Fraters Libertas

Who's Playing Again?

Looks like I'm the last one to weigh in on the game tonight, so I guess it's up to me to be "definitive." Pardon me while I definitively clear my throat (ahem).

I'm from Minnesota and the incidence of teams wearing laundry with my state's name on it pretty much dictates the extent of my true rooting interest. So in a game where there isn't a team I can recognize as "one of us" I have to use my head instead of my heart in choosing in whom to invest my sense of self worth.

On local connections alone, I suppose I should be rooting for the Red Sox, as they've got a coronary clot of guys who used to wear our laundry. Four former Twins: Todd Walker, David Ortiz, David McCarty, and Todd Jones.

Walker and McCarty both carry on their foreheads the indelible black mark of former Twins manager Tom Kelly's stern disapproval. With Walker it was his defensive ineptitude, his lack of a work ethic in improving his skills, and his pouty entitlement-based attitude. Years ago Walker used to whine to the media after being removed in the late innings of any close game the then last place Twins were engaged in. Seeing Grady Little do the same thing this post season, I imagine Tom Kelly is somewhere smiling. Well maybe dropping the intensity of his scowl a little bit, this is Tom Kelly we're talking about after all.

Kelly hated McCarty because his swing was too long for major league pitching, his lack of a work ethic in improving his skills, and because he was spied drinking white wine and toasting the future with his wife on the team's charter flight after his first big league game back in the mid 1990s. It was bad enough that he brought his wife along in the first place, but apparently the two also isolated themselves in a smug cocoon of self congratulation on that fateful flight, and McCarty's reputation in the manager's eyes never recovered. In Kelly's world, rookies don't do that. Especially pampered, Stanford educated rookies, grossly over rated by the scouts and forced upon the field manager by the front office. And maybe Kelly was right. After struggling mightily throughout his Twins career, McCarty was uncerimoniously cut loose

According to reports, David Ortiz wasn't a favorite of Kelly either. He recognized Big Dave's talent, but he felt he was too injury prone and that you couldn't rely on him over the course of a long season as your run producer. Ortiz survived Kelly's tenure, but his release at the end of last season was based largely on Kelly's generally accepted analysis. Todd Jones was a mid season pick up from the Tigers during the 2001 pennant race. As a middle reliever and set up man, he generally stunk. But that fact is rendered moot due to the colossal stink emanating from the man who cost the Twins the pennant that year, closer LaTroy Hawkins. Jones's true legacy will be loss of the man we traded for him. A certain left hander by the name of Mark Redman. You might have seen him starting Game 7 of the NLCS last night for the World Series-bound Marlins.

The Red Sox also have two former St. Paul Saints aboard. Kevin Millar, an "original Saint," from that team's first season, which I can report first hand was glorious, hilarious, and thoroughly beer drenched. The emphasis of the fans was on that last aspect, so I don't really remember any of Millar's personal exploits.

And Jason Varitek was a Saint for a while too, but only in concept. Back in the late 90's, he was a well regarded first round draft choice of the Mariners, whose agent felt his talents should transcend the generally accepted salary parameters of someone drafted in his position. So he held out, and as a pressure mechanism started looking for options outside of the major league system. The option they chose was a contract with the independent St. Paul Saints, with the implied threat that he'd stay there for a year, keep his baseball talents honed, and then re-enter the draft the following year. And by the way, this wasn't the first time Varitek tried this money grubbing strategy. The first time was when he was still in college, and he was the number one draft choice of ..... The Minnesota Twins. Despite a fair market contract offer by the Twins, he held true to his threats, returned to college for his senior year and the Twins lost his draft rights. The next year he was drafted by the Mariners and after a long summer of anxiety and wrangling, Varitek signed with them and his Saints contract was torn up.

After writing this litany of mediocrity and misery of former Sox with Minnesota connections, I realize there's really no way I could root for the Red Sox. But I had already made up my mind based on the behavior of Martinez and Ramirez. An example of the latter was described in today's Star Tribune by Pat Reusse:

The Red Sox were facing elimination against the archrival Yankees on Wednesday evening. Boston had blown a 4-1 lead, fought back from a 6-4 deficit and was leading 7-6 in the eighth inning.

Nomar Garciaparra, Boston's previously slumping shortstop, opened with an infield single -- his fourth hit of the game. Manny Ramirez was next. He hit a bouncer toward Alfonso Soriano, the Yankees' unsteady second baseman. Soriano double-clutched on his throw to second for the forceout. That should have cost the Yankees a double play. It did not, because Ramirez, playing on an eight-year, $160 million contract, was jogging to first base.

Imagine that. One run ahead in an elimination game, and you can't buy a full-out race to first for a $20 million salary.

And if that's not enough evidence to convince all you hard working, personal responsibility embracing conservatives who to pull for, here's some advice from NRO's Johnah Goldberg:

One of the central tenets of conservatism is a respect for, and loyalty to, the familiar, the particular, the local. ... An attachment to home and soil, to one's way of life, and to the traditional order which gives that life meaning and context is an essential part of what it means to be a conservative.

There you have it. Since I don't have anything local to cheer for, I am naturally inclined to desire the familiar, the traditional order of things. And that means celebrating as the Yankees add to the echoes of Yankee Stadium's previous 26 world championships and Boston looks into the silent abyss of defeat yet again. And at the very least, it may make Tom Kelly smile (and should prevent any reprise of a David McCarty-and-his-wife love fest on the flight back to Bean Town).