Post-pandemic popular culture is largely interested in the question “what is the innate human condition?” So far, the answer seems to be: “selfishness.” From Joel and Ellie dispatching folks with abandon in order to survive post-apocalyptic America in The Last of Us, to the cast of The White Lotus draining resources from the people and land around them like the Grinch sucking up Christmas, to Ms. Cyrus saying she would buy the flowers herself, post-pandemic pop culture is understandably (self-)centered upon surviving and thriving.
Like Joel and Ellie’s world, baseball, at its most base, is a game of winning and losing, of have and have nots.