Obama or Phillies-Rays; which is the lesser of two evils?

That headline may be misleading: I don't think Barack Obama is evil. In fact, I’m not going to offer any political views in this blog. I’m with those that believe that except in extreme cases (Go Tommie Smith! Go John Carlos!), it's not ok to mix Sports with politics. Although I do find it kind of fun when athletes become Congressmen. (Go Bill Bradley! Go Steve Largent!)

These days, Sports has not just been a nice escape from our economic woes, it’s been a good place to turn to get away from the nonstop political chatter. I’ve had just about enough political advertising, haven’t you?

Too bad. Judging from the record $150 million Barack Obama raised in September alone, we’re going to be seeing a lot more of his very confident mug on the tube.

One place we know he’ll be, at the tune of $1 million, is on Fox before Game Six of the World Series next Wednesday night. Not just an ad, but a 30 minute infobamafest. 30 MINUTES. You can get through a whole inning in 30 minutes. Sometimes, even an inning and a half!

And the most incredible part: Major League Baseball is going to delay the start of the game, originally planned for 8:22 EST, 15 minutes so he can have the solid 8-8:30 block of time on Fox and other networks, creating a media roadblock that you just can’t avoid.

To point out the obvious ironies of this Barackomercial: The 30 minutes of BO is being aired on Fox, which isn’t known to be a bastion of happiness for Democrats. The program he’s pre-empting is the World Series. And as popular as football may be, we don’t sing “Football, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet,” and we don’t call football “The National Pastime.” It’s still baseball, if I’m not mistaken. And baseball is still kind of sacred. Hello, Mr. double digit lead in the polls? Maybe you’d like to stomp on an American flag and sing the Star Spangled banner with Roseanne Barr? And while you’re at it, why don’t you piss off a real significant number of people and pre-empt a half hour on Regis and Kelly too?

But the biggest irony of all is, with the marquee matchup of the Phillies and Rays, the ratings could actually go down once the game starts.

Ba-dump-dump.

Meanwhile, rumors have it John McCain isn’t going anywhere near the Fall Classic. He’s sticking to safer venues that don’t mess with our great country, airing his long format spots on English Premier League games on Setanta Sports.

I’m Rocco Baldelli, and I approved this message.