Anyone who has known me for longer than about 30 minutes knows that I am a Boston Red Sox fan. After the collapse in the 1986 World Series, that experience was, for about 15 years, an unmitigated experience of misery and the addition of reasons for Red Sox fans to nurse their massive inferiority complex with respect to the New York Yankees. However, beginning in the late 90s, Sox ownership began once again to make an earnest effort to field a winning team, and Sox fans were once again treated to meaningful baseball in September – even if we still inevitably finished behind the Yankees and then were (usually) eliminated by them in the playoffs.
2003 was the first year Sox fans had reasons to believe that things might be different. Position for position, it was the first year since the mid-80s that the Sox had fielded a team that stacked up more or less equally with the Hated Yankees. During this season, the Sox were managed by an affable fellow named Grady Little. Grady was well liked (maybe even loved) by his players, who credited him with creating a loose atmosphere in the clubhouse and making Boston a place where good players wanted to play. During the two years Grady managed the team, the Sox won a nearly unprecedented (in recent history) 188 games.
That year, of course, the Sox and the Hated Yankees met in the American League Championship Series, an epic affair that came down to a decisive Game 7 with Pedro Martinez on the mound for the Sox. The Sox had a 2-run lead going into the 7th inning, but a truly epic series of strategic blunders by Grady Little (I won’t recount them here) frittered the lead away and the Yankees once again emerged victorious. It is one of the few times in modern history that a manager has decisively cost his team an important game.
In the offseason, the “smart set” sports commentators opined that it would be crazy for the Sox to fire Grady Little even after his ignominious performance in the most significant game in recent Sox history. They wrote, quite reasonably, that Grady had brought the Sox to heights unheard of since the heady days of 1986 and that ownership should just show patience and expect the fans to be thankful that the margin between the Sox and Yankees was smaller than it had been in recent memory.
Thankfully, Sox ownership ignored all this eminently sensible advice and Grady was not invited for a return for the 2004 season. By doing so, a clear message was sent to applicants for the job of Sox manager: there comes a point, and the point is now, that giving it the old college try and coming in a close second is not enough. After having spent millions of dollars and countless effort building a team that had the promise and ability to beat the Yankees, they expected this team to actually, you know, beat the Yankees. The rest, of course, is history, as the last 11 years have arguably been the most successful in Sox history (the disastrous current season notwithstanding), including a victory in 2004 over the Hated Yankees in the ALCS and their first World Series title in decades.
So, this little baseball historical aside, let’s talk politics for a minute.
Every two years, on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, I bring myself to take a couple hours off of work, brave traffic going in the wrong direction, stand in long lines, and vote. With the exception of a single vote cast for Marion Berry (the pro-life former Democrat Congressman from Arkansas, not the crack smoking former mayor of DC) back in 2002 or so, I have voted every single time for every Republican on the ticket.
Like most Republican voters, I’ve had mounting frustrations with failed promises on the part of the GOP since the much ballyhooed Gingrich revolution in 1994. However, my pragmatism has always gotten the better of my frustration and I have always reasoned with myself that, however feckless and impotent the Republicans were, they were better than the Democrats. At least the Republicans did not have legalized infanticide up until the date of delivery enshrined in their party platform, I always reasoned with myself.
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