Obama’s Second-Most-Controversial Speech

The following are remarks prepared for delivery by presidential candidate and baseball fan, Sen. Barack Obama.

“Play ball.”

108 years ago, these words launched America's experiment in sports. Baseball became America’s pastime, stained by scandals that divided fans and players down to this very generation.

I am the son of a Yankees fan and a Red Sox fan. I was raised with the help of Red Sox grandparents who survived the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees. In no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

I have condemned the mugging of a Yankees fan. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I think wearing a Yankees cap in a bar near Boston was nuts? Of course. Did I know Boston fans think New York “sucks”? Absolutely -- just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from Yankees fans with which you strongly disagreed.

In my book, Impossible Dream: the Red Sox 1967 Season, I described a Fenway game: "People began to shout, drink beer, and cry out…. And in that single note -- hope!”

That is my experience of the Green Monster. Red Sox fans are full of raucous laughter. They are full of swearing. Manny Ramirez predicts 1,200 career homers and he is full of it, too.

These people are a part of America, this country that I love.

For Red Sox fans, memories of humiliation and doubt have not gone away; anger may not get expressed in front of Yankees fans. But the rivalry is real; it is powerful.

Working together we can move beyond some of our old wounds.

For Red Sox, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past.

For Yankees, it means acknowledging that what ails the Red Sox fans does not just exist in the minds of Red Sox fans; that the legacy of disrespect is real.

All Americans must realize your pennant does not have to come at the expense of my pennant unless we’re in the same league so let’s move on.

For we have a choice in this country. We can pounce on Hillary as a Cubs fan turned Yankees fan; we can speculate on whether Diamondbacks fans will flock to McCain.

We can do that.

But at this moment, we can come together and say, "This season we want to talk about HGH, who’s trying to buy the pennant, and what is the deal with Johan Santana. Seriously. What is up with the Mets?”

But it is where we start. It is where our fanaticism grows stronger. As generations have realized since the American League split from the National League, that is where irrational loyalty begins.