Well, if there was one area in which I thought Obama was both knowledgeable and sincere in his allegiance, it was his love of sports-particularly the Chicago White Sox, whose jersey he donned last night during his opening pitch in St. Louis.
So much for that. Bob Costas gets Obama talking about his beloved team, at which point the president declares that "there's a different quality to what used to be Cominskey Field vs. Wrigley."
Indeed, one might even say there's a different quality to what used to be Comiskey Park vs. Wrigley.
It would appear that Democratic presidential aspirants don't just have fantasy sports leagues, but fantasy fields as well. It was 2004 when John Kerry was so excited about his trip to Green Bay's famous Lambert Field.
The president's sports knowledge in other areas is rather convincing, as Christina Bellantoni points out in her exhaustive tour of his sports obsession, so how'd he manage to muff the name of his home team's stadium?
I happened to be at a restaurant last night while Obama took his seat in the press box to comment on the game with the sports talkers for what seemed like an unduly big chunk of the game. The sound was down, so I was able to inadvertently follow some advice from Joseph Epstein's recent WEEKLY STANDARD piece on TV-watching:
I once read that one of the signs of encroaching madness is watching television with the sound off. My own sense is that just the reverse is true: The way to madness lies in watching television with the sound on. So irrelevant, so repetitive, so low grade is sports chat that I have, in fact, taken to watching all sports events with the sound off. Baseball, college and pro basketball and football, all are immensely improved bereft of the clichés and cheap sentiments of their highly paid announcers. I don't watch hockey or NASCAR racing--if I did, I shouldn't find time to write even this brief casual--but I feel confident that they, too, would be much improved by silence.
Many an evening I feel I can also watch the news with the sound off,
so predictable does it all seem.
You may want to do the same the next time the sports-fan-in-chief jumps into the booth, lest you be subjected to stories about his favorite moments at "Fendi Park" in Boston or some such.
Update: Ahh, yes, who among us does not love the Nittaly Lions?
