Yesterday, Giuliani adopted perhaps one of his most controversial positions — in favor of the Red Sox in the 2008 World Series. This looks like a political ploy for Giuliani campaigning in New Hampshire, undisputed Red Sox country. However, my wife, a fanatic of baseball if not of Giuliani, thinks that this is perfectly reasonable as it is in keeping with baseball tradition to root for your league in the series if your team is not in it. Which is exactly Giuliani’s reasoning:
“I will be rooting for the Red Sox because I’m an American League fan, and my tradition has been to root for the American League team, particularly if it’s a team that beats the Yankees. And in this case, you won the division and we lost. Somehow it makes me feel better if the team that was ahead of the Yankees wins the World Series, because then I feel like, well, we’re not that bad.”
However, I’m not sure that most Sox fans see it that way. An email from a friend:
I just took a poll of the three Red Sox fans in my office and asked them if the Yankees were in the Series, would they be rooting for them? They all uniformly and adamantly said that they wouldn’t root for NY ever.
Comments ranged from, “Never” to “Remember 2001? After 9/11 people who had always hated the Yankees made an exception and rooted for them that for one post season because they wanted something good to happen to the city of New York. Not me. I knew they were still evil.”
The best one came from the sweet mother of three down the hall: “No way. No way in the world. Never. Any team except them. And I think that’s [expletive redacted] that Rudy is saying that.”
Hmm. Too bad George Will seems to be pulling for Giuliani these days, otherwise he’d be the perfect person to broker this dispute.