One of the few downsides of my resuming full attention to the weird Boston Red Sox 2026 season is that I now have to watch the paid political ads between innings on NESN, the New England Sports Network that broadcasts Sox and Bruins games.
As background [Note: this is NOT a baseball-related post, so ye who have been deprived of love for the National Pastime by a quirks of mysterious God, don’t stop reading], the team played so wretchedly for so long—three full months—that I was forced to suspend viewership just to preserve my sanity, as all rational analysis led to the unavoidable conclusion that the team was a hopeless, inexplicable flop despite what should have been sufficient talent to compete, and watching the group find infuriating ways to lose was a waste of time and emotion. Unexpectedly, and almost without precedent in baseball history, Boston climbed from a dismal 32–46 record on June 24 and a 1% playoff probability to 61–51, capturing the second American League Wild Card spot and tying an 80-year-old franchise record with a 15-game winning streak. They are now in the midst of a new 6 game streak now, and are playing exciting, spirited baseball, most recently sweeping the Best Team Money Can Buy, the L.A. Dodgers, in the Evil Empire’s home stadium.
But the political ads! They are insulting, as the authors obviously believe Red Sox fans are morons, and, to be fair since I read the comments after team reports, many certainly are.
Ethics Alarms 
When you have spent nearly a decade creating an alternate reality where Donald Trump is the Devil and all his works are evil, all you must do is pledge to stop, undo, clean up and, where possible, erase the slightest evidence of his existence.
Most rational people realize these opponents of evil personified are insane, deluded or, at best, misguided.
This perspective is from someone who did not vote for him in 2024.
The same type of ads ran in the Illinois primary often seen in Indiana.
I’m morbidly curious to see exactly how the left pivots, after hysterically and vitriolically ranking Donald Trump somewhere below Satan and slightly equal to Adolf Hitler, to calling the next Republican presidential candidate the worst thing ever.
See my comment below, Michael. TDS is “the new normal!” (Where has that dreadful phrase gone? Somewhere far away, I hope.)
I’ve been seeing a televised ads for a candidate in Wisconsin (don’t remember what progressive woman it is) that’s openly claiming that corporations are “stealing the American dream”, the new phrase to show that corporations are evil.
These people are certifiably delusional.
I’m seeing the same nonsense that I wrote about back in August 2011 and later in May of 2017 being recycled by progressives. Loads of smearing lies with absolutely no substance and the morons supporting the political left are eating it up like candy.
Note: this is NOT a baseball-related post, so ye who have been deprived of love for the National Pastime by a quirks of mysterious God, don’t stop reading
I’M TRYING. I fundamentally know it’s game whose complexities allow for a great deal of engagement and enjoyment. But I think most of my problem is it is already hard enough for me to get interested in *any* televised sport even though I muscle through televised football my beloved Aggies. But at home, given a random 3 hours, there’s just about anything else I would rather do than watch sports…any sport.
For me, baseball is best in person because it’s fundamentally a community event, but that’s expensive for a casual fan.
So I love it…but I can’t love it.
I think there may be some utility in calling this Republican Derangement Syndrome. I’m pretty sure once Trump has timed out, the same rhetoric will be used on whoever succeeds or attempts to succeed him. This is basically “everything is terrible” on steroids. To fix it will require eliminating the Supreme Court, the electoral college and the Senate. All that will remain will be the Congress which will function like the single body Communist party in Soviet Russia or Cuba. No more United States; simply America (controlled by the big cities and the coasts). Corporations will be appropriated by the Party. Nirvana will follow immediately like in Cuba. Everyone will be impoverished and the lights won’t come on. But the elites will be living large in their houses on the Mediterranean coast alongside the Russian oligarchs and the Middle Eastern potentates. Power to the people!
…and I’ll be proud to be an American, where the guv’ment knows when I pee…
You oughta try living in this pathetic state (Massachusetts). It’s likely worse than you can remember.
I, too, have been lured back into watching the Red Sox based on their performance of late. I have every reason to believe that they’ll crater again, but for now, it’s fun. Besides, it’s still 54 days until puck drop.
I don’t particularly begrudge NESN for carrying these ads. God knows they probably make more dough by having Markey and Moulton try to out-pander and out-hate each other on Trump than they make from the usual slew of Jordan’s Furniture and regional Toyota spots that regularly occupy most of the space between innings.
There is some value, I suppose, in exposing just how pathetic and venal both candidates are. Markey has always been a back-bencher’s back-bencher, but I thought Moulton had a bit more character than what is now being revealed.
Besides, why SHOULD the Republican party weigh in here? That GOP Senate candidate is set, and isn’t likely to prevail anyway, so it only makes sense that the Mass GOP – an organization which, by the way, is trying to dig itself out of a major financial hole created by previous (corrupt) leadership – would hold on to its (limited) resources until after the primary.
It would be stupid not to do so. Besides, as Napoleon once shrewdly observed, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”