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Tough Calls

Dear Friend,



Over the August District Work Period, my unofficial brother, Bill “Doc” Worley and I went to Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City to see the high flying Detroit Tigers play our struggling Royals. In spite of their 12 ½ games out of first place standing, the home town good guys played well. In fact, it was a great game. Well, it would have been great except for the Tiger fan who sat behind us.



Over the course of the eight innings we watched the game, the very forthcoming foreign fan disagreed with the umpires on at least 25 percent of the balls and strikes. Although I was respectably irritated, I gave him the “shut up and go home” look only once.



Later, that night while watching CNN’s review of the Republican Convention, it occurred to me that those of us in Congress and to some degree, the American public, do the same thing. We call legislative and policy balls and strikes not necessarily as they are, but as we wish them to be.



Make no mistake, some of the balls the fan saw as strikes, and vice versa, were very likely just as he saw them. Neither the umpire (media and pundits), nor the other side is always right.



Hopefully, we strongly believe the positions we embrace are correct and best for the American people. But let’s acknowledge, if only in our quiet and solitary moments, that when it comes to calling balls and strikes, we are fallible. By the way, the refs’ bad calls allowed the Falcons to defeat the Chiefs in their 2012 season opener, 40 to 24. I am all for giving the refs with cataracts a chance in the N.F.L., but I do wonder why the experiment began in Kansas City?







Emanuel Cleaver, II

Member of Congress

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