This morning we reached for the stars, this evening they take the field in Cincinnati. A childlike curiosity colliding on the shores of the Ohio River and the outer reaches of our galaxy.
It turns out that space and baseball share more in common than the relativity of time. Last night’s Home Run Derby demonstrated that a countdown can be a good thing, that something as simple as the the tic-toc of a clock can reignite interest in an event that had laid dormant for far too long.
Now baseball mustn’t stop there. America’s Pastime can continue to propel itself into the future by embracing a broader coalition of fans and rules to better align itself with the 21st century. Speed up rules must take affect, ticket prices must be curtailed. The derby was a start but more can be done, more can always be done.
Same is true for space. Today our solar system is full of one fewer unknown now that images of Pluto have been beamed back across the Milky Way giving us our best glance yet of the icy orb.
Space however remains a bundle full of mysteries, a horizon lined with question marks and quantum leaps. Collectively, human beings have placed superficial limits on our understanding by allowing things as trivial and earthly as budget cuts and deficits to determine our intellectual reach. The answers are out there, somewhere amidst the suns and supernovas and unless we foster inquiry and fund future exploration then we run the risk of succumbing to our own inertia. Thinking inward rather than outward towards the ever expanding fringes of our universe will spell an untimely end for human existence on Earth.
Yet, as the Home-Run Derby proved last night, the clock should not be feared. The unknown must be embraced.