I have been a Red Sox fan all my life, albeit with varying degrees of intensity. When I was a lad of 10 or thereabouts I would listen to Curt Gowdy doing play by play late at night, my transistor radio tucked beneath my pillow. Many was the night that I suffered silently as they lost yet again. Being a Red Sox fan was a character building exercise for it taught one how to deal with disappointment. On the other hand, it also taught one to expect disappointment, which may not be the world’s greatest character trait. A true Red Sox fan expected, and still expects, to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune at the end of every season, no matter how good things look at any other point. Our expectations are rarely proven wrong.
Being a Red Sox fan helped prepare me for being a Democrat, for just as the Red Sox always (or almost always) find a way to lose, so too do the Democrats. The Democrats are the Red Sox of politics. They may come into an election with a lead, but they almost always figure out a way to blow it.
The Red Sox are, as I write this, in first place, nine and a half games against the hated Yankees, the Republicans of baseball. There are Red Sox fans who have lost faith, who believe that this year’s Sox are simply incapable of blowing that big a lead. But I have faith. I know they can do it. I cast my memory back to 1967, 1976, 1986, and so many other years. Yes, they won in 2004, but that was, I am sure, due to a disturbance in the Force which will not be repeated. I am just as sure that the blue wave will dash itself against the rocks of Democratic stupidity before it reaches shore.
And yet, hope springs eternal in the human breast. So I submit that, just maybe, the fate of the Red Sox and the Democrats are inextricably entwined. If the Red Sox manage to go all the way, then so too, shall the Democrats. This year, the gods of baseball and the gods of politics have made a pact. As the Red Sox go, so goes the nation. Democrats: prepare for the worst.
UPDATE: I actually wrote this post early yesterday. The Sox now have an eight game lead and are losing as I write this update. I knew they could do it.
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