IN RUSSIA, MORE BASEBALL BATS THAN BALLS SOLD

A pro-Russian demonstration in Ukraine, in April 2014. /
Photo: DIMITAR DILKOFF / AFP

Only one baseball ball was sold in Moscow last year, for a total of 400,000 bats, revealed the Russian president's advisor for human rights Mikhail Fedotov last Thursday, on October 1st. He said those numbers show a rise in insecurity, since those bats are used for fighting.

The total number might even be higher: the Russian news agency TASS reported on September 8 that "some 500,000 baseball bats were sold in Russia last year", according to Moscow's traffic police chief, who presumed that "buyers were drivers as the game is not popular in the country".

It seems to be a frightening rising phenomenon: while the numbers have reached the thousands today, back in 2010 the Moscow News was reporting that "one large sports chain told Moskovsky Komsomolets that it had sold 80 bats across the city, but just 20 balls", a much lower number than today. 

The Moscow News says it is also due to online Russian advertising, which encourages this behavior by not letting one think that a baseball bat is only fit for sports: "“A baseball bat is not only athletic equipment but also an excellent means of self-defence,” one ad reads. “It is recommended to carry a small baseball bat in your car.”"

The Russian Federation of baseball told the AFP it did not see a rise in the practice of baseball among Russian people. On the other hand, it did point out to the fact that they do not have enough baseball bats in stock to allow the selling of such a high number of them: "the bats the police are talking about are not destined to sports: you cannot play baseball with them", said the Federation's spokesperson Nickolai Guerassov.

Mr. Fedotov underlined that those bats were often used by extreme nationalists, like the Orthodox activists who destroyed artwork in Moscow's city center last summer because they found it blasphemous. 

This last episode fits in a "culture war" started by the Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, who, since his appointment three years ago, the 44-year-old minister has publically spoken against all anti-patriotic, anti- Russian traditional values art brought by Western and young contemporaneous Russian artists.

This article was written for this blog only.