The political perils of Fenway fandom

Happy 100th, Fenway! (Bernard Gagnon) Red Sox fandom is a double-edged sword for anyone, but particularly for a Massachusetts politician, as Martha Coakley discovered, twice. Not only is fealty to the Sox required, a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the team is as well. Woe be the politician who has a problem with either.  

Republicans Mitt Romney and Sen. Scott Brown both got a small taste of that this week, leading up to Fenway's 100th birthday. Romney is, of course, there.

"It was probably the first time he's been there," said former Massachusetts governor and 1988 presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. "In jeans of all things," the Democrat said with a sigh.

Romney in jeans most Red Sox fans can probably overlook, but this?

Earlier this week Red Sox season-ticket holder Mitt Romney gave a national network interview at Fenway Park. This led someone to bring to my attention that Romney, who was governor at the time, was there at Fenway Park for the historic championship-clinching Game 4 of the 2004 World Series. Or at least, he told an Air Force pilot he was:

When he told me he was Massachusett's governor, I politely asked him to leave the flight deck, declaring the cockpit off limits to all Red Sox fans. He laughed and made a few cracks my way, regarding the Yanks, and we hit it off pretty well. I asked him if he was at Fenway when the Sox finally won the World Series, and with a huge boyish grin he replied, "Yes I was."

No, he wasn't. I could go to a lot of trouble proving to you that Romney was actually in New Hampshire campaigning for George W. Bush that day, but it doesn't really matter because'as every New Englander has been screaming while reading this post'Game 4 was played at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Missouri.

There's Romney pulling a Romney, one of those bizarre lies'in this article David Bernstein calls them the "Zelig" lies after the Woody Allen character, desperate to fit in'that he must think makes him relatable to people.

Then there's Scott Brown, whose grasping for Red Sox credibility took a big beating this week. First, there was his radio ad commemorating Fenway's centennial and praising the team for staying put when other powerful forces were trying to shut down the park and move the team outside of Boston. What Brown failed to mention, of course, and which every media outlet in town gleefully brought up, was that he was one of the people pushing for a new stadium from his position in the state senate. Oops.

Not as big of an "oops," perhaps, as his subsquent and unapologetic acceptance of the maximum possible campaign contribution from head of  the enemy camp, Randy Levine, president of the New York Yankees. His excuse was as bad as the donation itself:

'We're happy to accept Randy Levine's donation,' Brown campaign spokesman Colin Reed said. 'The way Scott Brown looks at it is, this is their way of paying us back for Babe Ruth.'

Really? Scott Brown is just like Babe Ruth? That'll go over well with the crowd.

Romney and Brown, and frankly just about any Massachusetts politician, should keep Sen. John Kerry's caution in mind: "I've been around so long I can remember when the Red Sox weren't associated with winning anything."