A Flip Flop Of Unimaginable Magnitude

How ironic! On the eve of the World Series, in a craven attempt to garner New Hampshire votes, Rudy Giuliani became an illegal immigrant in Red Sox Nation.

I'm a fan of the Boston Red Sox. I wasn't born in Boston — you'd have to go to Owosso, Michigan to see where this all began — but I feel like I came to my fandom as honestly as any non-native. My father likes baseball, and I've always loved it, and I inherited my reverence for the Olde Towne Team from Dad, due in large part to the stories he would tell me about Ted Williams and Carlton Fisk and my grandfather would tell me about Babe Ruth. I wanted to watch their games on TV, but that was usually impossible in the days before MLB Extra Innings and satellite networks, so I made the best of things and would watch with joy when they would play a team in my market.

I moved to Boston in 1997, and one of the things I was most excited about was getting to watch Red Sox games. A friend of mine took me to a game at Fenway Park in 1998 for my birthday, and it was like going to church. The Sox lost to the Rangers, although I got to see a Mo Vaughn home run. The game was everything I imagined it would be, including the last-minute depression of the failed late rally. Ever since, I've been hooked, a member of a fan community that calls itself Red Sox Nation.

Being a citizen of Red Sox Nation carries some real responsibilities. 1, root for the Sox. 2, hate the Yankees. 3, root for anyone playing against the Yankees. 4, learn the lore. 5, hate the Yankees. Yankees fans have similar responsibilities.

I respect the dedication of die-hard sports fans. I even begrudgingly respect the Yankees fans because many of them have a similar dedication to their team that we do to ours. Rudy Giuliani had a plaque on his desk during his tenure as mayor that said "Yankee Fan In Chief" and played the role of Iconic Yankee Fan very well. Many people hold their allegiance to the Yankees or Red Sox as an inalienable way of life, and support for The Enemy — whichever side you're on — is unthinkable.

The fact that he would suddenly abandon his lifelong favorite baseball team in favor of their arch rivals while campaigning in New Hampshire and Boston just shows that no policy position, or belief, or even perceived truth is safe in the hands of Rudy Giuliani. Sure, he changes his position on gun control, or other social issues, and voters know intuitively that there's probably some triangulating going on for political reasons, and they live with it. He is, after all, running for President. But rooting for the Red Sox? What kind of a fraud is this man?

But fans interviewed at Yankee Clubhouse Shop in Manhattan gave Giuliani a Bronx cheer. "Any Yankee worth his salt cannot root for the Red Sox under any circumstance at all. Period. End of story," said Ken Schlesinger, 44, a lawyer from the Upper East Side.

Armando Quintero called Giuliani a "fake fan" for backing Boston. "He needs a true Yankee fan to talk to him, put him in his place, let him know what a real Yankee fan is all about," said the 39-year-old dry cleaner from Queens.

As a Red Sox fan, you might think I would welcome the defection. I cannot, however, because I know it is fake. It is base and traitorous, and even though I despise the New York Yankees, I despise a man of broken constitutional fiber who will throw away his core values in order to garner votes, a man who will abandon the sports equivalent of a long-held religion at the slightest provocation. I might be moved to ask if you can trust anything the man says, or if he has any real beliefs at all.