Baseball, Politics, and Soros

I'm late to jump on the George Soros-Washington Nationals story, but here I go, and I'm going to make it short and sweet. Reps. John Sweeney, Tom Davis, et al, have an opportunity to show some conservative stripes here. They can tell Major League baseball that they'll boycott the Nationals if the Soros ownership group buys the team from MLB. That is a perfectly legitimate activity, and well within their rights. It could also stand to be an effective tactic, as Washington is a very fickle baseball market and any whiff of a boycott is sure to make the franchise just a little less valuable. By huffing and puffing, demanding that MLB deny the bid by the Soros group (of which Soros isn't even the head) and threatening to pull Baseball's anti-trust exemption, Davis and Sweeney look like asses. There have been ample reasons to pull Baseball's special status, but this ain't on of 'em.

It isn't hard to dislike Soros, I dislike him too. But this is petty and vindictive. The ass-sandwich Soros used his God given right of free speech to try to unseat George Bush, and he failed. These Reps. and their supporters can use their right to deny a Soros owned team their dollars, but what they are proposing is nearly unethical.