October 13, 2003

POLITICAL BASEBALL,CONT'D: More nonsense

POLITICAL BASEBALL,CONT'D: More nonsense this week from hack politicians seeking to drain political capital out of the Yanks-Sox rivalry. We've already heard about John Kerry's attempts to smear Howard Dean as a "Yankee fan," when it's likely that neither has watched a single baseball game in the last decade (after all, we all remember Ted Kennedy congratulating "Mike McGwire" and "Sammy Sooser.") When Kerry met William Weld for a "make-up beer" after their 1996 Senate race, it looked as though Kerry hadn't consumed such a low-class alcoholic beverage at least since he was in college.
But now Kerry has proposed one of those stupid wagers in which politicians put a certain amount of their states' primary product on the line against that of an opposing state, and the loser must hand it over depending on the outcome of a championship-level sporting event. The proposed bet is over- you guessed it- chowder; under the proposed wager Kerry would give Dean a certain amount of New England chowder if the Yankees were to win the ALCS; Dean must fork over the New York version of the treat in the event of a Sox victory.
This is a tiresome enough trend even when both sides are cooperating- but now Kerry has offered such a bet in which one of the parties doesn't even admit to supporting the team that his opponent says he does. Dean's spokeswoman, my old Boston Magazine colleague Dorie Clark, came up with the great quip that ""Howard Dean is as much of a Yankees fan as John Kerry is Irish." Or was it Jewish?
If the Yankees lose, Dean should have to hand over a truckload of Ben & Jerry's to the Kerry campaign.
Closer to home, we've got the embarrassing Michael Bloomberg making the opposite mistake- instead of denying it, he has come forward about switching sides in this unswitchable rivalry. A Massachusetts native who refused to give up his Red Sox fandom even when he ran for mayor of New York with the backing of Yankees Superfan #99 Rudy Giuiliani, Bloomberg is all of a sudden a Yankee backer, photographed last week in a "1918" baseball cap and yesterday calling for Pedro Martinez to be "arrested" after his altercation with Don Zimmer in the Fenway infield.
But hey, if Bloomberg can change his mind on what baseball team he roots for, maybe we can get him to reverse field on that smoking ban…

Posted by Stephen Silver at October 13, 2003 01:07 PM
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