Politics, baseball connect at State House
Politics makes for strange bedfellows, but yesterday's intersection of politics and sports at Beacon and Park streets produced an amiably awkward pairing, even by Massachusetts standards.
For there, on an outdoor stage crowded with autograph-hungry politicos, the spaciest of all the Red Sox ''idiots" joined the straightest politician on Beacon Hill for a world championship lovefest.
There was World Series MVP Manny Ramirez, he of the crazy hair but resplendent in dark pinstripes, striding late across the State House lawn a few minutes after button-down Governor Mitt Romney pondered aloud why his star guest was missing in action.
''You're all wondering where Manny Ramirez is! So are we," Romney boomed into a microphone as a few thousand fans, many of them state employees, jammed Beacon Street for the 15-minute lunch-break ceremony honoring the Red Sox World Series victory.
A missing Manny could have given Romney a second straight bad day, coming on the heels of a skull-bruising gaffe Thursday as he bumped his head while climbing a platform to dismantle the ''Reverse the Curse" sign on Storrow Drive. Adding insult to injury, the photo op caused a huge traffic jam.
But Ramirez, who lives across Boston Common at the new Ritz-Carlton, managed to navigate the parkwide commute in fashionably late style, just after the punk-rock Dropkick Murphys blasted ''Dirty Water," the Red Sox's unofficial anthem, off the sides of downtown office buildings.
Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek showed up on time, watching appreciatively as a giant banner congratulating the world champs was unfurled from the balcony of the venerable State House.
''You guys suffered a long time," the shades-sporting Varitek told the cheering crowd. ''This is for you guys, and thank you!"
Later, Ramirez pointed his arms and index fingers at the fans in signature style, beaming as a ''Manny for Governor" sign was hoisted behind him. ''I feel we're going to do this again next year!" Ramirez said.
The fans went bonkers, and who could blame them? Romney already had lauded the Sox ''for freeing a nation" and displaying ''some of the great qualities of the human spirit." In the Red Sox, it seemed, was a combination of George Washington, Mother Teresa, and Knute Rockne.
The crowd was swollen by state employees who received 11th-hour e-mails yesterday morning that encouraged them to attend. Tricia Ford, deputy commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, said not much encouragement was needed.
''I was in charge, so I said, 'Let's go!' " said Ford, outfitted in Red Sox jersey and cap.
She suggested, perhaps a little less than jokingly, that Romney could make the day an annual holiday.
For a city that takes off Bunker Hill Day and St. Patrick's Day -- oops, make that Evacuation Day -- celebrating the Red Sox's first world title in 86 years seems like a bases-clearing hit.
