It’s an American tradition, right up there with littering and trash talking – you buy your ticket to a sports event and exercise your God-given right to boo the hell out of whoever you choose.
Normally, that means the umpire, members of the opposing team, or an underachieving member of your own team. But at special events like Opening Day when politicians show their faces, they can usually expect to be greeted with a chorus of boos, especially from those hardy pregamers who are well into their booze.
And that’s what happened to Gov. Maura Healey and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu last Friday at Fenway Park. The boos were loud, and from the video the two veteran pols appeared to smile their way through it.
But to hear some tell it, this routine, entirely predictable hazing was actually some sort of transcendent boo-pocalypse. The headline posted by a right-wing website - “SUPER LIB POLITICIANS GET BOOED OUT OF THE BUILDING AT RED SOX HOME OPENER” - failed to include evidence of Healey and Wu running for cover, of which there was none.
Still, the three Republicans hoping to oust Healey this fall eagerly retweeted video of the booing as a hopeful sign for their political ambitions.
“Man I love Red Sox nation,” wrote Mike Kennealy. His love affair with Massachusetts Red Sox fans may falter in November if they vote along the lines of recent polling showing Healey pulverizing Kennealy by a two-to-one margin.
“Looks like fans want someone else to bat,” offered Mike Minogue, who fares even worse than Kenneally in the poll.
And for Brian Shortsleeve, also beaten like a drum by Healey in the polling, the Opening Day boos held deep political significance. “When even deep-blue Massachusetts is booing Maura Healey and Michelle Wu, you know something’s broken,” he tweeted. “People are fed up with high costs, high taxes, and zero accountability. Time for a change.”
Huh. Hard to believe those Fenway protestors were willing to overcome their economic despair and shell out the nation’s highest cost-per-family to attend, $366.71 (parking, refreshments and souvenir hat included). Could the opening day crowd possibly be a skewed sample of the broader electorate?
Sports crowd booing lends itself to this sort of dubious interpretation because it is so common. Vice President JD Vance was booed by the crowd at an international celebration of respect and friendship, the Winter Olympics opening ceremony. The list of past presidents booed at baseball games includes Herbert Hoover (OK, that was in Philadelphia, where they boo Santa), Harry Truman, both Bushes, Barack Obama, and even then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.
And it’s unlikely any political figure has been booed more often at sports events than President Trump (in part because he attends so many): NFL games, the US Open tennis tournament, and memorably, the 2019 World Series in Washington, where fans mixed their boos with chants of “lock him up.”
Contra Kennealy, Minogue and Shortsleeve, getting booed at the game is not an indicator of political peril. In fact, the opposite may be true.
With the possible exception of those Philly savages, fans don’t normally boo someone they don’t know or care about. Around here, where the “rank out” is an art form of teasing among friends and family, negative remarks are sometimes a sign of respect. “Yankees Suck” is mistaken for a derogatory chant when it is actually a grudging acknowledgement of their illustrious history.
So while some of those who booed the governor and mayor last week were surely not fans of theirs, it’s a rookie mistake to take it as proof of anything.
Maybe some of them were just chanting “Wu.”
