An Addendum to the Previous Post: Further Thoughts

One of the interesting things about the online medium is the lack of temporal restraint on my work. Whereas other writing I've done had a finality associated with its completion, the blog format allows and demands, if my thinking changes upon further review, to expound upon my thoughts. With that said I've reread my previous post about Jose Reyes leaving the Mets, which can be seen here, http://theredeltraubreport.blogspot.com/2011/12/reyes-takes-his-talents-to-south-beach.html, and several thoughts jump out at me.

The first is that I subconsciously made an analogy between sports and politics that carried itself throughout the body of the text. The analogy was not the same trite comment about how modern political coverage resembles a horse race, but rather that sports fandom and political belief seem to mirror each other in some concrete ways. While, my political beliefs are based on, in my opinion, my objective powers of reason, and my sports fandom is based on an essentially arbitrary affinity for certain teams, both come from my father. While my politics and fandom have developed based on my own personal journey, the fact cannot be argued that they happen to mirror my father's opinions. There seems to be a conjoining of nature and nurture when it comes to these beliefs.

Secondly, the failures of the Mets post 2006, seem to mirror the failure of the Democrats. In 2005 Omar Minaya became the GM of the Mets, proclaiming the dawn of the 'new mets,' pundits were quick to take up this message, Adam Rubin wrote a book about this seachange, called "Pedro, Carlos, and Omar," which now comes across as naive and misplaced in the face of the subsequent failures. Similarly, Barack Obama came to power and it seemed he was ushering in a new era of politics, but unfortunately, like the Mets, the change seems more cosmetic than a fundamental lasting shift. The Mets failures, like Obama and the Democrat's, owes to factors both internal-- injuries, poor management-- and external-- other teams simply being better. A direct comparison can be made between Obama and Reyes, both neophytes with the potential to affect great change. For both however, their successes, feel like failures when weighed against the promise they carried.

Both these failures have me reminiscing for the salad days of 2006, the Democrats poised to take command of congress were certainly going to begin to undo some of the catastrophic damage done by the Bush administration, just as the Mets seemed poised to launch a potential juggernaut on the NL. But the successes, in both cases, were too minimal and short lasting. The Mets collapses in 07 and 08 can be seen as analogous to Obamacare, both better than the status quo, but fundamentally not remedying the sorry state of affairs.

And yet what choice do I have? While it would be easier to be a Yankee fan and a Republican, both seem unthinkable for me. My worldview is too entrenched. Perhaps this is the most apt similarity between politics and sports, failure is not a deterrent.