The great baseball pitcher Satchel Paige once said, “Avoid fried meats, which angry up the blood.”

The same idea can be applied to politics. We’ve become quite vocal and divided in this country in recent years, and it’s often best to avoid wading too deep into the topic lest your blood become angry. I do my best to keep this space politics-free every Thursday, but on very rare occasions there is some overlap.

Next Tuesday, Warren County residents will head to the polls to vote on an $83 million school bond issue. The money will go toward a general overhaul of the Vicksburg Warren School District’s facilities, with roughly $17.4 million earmarked for athletics.

I know the default setting for people, especially in conservative Mississippi, is to harumph and shoot down the idea of a tax increase. I like keeping what I earn and am not a fan of shelling out more. There’s very much a “make do with what ya got” approach to things that’s understandable.

The thing, however, is that there’s not much more the VWSD can do with what it’s got. Buildings and stadiums that are 50 and 60 years old are literally falling apart. Vicksburg High’s Memorial Stadium is built into a hill that is eroding underneath it. Give it another decade, and the stadium might need to be condemned.

Tracks at both schools fell apart years ago. The non-existent dirt track at St. Aloysius might be in better shape than the ones at Vicksburg and Warren Central.

Drainage issues are turning maintenance and upkeep into an ongoing nightmare. One muddy soccer or football game can destroy months of hard work and care.

The maintenance workers and coaches who take care of the fields do a great job tending to them, but there’s only so much they can do before the underlying issues need to be fixed and that’s what the bond issue is intended to do.

There are some other amenities that will be added, like jumbotrons and new facades for Memorial and Viking Stadiums. That’s not the reason the money is needed. The real reason is, if we’re going to have high school athletics around here then we should do it right and play in facilities that are safe for both players and fans.

Politics angers up the blood, but not as much as getting hit by falling chunks of concrete or stepping into a pothole on your way to the end zone.

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Ernest Bowker is the sports editor of The Vicksburg Post. He can be reached at ernest.bowker@vicksburgpost.com