By the time you read this, Kenmore Square will be littered with more bullets than during the Boston Massacre, and Boston will prepare for the biggest fiesta since the Boston Tea Party. Indeed, it has been a long time since the Boston Red Sox won the World Series. While the Massholes may be the only ones allowed to really enjoy this epic victory, there are many others who will cheer this as a win for everything good in sports. And, in some ways, a win for democracy.
Last week, when the Red Sox somehow managed to defeat the New York Yankees under such improbable circumstances, any sports fan worth his weight in clam chowder couldn’t help but take grim pleasure in watching the Yankees and George Steinbrenner slowly fade away with their tails between their legs. The Yankees were the new Mercedes SL600 sittin’ on dubs, ready to take off against your mom’s old Civic sittin’ on stock alloy; the $200 million juggernaut versus the $150 million Bad News Bears. Ok, $150 million is still a lot, but the Red Sox are certainly more representative of what we love about sports.
Consider the free-agent pitchers brought in this season by each respective team, Curt Schilling for the Red Sox and Javier Vasquez for the Yankees. All Schilling could ever talk about this season, besides his ankle, was beating the Yankees. Vasquez, however, was a hired gun with no real interest in who the Yankees beat so long as those Visa commercials featuring Steinbrenner weren’t true. Schilling buys into the notion that sports fans like myself have espoused for years: the Yankees are simply un-democratic.
The Yankees speak to everything horrible about sports. Sure, they act professionally, but there is something disgusting about Steinbrenner simply throwing his money around like he’s college football coach Mike Price on a recruiting trip. Roll Tide!
Much like Steinbrenner, President George W. Bush comes off as similarly vile. He amasses a giant war chest from his network of donors and former cocaine dealers just as Steinbrenner does with cable rights. Where Steinbrenner destroys any other teams’ possibility of making money by stealing their marquee players, Bush is buying NBC for the next week just to run attack ads 24/7.
Sports and politics should exist on a level playing field. When that sense of fair play is gone, it is always comforting to see a team or person that seeks to defy the odds and then does. I like to think that seeing as this was the year that the Red Sox took back the game for the fans, at least for the winter, then John Kerry will be able to do the same next week for our country. Both Kerry and the Red Sox carry with them a message of hope, a message that inspires us to be greater than we are and tell us we can be. And is it a coincidence that they’re both from Boston?
