No Thanks, Rudy

Let’s face it: life is pretty close to heavenly right now for Boston sports fans.
From the Sox to the Pats to the Revs to B.C., there is euphoria. And why not? The stars of the sports firmament simply do not align like this very often.

Oh, sure it’s been only three measly years since the last World Series for the Red Sox. But lest one forget, it was 86 years between the last one and the one before that.

So there seems nary a cloud above the sun-kissed, blue skies of Red Sox Nation just now.

Enter Rudy Giuliani. Clod. Cloud.

At an event in Boston just before the start of the World Series, the former New York Mayor, and owner of the nation’s largest 9/11 “Hero” franchise, did the unthinkable:
he said he was rooting for the Boston Red Sox.

And from Bangor to Brooklyn, fans of both teams howled in disgust.

A wee bit of background is in order. Giuliani grew up in fact in Brooklyn. As mayor, it may have been hard to find a bigger Yankees fan in anywhere in the five boroughs than Rudy Giuliani. He frequently wore a Yankees hat to work at city hall. He routinely went to games at Yankee Stadium, scheduled events so as to not to interfere with his trips there, was personally close with former Yankee manager Joe Torre (another Brooklyn boy), and even once confided that if he were ever to get a tattoo, it would only be to permanently imprint a Yankee logo somewhere on his skin.

And under the skin of countless Yankee fans is exactly where Giuliani’s sudden Sox smooch wormed its way.

“They should burn his seat that he sat in at Yankee Stadium,” George Patsin of Brooklyn told the New York Times. “They should burn it on TV so I can watch.”

George, I’m thinking pre-game festivities at Game 3 in Denver. Are you listening, Fox?

In his defense, Giuliani rationalized that he was, after all, an American League guy, and was merely rooting for the American League team once his Yankees were eliminated. Nice try. And if we were talking about the Tigers and the Twins it might have worked. But Boston and New York fans know well that nothing remotely rational applies when it comes to The Rivalry. You don’t take out temporary fan rights in the enemy camp.

Had the Sox lost to the Yankees in 2004, imagine what would have happened to John Kerry had he said he was rooting for New York in the World Series. Okay, he still would have lost. But he may well not have carried his own Massachusetts, never mind Ohio.

Look, there is nothing new about political pandering. And to be fair, Massachusetts is watching Giuliani’s chief rival (and its own former Governor ) Mitt Romney do some remarkable things with pandering that have not even been invented yet. But Giuliani pandering in Boston? Granted Massachusetts has 12 electoral votes, but he has about as much chance of capturing those in a presidential election as Manny does becoming Secretary of State.

For that matter, Giuliani has further alienated his own state which has almost three times (31) the number of electoral votes. No wonder he and his wife have trouble working out the math of the total number of times they’ve been married.

‘Course, Giuliani’s potential Democratic opponent has her own issues with hardball loyalty. And I don’t mean the Chris Mathews kind. Hillary Clinton was born in Illinois and for most of her childhood and adult life she professed to being a Cubs fan. Until, that is, she decided to run for the Senate from New York. At which point she claimed to be a Yankees fan.

Clinton also recently voted to essentially take military action against Iran, then promptly turned around and supported a colleague’s (Sen. James Web, D-VA) bill to oppose any such action.

Truthfully, Clinton has more change-ups in her repertoire than Dice-K. And should she and Rudy square off in a presidential debate, you can expect at least one lighthearted moment to be devoted to their respective lapses in loyalty to their teams.

Only it may not be that lighthearted a matter after all. Especially in Giuliani’s case.

The fact is, his fundamental misreading of the never-ending Red Sox-Yankees hostilities frankly calls into his question what else he might misread. Iran? North Korea? Who knows? This is a guy who is already on record as saying he would bomb Tehran.

But maybe he wouldn’t.
After all, he was on record as being a diehard Yankee fan, too.

No, don’t be passing off your pinstripes as Red Sox red, Rudy.
When it comes to baseball, if we want some truly major league pandering, we’ve got our own Mitt.