Hold The Spit And Extend The Hand

It was only a handshake. Only? In the searing climate that scorches public life today, Tuesday’s handshake between an umpire and a second baseman felt as refreshing as a cup of cool water.

Last September, Roberto Alomar spat at umpire John Hirschbeck to protest a call in a Baltimore Orioles game. Last week as another game was beginning in Chicago, Alomar walked across the field and shook Hirschbeck’s hand in full view of an applauding crowd.

We have gotten awfully good at spitting at one another, here at the end of the 20th century in the most prosperous nation on the planet. We might be rich in technology and material possessions but we are impoverished in the matters of the spirit that make for simple scenes like the handshake on a baseball diamond in Chicago.

It might seem like the simplest thing in the world to shake the hand of one with whom you’ve vehemently disagreed and then get on with the game.

It’s also one of the hardest things in the world.

Bickering does come naturally, doesn’t it? It seems so much easier to keep fighting, once you’ve started. To keep slathering your foes with heavier and more corrosive layers of rhetoric until you can’t even see what’s underneath it anymore.

These thoughts come to mind at a time when there is a lot to be done to make our communities more livable.

But little can be done when dominant features of politics are obstructionism, litigiousness, partisan bickering, scare-mongering and a blind hostility to public investment (taxes, for instance) no matter how worthy the cause might be.

Where does this come from?

Is it the fault of hate groups who live too comfortably among us? Of talk radio, which entertains by splashing around in pooled ignorance and rhetorical poison? Of lawyers, political parties and, yes, the media, who feed on conflict?

The search for scapegoats feels fun - until you realize it leads to more of the same.

More important, scapegoating short-circuits the accepting of responsibility that each of us must undertake to build a healthier culture.

Think about the range of things our society and its representatives in government bicker about. Pothole repair and highway maintenance. Race relations. Public schools. Downtown renovation. Welfare-to-work. Access to health coverage. Natural resource industries.

Set aside, for a moment, the grievances in these familiar disputes and imagine what an attractive future would involve: Equal opportunity, decent roads, better schools, thriving cities, accessible health care, productive forests … We know how to prevent such a future and we are well on the way to doing so. But how are we going to make that future real? Sure, sometimes you have to stand and fight. Afterward, however, isn’t there a time to shake and move on?

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board