Larry Wilson: Pickleball wars over Donald Trump

Occasionally I will taunt my fanatically pickleball-playing sister, the Queen of Get-Out-of the-Kitchen — that’s a pickleball insider joke — of the Westside, by calling her sport pickle, and noting that its players can lean a little senior.

But hey, she says, we’ve got the celebs on our Santa Monica public courts! Why, the Second Gentleman and his son have been known to slum it down from Brentwood for a fast game. (Wouldn’t it be weird to be known as the SG? When his wife is elected president, it’s First Gentleman? Tea with spouses while the bigwigs talk war and peace in the Oval?)

Anyway, any notion that the pickleball wasn’t played by the cool kids was dispelled last week when Mookie Betts declared, in one of those miked-up-live-in-right-field interviews that they’re doing during ball games these days: “Pickleball, that’s my jam! I just go to random parks and play with random people. I love the hang. You get to talk with people, get to meet people. The cool thing is you can be anywhere from 10 to 80 and play pickleball.”

Oh. Well, he brought it up, not me. It’s just we can stipulate that all you have to be is young at heart to pickle.

“I’ve got a lot of friends, random 70- and 80-year-old people,” Mookie continues. “Especially in spring training, I’ve got a crew. I don’t know none of their names, but I just go hang out with them.”

OK, and Mookie’s other favorite sport, when he’s not knocking it out of the park in Chavez Ravine, is known to be bowling. so maybe he’s just … old school in general.

But a story by the San Francisco Chronicle’s esteemed senior political writer Joe Garofoli caught my eye last week, and pickle’s right in the middle of it: “Growing dissent at the upscale Contra Costa County senior community of Rossmoor offers a chilling preview of where our country is headed if we can’t start discussing our political differences civilly. Inflamed by a fistfight between two women on the pickleball court at the 55-and-over community, the tensions have escalated to include complaints of an authoritarian crackdown on free speech — including restrictions on public demonstrations on its lush grounds and on political commentary in the Rossmoor News.”

Pickle punch-outs at Leisure World! It really doesn’t get better than that. I mean, I take Joe’s “chilling preview” cautions seriously. I, too, wish we could discuss our political differences civilly, and then just call out, “10-10 — deuce! Next point takes it!”

But, as a California journalist, you can’t deny the juiciness of the story when a formerly friendly July game up at the Bay Area retirement paradise turned into an argument about, guess who, Donald Trump, following which “punches were thrown and the combatants tumbled onto the hardwood basketball court that doubles as the pickleball court. Clumps of pulled hair were left on the ground.”

As if that weren’t excitement enough, the story soon hit the local press, the Rossmoor News, as did the arguments about what happened, and, in a broader sense, about who would be president of the United States of America, following which, according to the head of the Golden Rain Foundation board, which runs the old folks’ home, it “decided to place a moratorium on the political columns in response to incidents of political discord in Rossmoor and a political climate that has fostered incivility.”

Because the hair-pulling was only the beginning. Not only were there loud arguments at the Rossmoor farmers’ market over political columns that had been published — security had to be called three times.

Americans of all ages are in a pickle over Donald Trump.

Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com