Some events deserve a cheer or at least a deferential nod. Naysayers should hold their tongues. The parade should proceed without rain. Like, for example,  the retirement of the greatest reliever in baseball history or the restoration of communication between two nations after thirty four years of resentful silence.

The appalling end of the New York Yankees season could not dim the joy and honor poured out for Mariano Riviera, completing nineteen years of relentless competition as the most feared closer in baseball.  As the Times  reported on Saturday,

Riviera, the king of saves, was not going to get one more. But he retired four batters, and with two outs in the ninth, Manager Joe Girardi, in a neat gesture, sent Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte–two of Riviera’s teammates in some of the Yankees’ best years–to the mound. Riviera handed the ball over and then buried his head in Pettitte’s shoulder. For a long moment they stood still, as the crowd cheered and cheered.

The tableau of acclamation had been repeated in smaller dimensions in every baseball park which Riviera visited in the 2013 season, fans of every team conveying their appreciation for a paragon of baseball, a paradoxically kind and ruthless competitor for nearly two decades.  If a single “boo” was heard, it was immediately silenced or ridiculed.

Such is the noblesse oblige of baseball and its history-conscious fans.

Such deference has long vanished from the political scene in the United States. “It is particularly unfortunate that President Obama would recognize the Iranian people’s right to nuclear energy but not stand up for their right to freedom, human rights or democracy,” carped Representative Eric Cantor, the Republican majority leader in response to the news that the President of the United States and the President of Iran had spoken for the first time in thirty-four years. In that interval American hostages were held in Tehran for 444 days, U.S. intelligence had decimated Iranian computer systems, and a Western coalition of nations had nearly strangled the Iranian economy with sanctions. On this day they looked forward to negotiations about preventing the spread of nuclear arms in the Middle East.

Indeed talk is cheap, as countless pundits reminded us during prime time news Friday night.  Words have carried very little weight in negotiations in the Mideast, as countless broken treaties with Israel and Palestine have attested. We’ve seen the Arab Spring decay into Arab Autumn over meaningless words.  Why claim that history can be made over words?

Because of thirty-fours years of failure to communicate, that’s why! When a long-standing feud of neighbors or husbands and wives subsides with a few conciliatory words, we cheer and urge them on to deeper relations. We fan the flicker of hope and wish them well.  We wish for reconciliation, whether it is inevitable or unlikely.  We willingly suspend disbelief and hope against hope.  We are not naive at that moment, but encouraging the faintest prospect of reunion.

September 27 should have been a day of celebration for the United States, as well as Mariano Riviera.  What happened on the next day or weeks after should have been left alone, and the political cheap shots laid aside.  You can wish even your worst enemy a Happy Rosh Hashannah (as President Rouhani demonstrated) or a Happy Retirement without compromising your credibility as a political heavyweight.

When you witness history, you should pay your respect and hold your cynical tongue.