Blue-ticketing bad guys

Nostalgia can sometimes lead to politically incorrect thoughts, like the notion of bringing back the old Alaska blue-ticketing system for dealing with miscreants.

It would never pass legal muster these days but back in early territorial times the law-abiding people of Alaska found a unique way to deal with the bad apples among them. Rather than jam up the territory’s limited jail space with lawbreakers, the undesirables were given the choice of going to prison or of accepting a free one-way steamship trip to Seattle.

Alaska historian Laurel Downing Bill (author of Aunt Phil’s Trunk, among other things) writes that “An abundance of gamblers, con men and thieves made their way north following the discovery of gold in the Klondike in the late 1890s.” At first such folk were often whipped or hung, but after Alaska graduated from a district to a territory in 1912, many of the gentler folk came to feel such treatment was too harsh. They settled on simply kicking the bums out of the territory, giving them a free one-way trip south.

The bad guys usually chose the steamship ticket, which was blue colored. They generally were taken by escort on the train to Seward where the tickets were issued. Once gone south — if they didn’t sell the tickets and head for a tavern — their names would be placed on a list that barred them from returning.

Such an approach, if it were possible these days, could make a real dent in the large number of problematic citizens who are addicted to drugs and alcohol, living on the streets and in our parks, and earning frequent flier status in Alaska’s court system.

The blue-ticketed Alaskans would barely be noticed in Seattle, which has a huge homeless population. But Seattle might decide to use Alaska as its own dumping ground, round up homeless lawbreakers there and shove them aboard northbound ferries.

We would lose that shoving match.

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The National Football League owners made a good decision on players kneeling during the national anthem. Players who are so inclined, for whatever reason, should remain in the locker room and join their teams after the anthem is played.

The owners took heat from those who argue that the NFL players should be able to exercise their freedom of speech on the field in front of those who paid for their seats and for millions of people watching the games on television.

By that logic, the players should be able to wear political signs over their uniforms. That would be risky, of course, since those wearing Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump signs would get clobbered by piling on of those with clashing views.

Such arguments are a disservice to football fans and likely to have dire financial consequences for the teams and for the league, which is already having a hard time with fading fan interest. People go to games and watch them on TV as an escape from the day-to-day problems of the world. Dragging issues of any kind onto the playing field — other than arguing over referee calls — undermines the intent of a large proportion of the game’s fans.

Players, forget about such things and remember that you are committed to a team sport and during a game you should be concentrating on supporting your team.

There is a place for such demonstrations. But it is not on the playing field.