(Yes, the reviews for Jon Foreman's EP project will not be on a weekly basis as I promised before... are you really bummed out about this?)

Baseball and Politics

In modern day politicking, where no subject of a candidate’s life seems too private to be untouched, we have seen the media pry into people’s history, families, and lifestyles. Of course most of this is simply to fill up the time of 24-7 television broadcasting; what else would you do when you already know everything about a politician’s track record and policies? Cars, houses, and high-school life are all aspects of the 2008 US Presidential Election candidates that have been examined by the media, but now a new topic is being discussed: which baseball teams do the candidates support?

On Tuesday, Senator John McCain (Arizona, republican) accused Senator Barack Obama (Illinois, democrat) of supporting both of the Major League Baseball teams that have made it to the World Series this year. Campaigning in Pennsylvania (home state of one of the baseball teams in questions - the Philadelphia Phillies), Mr. McCain said, “Now, I'm not dumb enough to get mixed up in a World Series between swing states.
"But I think I may have detected a little pattern with Senator Obama. It's pretty simple really. When he's campaigning in Philadelphia, he roots for the Phillies, and when he's campaigning in Tampa Bay, he 'shows love' to the Rays.
"It's kind of like the way he campaigns on tax cuts, but then votes for tax increases after he's elected."

Both baseball teams are from states considered key battlegrounds for this election - the Philadelphia Phillies from Pennsylvania and the Tampa Bay Rays from Florida - but does McCain really have a strong argument here? Has it really reached the point that Americans will not vote for a certain candidate because they support two baseball teams? Of course the importance of baseball in America is not to be underestimated - the last televised presidential debate lost a lot of viewers to the MLB playoff game that was showing at the same time... but will this baseball fiasco with Obama really affect Americans? Are we going to need a separation of Sport and State? Or is John McCain getting desperate in the final weeks of his campaign to slow down his rival’s momentum.

An interesting side-note: Barack Obama has stated earlier that he is a fan of the Chicago White Sox from his home state of Illinois, and coincidentally enough the Tampa Bay Rays beat the White Sox out of the league playoffs. Hmm... resentment anybody?