A couple weeks ago, I planned a weeknight getaway down to Anaheim to watch the Angels play against their closest rival for the division crown, the Oakland A’s. We took the Metrolink train down from Union Station and stayed at a hotel within walking distance of the ballpark (incidentally, being a pedestrian in Orange County is a thoroughly unpleasant experience. The hostility you feel from passing drivers is about what you’d expect were you to walk around town wearing a “Registered Sex Offender” t-shirt. I’m surprised they even bothered to put in sidewalks when they built the roads).

We were treated to a thoroughly entertaining game, which the home team won 5-3 after a 3-run rally in the bottom of the eighth, capped with a home run that flew over the right field wall and landed not more than a hundred feet away from our seats. The only detraction from the experience was the faithful A’s fan nearby who wasn’t the least bit shy about using his penetrating voice to hurl catcalls at the Angels venerable slugger Vladimir Guerrero. It’s bold to invade an opposing team’s stadium and throw insults at their star player, and I certainly wouldn’t do something like this at Dodger Stadium, but in Orange County, it’s pretty safe to say whatever you want. Out of a perpetual dread of civil litigation, you can rest assured that nobody’s going to do anything except maybe yell back at you. Honestly, the guy’s loudest challenger was actually a nine year old kid. Being an Orioles fan, I didn’t have a dog in the fight, so his heckling didn’t bother me except in the sense that it was completely lacking in originality.

Heckling is an art. And when it’s done well, it can bring about that which is every dedicated fan’s true dream — to affect the outcome of the game in his team’s favor.

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In our current age of hyper-partisan combat and contempt – to which I have proven myself at least as susceptible as my fellow fifth-rate political blatherers – it sure does chap my ass when I find myself appreciating the talents and perspective of a conservative.

It’s going to be a tough year for many Democrats, who currently find ourselves despising a candidate from our own party while finding it difficult to work up much of a lather over John McCain. He’s an altogether good man, a rare commodity in Washington these days, who (apart from a little obligatory ass-kissing of certain “agents of intolerance”) is refraining from all the name-calling, dissembling and other standard-issue bullshit we’d have every reason to expect from anybody else who might have been the GOP nominee.

I’d be willing to bet that McCain will prove himself the only Republican in the whole country who’s capable of getting through this entire election season without saying the word “Hussein” unless it’s got “Saddam” attached to it. (A shout-out to Eric, whoever you are: You’ve already lost this bet, based on your performance in the comments beneath last week’s column. Congratulations.) McCain is wrong on Iraq, he’s anti-choice, and his party is a cesspool of corruption, bigotry, selfishness and incompetence – but at least he is an honorable man who promises four years of higher ethics and moderation. A McCain presidency, if combined with a filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate, is not an entirely unappealing prospect.

Of course, the last Republican candidate who promised moderation gave us our current long national nightmare instead. This column is really about that guy – and about another guy who I found myself loathing a little less on Sunday, if only for a few minutes. (more…)