Washington has two worlds. There's the one of politicians and lobbyists, and there's the other one that rages against that machine.
So it might be no surprise that the battle between those worlds is spilling onto the baseball field over the issue of the Washington Nationals' mascot.
Right now there's nobody on the Nats' payroll to harass visiting teams while dancing on the dugout. But the Washington underground has come up with its own idea for a mascot: the Colonist.
He's the idea of statehood activists who want to use baseball to illuminate D.C.'s plight of having no voting representation in Congress. The Colonist showed up at RFK Stadium for the exhibition game against the Mets and, judging by the photos on his Web site, looks like a combination of Drew Carey, Gary Glitter and Captain Hook.
It's clever, but what's it really going to do? This sort of radical rabble-rousing has no place in D.C.'s high society, which will be the VIPs at Nationals games. When George Will and Robert Novak are calling "their people" to get the best seats in the cavernous ballpark, nobody's going to notice the Colonist.
He's not the first person to bring politics into the Nationals fold. The Nats play in a stadium named after Robert F. Kennedy, and the field is likely to be sponsored by the National Guard. This should make President Bush feel a little more comfortable when he throws out the first pitch Thursday in a city that voted 91 percent against him, though he still might want to have his ex-Yale player dad go in his place. At least then the pitching form will be spared boos.
Yet if enough people are calling "their people" to get tickets, Bush will probably be disproportionately popular when he walks onto the mound on Opening Day.
D.C. politics mix with everything, to the point that there will likely be a probe by the House Government Reform Committee into every home run hit by the Nationals. What precedent does it set for politics and baseball? How will athletes maintain their macho image when there are activists in the stands?
Soon "Adam and Steve" will be appearing in Fenway Park to show support for Massachusetts's approval of gay marriage. There will be the inevitable "Adam and Eve" response at Minute Maid Park in Texas to protect the heartland of American families and choking National League baseball teams from the success of northeastern elitists.
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley will hire union thugs to keep Cubs fans out of All-Star voting while dead people will somehow stuff the ballot boxes for the White Sox.
A memo has already circled around the Tampa Bay Devil Rays front office saying the club can "excite its right-to-life fan base" - and save cash - by not selling food or water at games.
Everything will be capped by the San Francisco Giants destroying their ticket pricing structure and distributing all tickets to factory workers based on production quotas.
But the Colonist didn't start all this. Don't forget the Pittsburgh Steelers being the agent of the steel industry by incorporating the industry's symbol as the team logo.
Professional sports teams are wary of moving to Las Vegas for its gambling dangers. But maybe they should feel the same way about Washington when it comes to the mixture of sports and politics.
