[ 0 0 ][ 0 0 ]

There’s an old, probably outdated adage that Americans don’t start paying attention to an election until the World Series is decided. That was when there used to be a discernible gap between the two events. The 1964 World Series, to pull Teddy White’s ancient example from the archives, ended nineteen days ahead of Lyndon Johnson’s landslide over Barry Goldwater. Mayor Lindsay was re-elected eighteen days after his final Met champagne bath. Eight years later, Ed Koch succeeded Reggie Jackson as the big news in town by a matter of twenty-one days. Even in this age of playoffs and postponements, the 2008 Phillies clinched their title a full six days before Barack Obama clinched his. The Phillies have been defending that championship an awfully long time now. They hoisted their trophy exactly 53 weeks ago tonight. That’s more than a year. The Yankees maintained their defense from 2000 to 2001 slightly longer, but the November 4 ending to that campaign was attributable to everything being pushed back a week by 9/11 — and Election Day still came two days after the World Series. That’s how it’s supposed to be. It’s the American way: you have your baseball season, you have your postseason, you have your Election Day and then you get on with dreading Thanksgiving. Instead, soon enough, Bud Selig will be dressed as St. Nick, touting the virtues of expanding the World Baseball Classic and insisting the World Series is, as Albert Brooks attempted to convince Garry Marshall regarding Las Vegas in Lost In America, a Christmas kind of place. Bloomberg’s back to work this morning. His campaign is over. Everybody’s campaign is over except for the Yankees’ and the Phillies’. It’s November 4 and there’s going to be a baseball game outside tonight. It’s just wrong.