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Bear with me here. I’m going to get there, but I’m going the long way around. When the Dodgers acquired Manny Ramirez in July, I was scandalized that the Red Sox would reward a player who was poisoning the atmosphere in their clubhouse by trading him to a contending team. I mean, I didn’t really take it that seriously, but I did think he would have a hard time fitting in with the Dodgers’ shaky mix of rookies and misfits. Uh oh, says I. It’s Milton Bradley all over again. Ramirez is the opposite of what I look for in the players I admire.
Imagine my shock and dismay when Manny led his new team to the postseason. And when I say “led,” I mean he loosened the atmosphere and brought energy to a team that had very little identity and almost no offensive punch. They’re still the Dodgers, bitter rivals of my team, so I have to hate them. But I have to admit that they’re more fun to watch than the team they beat out, the boring old Diamondbacks. They owe most of their success to Manny, the maverick.
But I didn’t come here to talk about baseball. I came to speak of politics.
When John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, I was scandalized that a supposedly serious candidate would put someone obviously unqualified in a position so close to the presidency. And that was before her Katie Couric interviews! I have to admit, though, that I was also a little happy, because the Republicans, to me, are like the Dodgers. Palin is on the wrong side of nearly every issue that matters to me. |
