Less Than Two Weeks...

Olympics shlympics!
The very first spring training game for the Boston Red Sox will take place Wednesday, March 3, 2010!

Yes, I know the Olympics are happening in Vancouver, British Columbia. (I’m even aware of the oddly international family of skaters: The Reeds. There are interesting sports and less interesting sports; nifty outfits and zany outfits; and fabulously beautiful medals being awarded - and occasionally broadcast. Despite NBC’s endless hours of frenetic, scattershot coverage, they seem less interested in the events and more interested in their “packages” and interviews in front of the fake (Thank you Stephen Colbert!) fireplace.)

I know the official Republicans are embracing the wingers and the extremists. (While they seem to relish being the party of NO, they want their power back. To get it they need, as George Steinbrenner was known to say, “meat in the seats”. To get that, they need voters in the booths. The TeaPartyTypes we see on television are just the ones who made the scurrilous signs and hit the streets. There are more of them at home shouting at their TVs. The Republicans are pandering to and partnering with them to get their votes, so they can be the party in legitimate power once again. Not just wielding the kind of power toddlers do when they throw themselves down on the floor of the grocery store, in a full blown tantrum, demanding the candy bar.)

In the good news column, I know the Public Option appears to have taken a turn for the better. (Although I don’t know exactly how the patient was resuscitated nor who administered CPR, I suspect it was the progressives - both voters and members of Congress. It is also possible that the Democrats, in a collective epiphanous moment, decided to leave the screaming toddlers wailing on the floor and act in the best interests of the American people.)

All that said, I confess to news burnout. Good, bad or truly strange news - I don’t much care. I am crispy. I am ready for spring training. I’m ready for old friends to take the field and the new players to introduce themselves. I want to hear Don and Jerry and the Eeyoresque sound of the foghorn as Jerry declares the “fog of spring training”. I want it to be simpler. And yes, the complex minutiae of baseball statistics and rules will be a blessed, comforting, distracting relief from governmental politics and the politics of international sport.