Blue vs. Red at the World Series

AT&T Park in SF is a beautiful baseball stadium.  I always try to make it to a few games each year, although honestly the free opera at the ballpark nights are just as fun for me.

At the moment the entire Bay Area has caught World Series fever, and I'm enjoying the ride as one of the region's many fairweather Giants fans. The name "Buster Posey" meant nothing to me a few short weeks ago, but now I can tell you that he launched a solo home run in the eighth inning of tonight's 4-0 victory against the Texas Rangers.  With tonight's win the Giants are one game away from taking the Series.  If that happens I'll go to the victory parade, but I resolutely draw the line at buying an overpriced cap.

As the playoffs unfolded I was hoping for a Giants-Yankees series, and that the Yankees would fall.  I am sad for the Steinbrenner family's loss this year, but never sad to see an over-priced empire crumble.  It also seemed that such a result could help resolve my lingering ambivalence about leaving the Big Apple for the Bay Area.  It's great out here, but I left my soul in New York City.

The Rangers must have misplaced my memo, because they decided to beat the Yankees.  Now, instead of a battle between representatives of two coastal bubbles, it's hard not to see this Series as a battle between red and blue America.  That's overstating things, I suppose.  But the other night, after the Giants won 9-0, part of the fun was that such a shellacking happened to Texas.  You know, Texas...George W. Bush and death penalty country. 

Tuesday is election day, and it appears that President Obama is in for a shellacking of his own.  This is unfortunate, because he remains a much better leader than Bush ever was.  (Bush isn't a bad man, just a terrible president.)  We'll see what really happens, and I hope the polls are wrong.  But it does seem like the tea-infused GOP will gain a greater footing in Washington for the next two years.  Although that will be grim, it would be a consolation of sorts if the baseball team representing the city that epitomizes "blue America" beats a team based near Dallas.  SF deserves the victory, for more than mere baseball pride.

Comments

[Janna Lawrence]

Although I most definitely agree with you politically, just as you point out that Bush isn't a bad man, just an awful president, the same is true of the state of Texas - it's not all red there. I lived there for 23 years, and not only was I a Democrat, so were most of my friends. Visit Austin, San Antonio, and South Texas sometime....

[Marcus]

Hey Janna, thanks for writing.

Yes, Texas is not all red...just as California isn't all blue. That labeling scheme is far too simplistic.

But for conservatives, SF does represent the "dark side." The simplest way to paint someone as an "extreme liberal" is to tie them to San Francisco; political ads across the country are employing that tactic this year. Likewise, left-wingers can just say "Texas" to get the crowd going.

The other night, after the 9-0 Giants win, my fiancee and I were walking along Lake Merritt in Oakland. We passed a group of people talking about the game. Someone said, "2-0 would have been fine with me...but 9-0? Wow!" My fiancee expressed sympathy for Texas, after losing so badly. One member of the group said, "Why? It's TEXAS, for heaven's sake." This is when I realized that my red-blue analysis actually carried some weight. There's something to it.

[Eric]

Most of the Texas landscape lacks variety (even for those who find it generally pretty), the cities by and large have little to offer to people who enjoy walkable urbanity like SF or NYC, and it's hard to deny the stats which generally put Texas in a poor standing for its distribution of wealth. It also has re-elected Rick Perry.

But it continues to boast one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, with some pockets of visible job growth, housing remains affordable and no sign of a real bubble, and the state isn't remotely close to insolvency. At this point, I imagine that far more people are moving from California to Texas than the other way around.

I suspect the California/Texas rivalry will only grow in the upcoming decades, especially if Texas continues to narrow the gap in population between the two. Such rivalry will undoubtedly have vitriolic political undertones.