Baseball's tragedy in Tucson.

• Author: Zirin, Dave
• Position: Edge of Sports

Dallas Green has long held a cozy corner of baseball history. After an inauspicious playing career, he was the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies when the team ended one of the sport's great droughts and won its first World Series title in 1980. He was the general manager of the Chicago Cubs in 1984 when the historically hapless Cubbies won the National League East with help of league MVP Ryne Sandberg and Cy Young winner Rick Sutcliffe. Green was named executive of the year. As team president of the Cubs, he was probably the person most responsible for getting lights in Wrigley Field, making him an enemy of the puritanical "no lights" crowd.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Now Dallas Green, in retirement, has resurfaced dramatically in the press, in a state of abject tragedy. The nine-year-old killed in the attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords happened to be his granddaughter Christina Taylor Green.

Why does it matter or should it matter that the little girl who died happened to be the granddaughter of Dallas Green? It obviously doesn't make her death any more horrific. It doesn't make the photos of her smiling, angelic face any less searing. But it's a reminder of how tragedies of this nature shrink our world. The greatest danger when horrors like this occur is feeling comfortably numb to the implications of such a senseless slaughter. We see something like this happen, and we may feel sadness or anger, but in a world where reality and television have become utterly enmeshed, it can become far too easy to mentally just switch channels. This is simply not something we can afford to do.

We are all accountable for the political climate in this country. We are all accountable to fight for mental health services or tightening gun loopholes--whatever it takes to make sure events like this never happen again. We are all accountable for demanding that the political right understands that its assassination metaphors are beneath contempt. We are all accountable to turn off the set when the media indulges in its Sarah Palin fever dreams.

If we feel more connected to this awful tragedy because this nine-year-old girl, born on 9/11, is the...