I won't get into the complete unreality that was my 10 year reunion just yet. I'm too tired, I have to be up too soon, and it was a little too ridiculous for me to process fully yet. What I will tell you is that it was fantastic, and that when I went to meet a supporter who's a high school teacher, classes let out when I was in the hallway, and it really got real.
But what I want to talk about is baseball.
I can't claim to be anything I'm not. When we moved to New England (I was ten) I hated it. There were mosquitoes. People were trying to tell me about Jesus all the time. They didn't eat Pace Picante Hot Salsa, just the Mild. It sucked. And so I hated it, and everything associated. I made something of a passion out of rooting loudly and obviously against the home teams, and my poor pops took me anyway, on his Firm's season tickets, to many a game. When I moved to Seattle, I started to realize that there was something to that Boston place. Pizza, for one, and a good sub. And sports fans who cared even when things weren't so great. I started to root for the Sox, a little. In '03, I was back with Brie, and we watched game one of the (tragic) ALCS in John Harvard's brewpub in Harvard Square. I caught the bug for sure then. After Game 3 of the ALCS a year later, after we lost 19-8 and went down 3-0, I took a couple bets. My friends all laughed. I laughed last, of course, but that's not the point.
In the Republican You-Tube debate tonight, the last question came for Rudy. The guy wanted to know how Giuliani could be a Yankee fan, but root for the Sox in the series. Giuliani gave an answer that could be accepted in almost any other circumstance. He said he's a fan of the American League, and he'll root for whatever American League team makes the Series. Makes sense. I'm an American League guy too. But folks in NY and Boston know his answer wasn't ok. If you're a Yankee fan, you're contractually obligated to scoff at the Red Sox. If you're a Red Sox fan, you'd mortgage your soul to see someone, anyone, beat the Yankees. It isn't an either/or kinda rivalry that gets put aside when there's a National League enemy to defeat. It's a not-over-my-dead-body will I root for those cocksuckers kinda thing.
And the worst part is, "I don't know where I stand" Crazy Rudy didn't even give the worst answer to the question. Mitt "I couldn't hold a steady position if my life depended on it" Romney holds that honor. Mitt, born and raised in Michigan, made some sort of ridiculous claim that his family was all dyed in the wool Sox Nation. And then he dropped this one on us: "We waited 87 long years..." blah blah blah. Yeah, yeah Mitt, you're the good, long suffering Red Sox fan up against the evil Rudy Yankee-ani empire... Wait a second. Did you say 87 years? Hmmm. 1918. 2004. Nope, can't quite come up with 87 there. You f*&kin' moron, it was 86 years. How someone can claim, essentially, to have lived and died with the Sox (a claim I personally do not make, btw), and then assign them to 87 years in the wilderness... But then, Mitt's probably a bible expert too, so I'm sure he knows Christ was in the desert for 41 days.
And these are two of the people who're seriously being considered for President of the United States of America. Good god, people. Good god.
