One of my all-time heroes died this week..Detroit Tigers catcher Bill Freehan – a perennial All-Star and the quiet leader of the 1968 world champions died at age 79, the team announced Thursday. .According to a report in the Detroit Free Press, Freehan had suffered from dementia for several years, spending the last few under hospice care in his northern Michigan home..I’d seen him play many times, at the old Tiger Stadium — a big old ballpark in the Corktown neighborhood of Detroit. .Held up by massive green girders, there wasn’t a bad seat in the house. And the hotdogs and beer were awesome..The news shook me up a bit, but it also made me think of the America, and the Canada, that once was..When heroes were heroes. The generation that preceded us may have been the greatest ever and we damn well knew it..We didn’t tear them down due to decades-old allegations nor did we throw paint on historic statues or burn down churches..Looking at Freehan’s early ’60s baseball photos and cards, I shed a few tears. No, actually, I wept..Thoughts came pouring back when things were much simpler. When our nations held what we call the moral high ground. Or at least we thought so..Back then athletes didn’t make insane money as they do today. When NHL great Gordie Howe retired he only had $13,000 in pension money. Imagine that..There was no internet, of course, no video games either. No computers..As a kid, if you were lucky you had a sandlot to play in. If you were even luckier you had a real baseball glove..The neighbor’s boy, Rick Gauthier, took pity on me and gave me his glove. To this day I still don’t know why but I took it and treasured it for years..It was never boring on my street in Windsor. There was always a street hockey game, or a touch football game going on..Thinking back on it now, the only thing that kept me going in that silly, rotten Ontario Catholic school system was the knowledge there might be a game that night on my street and maybe, just maybe … some girls might join us..Freehan made a grand total of $37,000 that year, about double what my Dad was making at the car dealership where he worked. .Some players today make more than that in one game. .A journalist once asked “Joltin” Joe DiMaggio, why he played so hard every game..He responded: “The reason I play so hard is that somewhere out there is some kid who has never seen me play before, and I don’t want to disappoint him.”.Imagine that – playing for the love of the game. RIP Joltin’ Joe..Suffice to say, the game of baseball has stayed mostly the same. Most of the same rules apply and thank God for that..But the playing field that makes up the game of international relations has drastically altered and we have not changed with it..China has grown much stronger. Much, much stronger. .To the point where they can bully nations like Canada at will, especially when we have leaders who are lacking in courage and backbone..China’s effective use of so-called “gray zone” stratagems has also changed the way the game is played..Case in point — the two Michaels currently sit in Chinese prisons accused of things they likely didn’t commit. .Apparent retaliation over the high-stakes dispute involving Meng Wanzhou – the “Princess of Huawei.”.According to Justin the Younger, our dashing but feckless leader, it may still take “quite a long time” to resolve the case of the two Canadians who have been detained for over two-and-a-half years..In defending this “quiet diplomacy” — which has achieved nothing — Justin, in his overbearing school principal style, said: “The approach on consular cases like this one, unfortunately, takes quite a long time and we don’t always get to talk about what is going on.”.“Much of this is wrapped up in global diplomacy, quiet pressures,” he said..Right … quiet pressures. .I bet those “pressures” will work on Xi Jinping, who has brutally imprisoned an estimated 1.5 million people, mostly Uyghurs, but also including Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other ethnic Turkic Muslims, Christians and even foreign citizens in secretive internment camps..What does Trudeau take us for? A bunch of monkeys?.A prime minister with no balls and a communist government in Beijing holding us hostage and no hope in sight. Ain’t that wonderful..To deter China’s so-called gray-zone antics, Washington and its allies (that’s us) must take a page from Beijing and adopt a holistic, grand-strategic posture that applies patient, vigilant countervailing pressure on many fronts simultaneously, write James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara of National Interest in an analysis. .“In short, the defenders of the status quo must think in shades of gray and must accustom themselves to acting in the twilight between peace and war. To do any less would concede to China the initiative — and the future shape of the regional order,” the write..“Gray-zone aggressors deliberately refuse to breach the threshold between uneasy peace and armed conflict, justifying a martial response. Instead, they demolish the status quo little by little and replace it with something new.”.Fearful of making unpopular, difficult decisions, the Liberal government has waffled and surrendered the initiative to the PRC. Game over..According to Holmes and Yoshihara, gray-zone strategies are designed precisely to impose such quandaries on rival nations and their weak-kneed politicos..In other words, folks, we have been outplayed, badly. .In this game of global diplomacy, Trudeau is an amateur – a lightweight who never really qualified for the big leagues..Using a baseball analogy – he has struck out, again, and again, and again..Trudeau even invited the People’s Liberation Army soldiers to join Canadian troops in winter military exercises, before someone in the Pentagon heard about it, and kiboshed it in a hurry..He reportedly went into a rage after his novel idea was flushed down the loo. Which is right where it belonged..So when you go to the ballot box this fall before you make an X, think about the two Michaels, and what their life must be like in that Chinese hell hole..Think about what the communist government is inflicting on their Canadian families. .Think about the lack of leadership that has brought us to this point. The point of utter humiliation on the world stage..And say a prayer for Bill Freehan..Dave Makichuk is a Western Standard contributor.makichukd@gmail.com
One of my all-time heroes died this week..Detroit Tigers catcher Bill Freehan – a perennial All-Star and the quiet leader of the 1968 world champions died at age 79, the team announced Thursday. .According to a report in the Detroit Free Press, Freehan had suffered from dementia for several years, spending the last few under hospice care in his northern Michigan home..I’d seen him play many times, at the old Tiger Stadium — a big old ballpark in the Corktown neighborhood of Detroit. .Held up by massive green girders, there wasn’t a bad seat in the house. And the hotdogs and beer were awesome..The news shook me up a bit, but it also made me think of the America, and the Canada, that once was..When heroes were heroes. The generation that preceded us may have been the greatest ever and we damn well knew it..We didn’t tear them down due to decades-old allegations nor did we throw paint on historic statues or burn down churches..Looking at Freehan’s early ’60s baseball photos and cards, I shed a few tears. No, actually, I wept..Thoughts came pouring back when things were much simpler. When our nations held what we call the moral high ground. Or at least we thought so..Back then athletes didn’t make insane money as they do today. When NHL great Gordie Howe retired he only had $13,000 in pension money. Imagine that..There was no internet, of course, no video games either. No computers..As a kid, if you were lucky you had a sandlot to play in. If you were even luckier you had a real baseball glove..The neighbor’s boy, Rick Gauthier, took pity on me and gave me his glove. To this day I still don’t know why but I took it and treasured it for years..It was never boring on my street in Windsor. There was always a street hockey game, or a touch football game going on..Thinking back on it now, the only thing that kept me going in that silly, rotten Ontario Catholic school system was the knowledge there might be a game that night on my street and maybe, just maybe … some girls might join us..Freehan made a grand total of $37,000 that year, about double what my Dad was making at the car dealership where he worked. .Some players today make more than that in one game. .A journalist once asked “Joltin” Joe DiMaggio, why he played so hard every game..He responded: “The reason I play so hard is that somewhere out there is some kid who has never seen me play before, and I don’t want to disappoint him.”.Imagine that – playing for the love of the game. RIP Joltin’ Joe..Suffice to say, the game of baseball has stayed mostly the same. Most of the same rules apply and thank God for that..But the playing field that makes up the game of international relations has drastically altered and we have not changed with it..China has grown much stronger. Much, much stronger. .To the point where they can bully nations like Canada at will, especially when we have leaders who are lacking in courage and backbone..China’s effective use of so-called “gray zone” stratagems has also changed the way the game is played..Case in point — the two Michaels currently sit in Chinese prisons accused of things they likely didn’t commit. .Apparent retaliation over the high-stakes dispute involving Meng Wanzhou – the “Princess of Huawei.”.According to Justin the Younger, our dashing but feckless leader, it may still take “quite a long time” to resolve the case of the two Canadians who have been detained for over two-and-a-half years..In defending this “quiet diplomacy” — which has achieved nothing — Justin, in his overbearing school principal style, said: “The approach on consular cases like this one, unfortunately, takes quite a long time and we don’t always get to talk about what is going on.”.“Much of this is wrapped up in global diplomacy, quiet pressures,” he said..Right … quiet pressures. .I bet those “pressures” will work on Xi Jinping, who has brutally imprisoned an estimated 1.5 million people, mostly Uyghurs, but also including Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other ethnic Turkic Muslims, Christians and even foreign citizens in secretive internment camps..What does Trudeau take us for? A bunch of monkeys?.A prime minister with no balls and a communist government in Beijing holding us hostage and no hope in sight. Ain’t that wonderful..To deter China’s so-called gray-zone antics, Washington and its allies (that’s us) must take a page from Beijing and adopt a holistic, grand-strategic posture that applies patient, vigilant countervailing pressure on many fronts simultaneously, write James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara of National Interest in an analysis. .“In short, the defenders of the status quo must think in shades of gray and must accustom themselves to acting in the twilight between peace and war. To do any less would concede to China the initiative — and the future shape of the regional order,” the write..“Gray-zone aggressors deliberately refuse to breach the threshold between uneasy peace and armed conflict, justifying a martial response. Instead, they demolish the status quo little by little and replace it with something new.”.Fearful of making unpopular, difficult decisions, the Liberal government has waffled and surrendered the initiative to the PRC. Game over..According to Holmes and Yoshihara, gray-zone strategies are designed precisely to impose such quandaries on rival nations and their weak-kneed politicos..In other words, folks, we have been outplayed, badly. .In this game of global diplomacy, Trudeau is an amateur – a lightweight who never really qualified for the big leagues..Using a baseball analogy – he has struck out, again, and again, and again..Trudeau even invited the People’s Liberation Army soldiers to join Canadian troops in winter military exercises, before someone in the Pentagon heard about it, and kiboshed it in a hurry..He reportedly went into a rage after his novel idea was flushed down the loo. Which is right where it belonged..So when you go to the ballot box this fall before you make an X, think about the two Michaels, and what their life must be like in that Chinese hell hole..Think about what the communist government is inflicting on their Canadian families. .Think about the lack of leadership that has brought us to this point. The point of utter humiliation on the world stage..And say a prayer for Bill Freehan..Dave Makichuk is a Western Standard contributor.makichukd@gmail.com
