The American League wild-card playoff game between the visiting Minnesota Twins and New York Yankees gets under way tonight at 8 on ESPN. The National League’s wild-card contest begins at 8 p.m. Wednesday with the Colorado Rockies on the road against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
It should be the best time of the year for baseball fans the nation over. It’s the postseason. Every pitch, catch and swing of the bat truly matters. It’s all become so big that October no longer necessarily can contain it. If this year’s World Series goes the full seven games, it will end on Nov. 1.
But how do you find even the slightest energy or enthusiasm for America’s Pastime after watching and reading about a madman’s massacre of 59 people – and it could be 60 or more by the time you read this – in Las Vegas?
How comfortable should any of us be to join a crowd of thousands of people in an open-air venue after the carnage allegedly wrought by a single gunman using multiple rapid-fire weapons of dizzying mass destruction?
Is this an outlier or an outing of growing evil most sinister and prolific?