Baseball as metaphor

Though I grew up in New York rooting for the Yankees, I found myself strangely pulling for the Bosox this evening. Kerry threw out the first ball (it bounced and the catcher missed it) and there were all kinds of Red Sox Fans for Kerry and similar signage being handed out.
What with the Republican convention scheduled for New York in September, it seemed clear to me that the game was going to be a metaphor for the election, with the Sox representing the traditional blue-collar Democrat stereotype and the Yankees representing the pin-striped Republican fat cats of Wall Street.
It was an exciting game, explosive in the first inning, with a number of near misses as the Yankees mounted several inevitable tries at catching up. In fact, in the top of the first inning the Yankees appeared to be about to run away with it. Later, I commented to my friend and host here in the Boston area, Dave Powelstock, that if this game were a metaphor for the election, then the Yankees’ rally in the first inning was the equivalent of the capture of Saddam Hussein last fall.
For the rest of the game we were trying to make similar goofy analogies. We figured if a fan, for instance, interfered with a batted ball and somehow enabled the Yankees to win, then that would be an evocation of the Nader factor. Fortunately, it did not happen – and there was no “Mr. October” suprise, neither.
Boston 9, Yankees 6.