Sangamon Sun

It was a great week of baseball, especially for Cardinals fans. Let’s use a baseball analogy to describe what the Democrats did during the 2020 elections to skew the Presidential race in favor of Joe Biden. (Surprisingly, this is not a discussion of the Designated Hitter rule!)

I have argued that the Democrats changed the rules of the game to their benefit in 2020. They relaxed and ignored many longstanding state election laws. The changes they made, late in the season, allowed Biden to narrowly win a few states he might not have.

For well over 100 years, baseball rules have required the runner to touch First base, then Second, then Third and then Home Plate to score a run. If you don’t actually touch each base, in that order, the run doesn’t count. Those are the longstanding rules. Everyone knows them.

What if, for the 2020 baseball season, the American League told their teams that they could skip Second Base in September and October? The American League teams could run to First, straight to Third, and then Home. The National League teams continued to play by the rules and go to Second Base.

The umpires were surprised by this change. No one had told them, or the National League teams about it. But the American League teams pointed out that it was pretty hot out (Global Warming!). For medical reasons, they didn’t think it was fair for them to have to go all the way to Second Base, which is often a sunny  spot on the baseball diamond. It’s very inconvenient.

The National League teams scratched their heads in wonder. "But the rules about Second Base have been around forever". The American League pointed out that their players should have "an easier time" increasing the score.

As the various baseball games were played toward the end of the season, some of the games were won by the American League teams because their players could skip Second Base. The National League teams still won a lot of games. But at the margins, the American League teams scored a few more runs because their new rules made it a little "easier" to add to the tally. The slightly better record by the American League team under their rule changes gave them home team advantage in the upcoming World Series.

As the end of the season approached, the National League continued to play by the longstanding rules. The umpires (robed all in black) didn’t know what to do, as MLB hadn’t decided how to handle a situation where half of the teams had unilaterally changed the rules.

It was a great World Series. Record numbers of fans participated. Even with the new American League rules, the first six games split. In the Game 7 finale to the season, the score was tied. Then late in the game, with an American League runner on First Base, the batter hit a solid double. The runner on First went straight across to Third, and then Home. As it happened, everyone on the American League side was so excited that the runner was swarmed by his teammates in front of their dugout. He didn’t actually touch Home Plate. He just got close before the ball made it to the catcher from the outfield.

The crowd went wild! On both sides of the stadium.

The National League team was in disbelief. The umpires didn’t know what they could or should do, as the "winning" team paid half their salaries.

The American League team declared victory. They had gotten into their playoffs because they did a little better against a schedule heavy on National League teams towards the end of the year. They "won" four games during the World Series, decisively helped in a couple of them by the new rules, only they decided to play by. And in Game 7, skipping Second Base was a big help, as was having home team advantage. It also made a huge difference that the American League runner was excused from actually touching Home Plate.

It was a great comeback story for the American League, especially after the jerks in the National League had trounced them in the All Star Game earlier in the year. But the All Star Game was played under the longstanding rules of baseball, before the American League decided to try something different. Only about half the fans even like the National League anyway. Many of their teams are in backwater cities. The prominent American League teams are in major cities full of really smart people where important decisions get made.

Small changes to the rules in a contest can make a big change to the outcome. Especially when only one contender knows about and benefits from the rule changes while the game is being played.

The 2020 Democrats quietly, as secretly as they could, made a few "tweaks" to election laws in a few counties, in a handful of swing states. The Democrats relaxed or ignored as many longstanding election laws as they could to barely win a few more state contests. The Democrats justified their county level changes on COVID, but they didn’t bother to tell the election officials in all the Republican counties that they were changing the rules in the middle of the "game". That’s cheating. And the Democrats may very well have won the Presidency and control of the Senate because they cheated.

Obviously, my baseball example was a hypothetical. The National League Dodgers won the World Series in 2020. But so did Donald Trump.

- Kent Gray is a Springfield-based attorney who served on former President Trump’s campaigns in Illinois and Missouri and later served in the Trump administration.