in street clothes and there is no attempt to keep any part of the procedure sterile. We don't see the future of the healing arts, but their crude and brutal past.

Today we are faced with reforming health care in America, and as the President told us last night, we are the last developed democracy to do so. We have a system that permits insurance companies to cherry-pick their clients, charge wildly varying rates, deny benefits in bad faith, and circumscribe doctors. And yet, a vocal minority in America resists change.

It's difficult to know what part of the present system conservatives are trying to protect. Perhaps they believe that medicine will become more impersonal, more vulnerable to political machinations, maybe even more expensive. Perhaps they're simply frightened of the unknown the way all of us fear doctors and hospitals.

I think the present system is untenable and will one day look as primitive as Dr. Gross and his operating theatre. Change will come. The question is: will our nation be healed by it, or overtaken?

The Gross Clinic by Thomas Eakins, 1875; 8' x 6.5'. Click on the picture for a closer look.