Amid the ever-present pandemic and sprawling protests of racial injustice, with baseball imploding and visions of opening day 2020 now seeming like a mirage, at least there was solace and perspective to be embraced Tuesday at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
And at least a fleeting sense that a semblance of reassuring order was restored to a world thrust off its axis.
“It won’t be business quite as usual,” NLBM president Bob Kendrick said as he finished giving a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the new “Barrier Breakers” exhibit. “But it’s back to business.
“And that’s a good thing.”
Then at 10:27 a.m. on “Re-Opening Day” after a dormant three months, Kendrick was in the lobby when he saw a woman navigating the entrance to become the first official visitor in the new world order.
“I think we need some balloons,” he said.
Alas, Kendrick had to hurry to a phone appointment before he could personally greet the appropriately masked Alexa Mathes, who was traveling from Brooklyn, New York, to Colorado with her husband — who was working Tuesday and unable to attend.
Knowing they’d be spending the day here, she had researched online what she could do to get to know the city in that time and found herself drawn to the NLBM in large part for its role as a symbol and repository of civil rights.
“I’m interested in learning more about the Black experience and the history of the Black experience and what that means in the context of today but also in the context of generations prior,” said Mathes, science editor for Newsela.
Noting that people who are not of color have work to do on developing “empathy and appreciation” of that experience, she later added, “I think we want to be on the right side of history. And it seems like there’s a choice you can make now, and there’s a choice you can make in the future. And I’d like to make that choice now for the future.”
The reinvigorated pursuit of police reforms and racial equality in the wake of the killing of George Floyd beneath the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin makes the reopening particularly relevant. But that’s not the only percolating current event that resonates with — or is it reverberates from? — the museum.
With the specter of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic hovering, a caustic breakdown in negotiations between Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association has threatened the very season even as other professional sports leagues zero in on resumption of play in the near future.
From where we sit, the onus of this is on the owners.
But be that as it may…
“There’s a happy medium somewhere, and hopefully we’ll get to it,” Kendrick said. “But I do hope that both sides understand that the country really does need baseball right now. Baseball has always been there for us throughout.”
