Amid the hot dog vendors and megaphone preachers and throngs of tourists and the confounding amount of law enforcement present, there were two groups protesting outside of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game at T-Mobile Park on Tuesday.

One group was there to voice its opposition to the homeless encampment sweeps that had preceded the festivities around Pioneer Square and SoDo. Picketers displayed signs denouncing a city government that, from its perspective, was investing its resources into hosting a glamorous sporting event rather than creating permanent solutions to the problems it chose to brazenly hide for the sake of that sporting event. 

The second group of protesters was voicing its objection to another kind of displacement: They were fans of the Oakland Athletics, division rivals of the Mariners, who are on the verge of being uprooted to Las Vegas by an unsentimental ownership group chasing government handouts to build a fancy new stadium. 

One city divided by hosting one of baseball’s crown jewel events. Another city devastated by the potential of losing baseball altogether. And inside of T-Mobile Park, well, a joyous, celebratory atmosphere where the only inconveniences were the jammed-up concourses, the only evils were MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and the cheater Houston Astros, and the only problem of any significance for fans to solve was how they might convince Shohei Ohtani to sign with the Mariners in the offseason.

The show is over now, and the Mariners are back to their regularly scheduled programming this weekend. The question I kept asking myself this past week, as I wandered through this spruced up Seattle was “Who does this event belong to?” 

On one hand, I had to acknowledge, it belonged to people like me: a parent and baseball fan who took his kids to the Play Ball Park fan fest. They had an incredible time, strapping themselves into Velcro suits so they could rob home runs, running around on a ball field with Edgar freaking Martínez, posing for pictures with exotic mascots like Billy Martin and Slugger. 

But on the other hand, Play Ball Park cost money to enter. It offered discounts and line cuts for Capital One credit card holders, which felt a bit undemocratic. And every single activity was also somehow a brand installation. Plus, it choked off Occidental Avenue along the Lumen Field Events Center concourse, which made the approach to T-Mobile Park through Pioneer Square less charming than usual.

A hot dog vendor I spoke to before Monday’s Home Run Derby told me that the narrower version of Occidental made it easier for him to shout at customers. Traffic at his family’s business, Pioneer Grill, said Payden Baxter, was not all that different from a regular sellout Mariners game. It was fun, however, to try and convince all the out-of-towners that cream cheese on a hot dog was actually a good idea. And after trying it, he reported, most of them agreed. 

There are few things that feel more like the local baseball experience than stopping off for a Seattle dog on the way into (or out of) the park. But usually there’s not a miniature Statue of Liberty replica in the likeness of soccer star Alex Morgan nearby to promote the Women’s World Cup on Fox, or a stage featuring local indie musicians like Tomo Nakayama, or a real Budweiser Clydesdale in a pen just on the other side of the fence. 

It felt, in other words, like this entire swath of Seattle had been turned into a Play Ball Park: a perfectly idealized iteration of itself, with new baseball murals and ample security and conscientious denial of the outside world, even though it was just a few blocks away, as messy as ever. A roller rink and retro arcade in Pioneer Square? Come on.

Some conservative pundits around town have noted the hypocrisy in a city government that “cleans up” for a special event by sweeping out encampments and tacitly accepting the placement of eco-blocks (those massive concrete barriers used to prevent RV parking) for the sake of the All-Star festivities but won’t do these things at any other time to support small business owners. And that’s a fair point—if mayor Bruce Harrell believes that punitive measures are what the city needs, then why not be consistent? And if he doesn’t, then what does it say about our values if we’re causing harm to unhoused people just to fill up hotels, please corporate sponsors, and look good for TV cameras?

Before Tuesday’s game, there were a pair of homemade signs hanging off the pedestrian ramp that takes fans from the stadium light rail stop, up over the train tracks, and down onto Royal Brougham to enter the ballpark. They said, “Housing is a Human Right.” There were slogans written in chalk. “Seattle Hides Poverty Instead of Helping.”

One activist I spoke to on the way inside said she was out there because Seattle “just needs to take care of its own people.” It is too hard to find decent affordable housing, too hard to get help. She said she spent a year waiting on a section 8 voucher after a work injury. To see the city spending its resources on this, and displacing people to make it happen, was simply heartbreaking. 

The conversation brought to mind a group called the Citizens for More Important Things. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s (a few iterations of Seattle ago, I admit), they made the case that taxpayers should not spend their money giving gifts to professional sports franchises who could easily afford to build their own stadiums without help. Despite winning numerous public votes related to the construction of T-Mobile Park and Lumen Field, the Citizens were eventually steamrolled by the state legislature. 

Then in the 2000s, when the Sonics were being held ransom first by Howard Schultz and later by the Oklahoma City ownership group he sold to, the Citizens managed to get an initiative passed that limited the use of public funds to build sports stadiums. In the end, the Citizens were right. Taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for privately built stadiums, just as they weren’t for Climate Pledge Arena. 

But they were also wrong about something. The Sonics leaving was actually a really important thing. And even if they are not an ethical beneficiary of taxpayer dollars, privately owned sports franchises matter a lot. 

In a way, the entire act of fandom is one of suspended disbelief. We know on a coldly rational level that sports are meaningless pursuits. But if we embrace the magic and the mystery and the collective power in them, they become as meaningful as anything else: a common language, a laboratory for human achievement, a platform for change, a mirror. 

Which is to say that for everything I just wrote, it was possible to walk around downtown Seattle this past week and just enjoy the hell out of the spectacle and the warmth and the magic of baseball here. The city was sparkling:

Fans waiting in line outside of a random cell phone store to get autographs on Monday morning. 

An oblivious father and son in matching Mets caps taking a selfie in the middle of First Avenue in front of Pike Place Market as the light turned green and the waiting cars just politely did not honk. 

An usher at T-Mobile Park lovingly polishing the head on the Dave Niehaus statue in center field with a rag before the gates opened. 

Julio Rodríguez losing his mind in the opening round at the Home Run Derby in front of a rapturous home crowd. 

The “Come to Seattle” chants, loud and urgent when Ohtani, an impending free agent, stepped to the plate in the first inning of the All-Star Game. 

Amid the thousands of visiting fans repping their home teams, Mariners jerseys everywhere in every color with every name on them.  

Because sports are also about civic identity and culture. It’s real. It’s undeniable. It’s not just the subject of Macklemore songs. This is why those Oakland A’s fans were at the park, desperately trying to save the team they love for the city they love. 

The All-Star break comes and goes. The Play Ball Park opens and shuts. The arcade games in Pioneer Square get wheeled back into the warehouse where they came from. The “Housing is a Human Right” banners are taken down before the game ends and the crowd makes it back over the pedestrian bridge to the train station. But the fans themselves are still here in the aftermath. Seattle is still here at the end of it. 

Was this the case of sports failing a city? Or sports simply revealing what a city already is? The All-Star break was a fever dream. Who was it for? I don’t know. Who is any of it for?