Politics is politics, and sports is sports, but when you think about it for a moment,  they do have a lot in common.  Both are games, for instance.  Both are based upon competition, with winners and losers.  In sports, the objective is to destroy and humiliate the opponent using whatever means are at your disposal, not dissimilar to politics.  In many instances today, they are both played by selfish, self-absorbed egocentrics who put themselves first.

The Boston Red Sox, defending World Series champions, just shipped one of the worst of those offenders out of town, all the way across the country, and to a different league.  With no offense intended toward the Los Angeles Dodgers, it was the virtual equivalent of being sent to Siberia – - it couldn’t be further away in all respects from Boston, a show of determination to rid themselves of the disease with which he had infected the team’s entire organization.  Such is the legacy of Manny Ramirez, and the rancid trail of his sophomoric detritus he spilled on his way out of town.

The Boston Herald’s Gerry Callahan wrote in his column this morning about the many Red Sox players who took time each spring training to visit a tent just outside their Fort Myers facility to visit with cancer-stricken children.  I’m of an age when we prayed to and for our favorite players each night, rising each morning to find out how our heroes had done the night before.  The Red Sox ball players used to come to the town I grew up in every All-Star break for a day of celebration, a round of golf and a clambake, and I used to caddy for a ball player each year as a kid – - the highlight of my summers.

I didn’t and don’t have cancer, and I had then and have now so many things in my life to smile about.  I can’t imagine what it is like for those kids, but I can certainly believe they have few things in their life to smile about.  I know meeting a real, live Boston Red Sox ball player is one of them, and if not at the top of their list, it’s damn close.

In his time with the Red Sox, Ramirez couldn’t have been bothered to make the time to visit that tent, to sign an autograph or to pose for a picture with a single one of those kids, notwithstanding the fact it was less than 30 yards from their practice ball field.  Other ball players on the team spent as much time as was asked for or needed to help those kids smile, just as they do regularly for the Jimmy Fund, a charity that raises funds for children’s cancer treatment.  Ramirez might have been the one those kids wanted to see, and perhaps their smiles for the other ball players might have hidden a degree of disappointment, but it clearly was not among his concerns.  He didn’t have time for them.

The ball players who did and do visit those kids don’t do so for selfish gain, or for publicity.  You won’t hear them speak of it to the press, and in many instances, there is no press around.  They do it for the kids,  for the smiles, for their own souls, and out of a sense of duty and honor for the game they play.  They make the time and they find a way, and they do it for all the right reasons.

Last week we saw a United States Senator who presumes to be our president come November cancel a visit to a military hospital where he could have visited with American service men and women wounded in the line of war duty.  It wasn’t so much that he couldn’t have been bothered as it was he didn’t make the time or find a way, but the result was the same.

He’d have gotten smiles, and lifted the spirits of folks who may not have a lot to smile about these days.  He could have helped them feel appreciated and valued, just like those cancer kids feel when they meet Jason Varitek or Tim Wakefield or David Ortiz in that tent.  They would have found a way, and he should have, too.  In fact, when the ball players were in Washington to visit the White House after their World Series victory, they did find a way, visiting soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Clearly these men, Barack Obama and Manny Ramirez, are not the same.  The latter has spent his career dissing anyone and anything that wasn’t Manny Ramirez, while the former has spent his aspiring to loftier heights, ostensibly for the right reasons.

But, by acts of commission and omission, each has spawned similar consequences on people who deserved better – cancer kids and wounded soldiers.  One of them is never likely to see anything beyond his own little square on the board of life; the other purports to see the entire board but failed to find a way this time around.  Let’s hope he learns.

Cat people should marry cat people, and dog people should marry dog people, and sports and politics should each keep to themselves, too.  But, perhaps there are lessons to learn here, one to the other,  not the least of which is to keep your eye on the ball – - the one that really counts.