Election Day was great for baseball. And baseball was great for Election Day.
After the Mets collapsed yet again, I took all the emotional/spiritual/perspirational energy I poured into their hopeless cause and channeled it into following the presidential election. I also focused some of that chi into rooting against the Phillies, which didn’t work out nearly as well.
Like any other good lefty, I read Daily Kos, watched Keith Olbermann, and tsked at Fox News ass-hattery. But it’s easy to overdose on Smug when you live in a liberal bastion like New York and only consume media with which you agree. It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking you know what your fellow Americans feel and want.
I fooled myself in 2004. I never deluded myself into thinking that John Kerry was a magnificent charismatic agent of change because, duh. But considering the state of the country at the time, and the obvious (to me) evil represented by Bush, I concluded that Kerry would prevail. I told myself there was no way Kerry could lose because…well, he couldn’t, could he?
And then I found myself up at 2 in the morning, watching Ohio go to Bush, sucking down beer and wishing I was drunk enough to pass out and forget any of it had ever happened.