Happy Indictment Day! As we all know, New York is the main character and there’s nothing Los Angeles can do about it. Today, as we all eagerly await the unsealing of NYC Mayor Eric Adams’s federal indictment charges, I encountered something from one of those sickos at Politico that tickled me.
This is not the first time our beleaguered mayor revealed that he does not “know ball.” Hey, that’s fine. I too was once ball ignorant. Let’s take a brief trip down memory lane and assess recent NYC mayoral ball knowledge.
Bill de Blasio
The Blazer! Remember him? He killed a groundhog once. However, we are not here to review the bygone mayor’s hatred of large rodents. We need to look at the baseball relations of this not-so-gentle giant. Perhaps us baseball fans did not appreciate this man enough. We are sports fans. We routinely look past issues of domestic violence and drunk driving to root for our favorite players. OK, calm down, maybe that’s just Braves fans, and Keith Hernandez anytime Marcell Ozuna comes up on the Mets broadcast.
de Blasio grew up in Massachusetts as a Red Sox fan, and he never forgot that. This is a true “you gotta hand it to him” sort of thing. To be as mired in vitriol as de Blasio was during his tenure, not caving to bullshit PR and donning a Yankees cap to get some easy support is respectable. Yes, as seen in the linked Bleacher Report article, he was no stranger to sporting Mets gear. This is permissible though! How many of us have our true team, and then our soft spot team in the opposing league? For me, a National League Mets fan, I find myself pulling for the American League Mariners or Orioles in the playoffs. I do not own a hat for either AL team, but I would not be opposed to wearing one.
Sure, de Blasio promised progressives the world and delivered on next to nothing. Yet he did deliver on one of the most admirable things possible: continuing to despise the New York Yankees.
Michael Bloomberg
Didn’t this guy once say that he drank Miller High Life “on the rocks” at a commencement speech? I’ve been searching for that this morning, and I can find no record of it. I think someone did some serious scrubbing on this.
Bloomberg is another Massachusetts guy who wound up being mayor of the most diametrically opposed city. These days, he owns a piece of the Orioles, which makes a bit of sense as he went to college in Baltimore. Even though this billionaire is from Red Sox country, he is not a Sox fan. Yet here again is another guy willing to clothe himself in Mets apparel while not actually giving a shit about anything other than reducing capital gains taxes. Yes, I allowed this for de Blasio. I guess I have to allow this for the more evil guy too. Dammit, really backed myself into a corner on this one.
I guess it is the old adage of “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We live in a world where power and money are interchangeable concepts. Sure, de Blasio has more money than I will ever know. Bloomberg has more money than de Blasio will ever know. The only way to have that much money is to be a craven slave to the dollar, laying waste to everyone, everything, every institution in your path. All in the pursuit of more black on the balance sheet as the price of medication and groceries skyrockets. Sports in general, much less baseball, are of no concern to a sycophant like Bloomberg. He has the same feelings on the concept of sports as Rob Manfred: they are a financial investment for which returns must be maximized. Forget fandom, forget passion, forget any romantic notions you may have. Bloomberg, John Fisher, and yes, even Steve Cohen, they’re interchangeable.
Allow me an aside about Steve Cohen and the Mets. The Mets keep coming up as the stand-in team for these Masshole mayors. Now I’m arguing that the notorious cheapskate John Fisher equates to big spending “Uncle Steve.” Wait and see. What will happen if the Mets finally win it all? If they try for five or six more years and fail? I have a sinking feeling that Cohen will begin scaling back on payroll. As long as he can find a way to keep the profits rolling in, the product on the field will not matter. Avarice and billionaire status are hand in hand. The greed blinds that sense of loyalty and camaraderie that pulls us toward baseball.
Michael Bloomberg does not care about baseball beyond its profitability. However, I do think he would recognize a Brooklyn Dodgers hat.