As a Red Sox fan, I’ve been glued to the playoffs and the World Series. I’ll admit that I’m a “bandwagon jumper” kind of baseball fan. I only begin to pay close attention when my team makes the playoffs. Then I watch every game, and root, root, root, root for my team with the same fervor as all the fans who were there for all 162 of the previous games.
I love sports and really do wish I were a better fan. People seem to have so much fun getting into their college football brackets but I just can’t keep up with it – it’s too many teams, too much information and too much time.
I’m a news consumer – that's part of my job. I keep informed on the latest news stories and I enjoy talking about issues. Most of the time my mind is so filled with elections, bills and referenda of all sorts that it’s hard to keep up with the latest baseball stats.
Personally, I think there are too many people like me – people who consume so much politics they don’t have time for sports. On the other hand, I’m sure the sports people don’t have much time for politics either. But if I were to ask for political advice from one of those groups, I might just go with the latter.
William F. Buckley wisely once said, "I’d rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2000 people on the faculty of Harvard University.” He was making a valuable point – that he trusted the regular folks over the intellectuals.
As to which voters may just make wiser decisions in the voting booth, I think I side with the sports fans over the political folks. They may not know every issue or keep up with every controversy or “outrage of the day” because they’re busy with their fantasy football team. But they have a good sense of our nation's current political situation and that things are getting done amid all the noise and chaos.
So, that’s my message to the sports fans – we need more people like you who treat politics as I treat sports – go into the voting booth, trust your gut and vote. It's simple, vote for who you think is doing more to help the country. Then, go back to paying attention to your favorite team. You’ll probably be right, and we’ll all be better off