Inside Baseball

In a recent post, I described some questions from Bubblehead as being inside baseball. My wife messaged me asking what the term meant. So, let’s discuss briefly. Wikipedia sums up “Inside Baseball” this way:

Inside baseball is a colloquial term meaning conversations or dialog that refer to subject matter, the details of which the average member of the public would have no way of being privy to, and often concerning obscure matters that would only be of interest to the participants, leaving viewers or an audience mystified as to what is being discussed. The term has its origins in the notion that casual observers of the sport of baseball are often confused by in-depth technical discussion of the sport, and dismiss it as “inside baseball”, much like an “inside joke” which is only understandable to someone with knowledge of a specific and private subject.

So, to make it simple, I’m sitting watching a game with a casual observer and I say, “This hitter’s got a .400 on-base percentage, but he’s only batting .294 against lefties. He’s grounded into 23 double plays this year, but he’s struck out 105 times.” All of this tells the casual observer nothing about what concerns him most: what’s going to happen when the pitcher throws the ball and the batter hits in. Watching the game, that’s all that matters.

Politics can be much the same way. To be honest, on this blog I’ve been playing a lot of Inside Baseball with Idaho Democrats and Grant supporters. Does the public care whether 200 or 250 people were at the Vice-President’s fundraiser? No. Do they care who has raised the most money in-state? No. The out-of-state money can be an issue for some if you play the xenophobia card.

The Democrats have been waging an aggressive inside baseball campaign and we’ve been doing a marathon. Me v. the Entire Left Wing blogosphere.

Now, that’s always raised some concerns with me. I know people come to my blog from all over the world. How much do they care about this? Not a whole lot. But, we’re in a state where the liberal blogosphere has little counterweight. Come election time, I expect many of the posts I’ve made in July and August to come up as top search items on Google, along with articles from Red State Rebels, 43rd State Blues, and the Stupid Shall Be Punished. So, I’m probably making some sacrifices in terms of the growth of this blog to help provide a rebuttal that will explain the issues of this campaign to undecided voters and provide a counterweight to the left wing blogosphere.

My use of the term with Bubblehead meant simply this: Mr. Sali’s staff will read the e-mail and will most likely make a conclusion that this person is not a normal voter, but someone acting politically because the questions are nothing but inside baseball. This is definitely not a game the Sali campaign should play. As the candidate, he’s got to speak to the concerns of Idahoans. As a blogger who feels a lot of this inside baseball is dirty pool, (Do you love mixed metaphors or what?) correcting the record and providing context are critical to me even if I suffer a little bit in terms of long-term non-Idaho readership.

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