Get Real

Boston
breeds a special sort of media junkie,
hopelessly hooked on the minutiae of American political discourse, and
usually Democratic, while simultaneously obsessed with the other Great
American pastime, baseball. They unfortunately suffer under the weight
of baseball’s Sisyphusian boulder – they are Red
Sox fans.

To show you how sick this double addiction can get, lately
the Big Question dogging the sports radio talk shows is the following:
If God appeared in your back yard and offered you ONE miracle – either
John Kerry would win the US Presidency, or the Red Sox would win the
World Series – which would you choose.

Now, the Dowbrigade is, as regular readers have no doubt
noted, a gung-ho booster of the Beantown nine, but lets get a grip on
reality here.  Baseball is a GAME, folks. Presidential politics
is REAL LIFE, although at times it seems more fixed and choreographed than
World Wide Wrestling. The outcome of the Presidential elections will have
a direct effect on how each of us survives, or doesn’t survive, the next
four years.

In fact, the identity of the next President will determine
how many die, and which ones, in many spots around the world. As far as we are concerned, the World Series
or for that matter the entirety of professional sports, is less important
than the continued existence of any one human life, let alone the thousands
or maybe millions of lives whose futures will be determined on November
5th. Call us a bleeding heart Sissy, but that’s the way we were brought up.

So lets keep things in perspective. True, we spend a lot
more time watching baseball games than Presidential debates. And also true,
the New York Yankees are even further on the Dark Side than the mad-dog
Bush neo-cons. But if we cannot have the World Champion Boston Red Sox
as guests of honor at a Kerry Inauguration in January, for the ball club
and its fans there is always next time.  For millions of people both
in the US and around the globe, we are not so sure that is true.