Did Hillary Clinton root for the Yanks?

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2016

The World Series made them do it: The Cubs are in the World Series this year. This made the New York Times do it.

It made them ask the age-old question. When she was growing up in Chicago, did Hillary Clinton really root for both the Cubs and the Yanks?

That said, now that Dylan has won that prize, it seems the Times, it may be a-changin'! Jonathan Mahler's piece got relegated to the sports section in our hard-copy paper today. And he actually seemed to say that yes, she really did root for the Yanks:

MAHLER (10/26/16): Mrs. Clinton has pointed to ample evidence, including interviews from the early 1990s, that as a young girl in Chicago, she followed the Yankees in addition to the Cubs because she “needed an American League team,” and “in our neighborhood, it was nearly sacrilegious to cheer for the rival White Sox,” as she wrote in her 2003 memoir, “Living History.”

As a 7-year-old, Mrs. Clinton recalled in a speech in 2011, she dressed up as Mickey Mantle for Halloween, adding, “I have the picture to show you and to prove it.”

And in a lengthy 2007 profile, “Growing Up Rodham,” the respected Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins had corroborated this claim: “By age 10, Hillary was a tomboy obsessed with baseball, especially the switch-hitting Mickey Mantle.”

"Mrs. Clinton has pointed to ample evidence?" Is Mahler allowed to say that?

Second question: To what extent is New York Times coverage rigged against poor Trump? After all these years, they're even willing to cop to the truth about this!

For years, Clinton was assailed as The World's Biggest Liar (Not Counting Gore) for her disgraceful claim about the Cubs and the Yankees. How stupid and ugly was this endless campaign? Right before the passage we've posted, we'll let Mahler refresh you:

MAHLER: The source of suspicion about Mrs. Clinton’s baseball loyalties is another set of facts: In 1999, only days after announcing that she was forming an exploratory committee to run for the Senate from New York, she and her husband, President Bill Clinton, welcomed the Yankees to the White House for a visit. Mrs. Clinton donned a Yankees cap given to her by the team’s manager, Joe Torre.

The resulting photographs fueled scorching criticism for years.

“She went to the Yankees so that she could run for senator from New York,” Chris Matthews said in 2007 on MSNBC’s “Hardball.” “It’s so obvious. Why is she—doesn’t she know she looks like a fraud?”

"It's so obvious," Matthews said, just before calling Clinton "a fraud." He was still saying this eight years later!

Eight years earlier, we'd quoted those profiles from the early 1990s, the yellowing profiles which had described young Clinton's love for the Yanks. But so what? In those days, information never quite reached the horrific Hardball host, whose savaging of Candidates Clinton and Gore had made him a Trump-before-Trump.

Today, Candidate Trump has established himself as reigning king of the stupid and ugly. Back then, Matthews, Jack Welch's overpaid Trump-before-Trump, had been cast in that stupid destructive role.

You'll never hear anyone say that, of course. Dearest darlings, it just isn't done!

How stupid and ugly was it: In July, we revisited this stupid and ugly old game. In real time, a long string of embarrassing, disgraceful pundits took turns at the plate.

For the background to the story, click here. Ro revisit the vile pundit fury, click this.

This is the way the game has been played down through these stupid vile years.