He Should Have Been Riding Pine

This entire impeachment mess could have been avoided, or at least rendered less distasteful, if everybody had simply done the all-American thing and spoken strictly in baseball metaphors.

You know what I’m talking about. If everybody had done what comes naturally and used the argot familiar from high school, the entire question of perjury would now be moot, because baseball language is at least as precise as any legal jargon. Here’s how the grand jury testimony might have gone:

Prosecutor: Did you ever get to first base with Ms. Lewinsky?

Clinton: (hesitating slightly) Yes.

Prosecutor: Second base?

Clinton: (consults with attorney) Yes.

Prosecutor: Third base?

Clinton: That would depend on your definition of third base.

Prosecutor: For our purposes here, that would be the commonly accepted usage, defined as “any of the really serious stuff, short of home base.”

Clinton: (Sighs reluctantly) Yes.

Prosecutor: And finally, Mr. Clinton - home base? Did you ever hit a home run? Did you ever steal home?

Clinton: (Vehemently) No. Never scored a run. Never touched home. Was never batted in. Never stole it. Not once.

This, of course, would have squared with Monica’s testimony as well as her statements on the Tripp tapes: “I kept asking the Big Creep - like, why don’t you ever want to run in from third? Home plate is like, you know, really, really important to me. Like, I think our relationship has - deepened? - to the point where we can put a run up on the board.”

This would also have squared with Clinton’s forceful public statement when the scandal first broke: “Now you listen to me. I never, ever, went deep with…that woman.”

Of course, there might have been a few difficulties, even with this language. In baseball it is generally accepted that third base is all well and good but you don’t get a run until you cross the dish. Close, as they say, but no cigar.

Yet some people - Mrs. Clinton springs immediately to mind - might not accept that a third base is such a harmless place to be standing. I can see the private conversation in the East Wing now:

Bill (pleading): But, honey, like I told the grand jury, I never hit a single homer. Not one dinger.

Hillary (arms folded): Whatever you say, Slammin’ Sammy. But you’ve got, what, 600 triples under your belt? You’re about to overtake Mark McGwire in total bases, aren’t you, slugger?

Even baseball’s precise language is open to interpretation. Not everybody agrees on the definitions of first base, second base and third base. The definition of “second base” these days may be what used to amount to winning the World Series when I was a whippersnapper.

Still, the Clinton-Monica affair stretches almost any definition of third base. This was a hard line-drive off the top of the wall, a standup triple with a wide, wide turn around the bag, followed by a taunting dance down the third-base line.

But one definition is immutable: the meaning of home run. Bill might have rattled some shots off the walls, but he never, by anyone’s account, went into the stands. He never hit a dinger, never went yard, never touched ‘em all. (The bases.)

Elvis, in other words, never left the building.

As you can see, this language would have brought a civility to the debate that it severely lacks. It would have also made it easier to explain to the kids.

“You see, Timmy, the president kept promising everyone that he never played baseball,” mothers could say. “But then somebody named Monica said she played baseball with him all the time, and not only that, he kept hitting triples.

What was that you asked, Timmy? No, he never hit a homer. But, Timmy, the point is, he shouldn’t have been playing at all.”

I’m probably living in a dream world here. Even if people had used baseball language, it might not have made an difference. Clinton might have denied getting to third base at all, calling it “second base” using some kind of Arkansas definition.

But at least the constitutional question would have been clearer: Is third base a “high crime and misdemeanor” or does a president actually have to hit a “tater”?

The Framers are mute on this question, just as they are on the designated hitter rule.