CAN YOU BE A LIBERAL AND A YANKEE FAN?: I don't think you can, but clearly many people disagree with me. To those truly committed to liberalism, it would seem anathema to support the team with the most money and the most power, one that takes a laissez-faire attitude towards those less fortunate, and makes a regular habit of stealing the most valuable goods (Giambi, Mondesi, Weaver) from poorer teams. And if there were no Yankees, there certainly wouldn't be a strike coming up later this season. Clearly, there's a lot of hypocrisy going on in New York, as the same state that supports the Yankees has gone Democratic for president every year since 1984. One of my old professors, indeed, broke with the Communist Party in 1949 because Jackie Robinson had just broken the color line and they wanted my prof to root for the Dodgers rather than the Yankees.
A better team to cheer for would be my very own Minnesota Twins. The Twins are the baseball equivilant of the poor inner city kid who gets a scholarship to Harvard, graduates, and becomes a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. They came into the season with the 27th-highest payroll out of 30 in the majors, moved ahead of the pack early, and are now 10 games ahead of the second-place Chicago White Sox. So all you liberals out there- root for the strike to be settled so the Twins-Expos World Series of Destiny may proceed.