President Barack Obama isn’t just going through the motions when it comes to backing his home-town Chicago White Sox, says top aide David Axelrod.
“I think he regularly checks [the Sox scores] on ‘SportsCenter’ at night,” Axelrod told the Chicago Tribune. “He keeps up on [the Sox], in between health care reform and arms control and all the other stuff he has to do. He keeps up on, not just baseball, but obviously on basketball, football. … He’s a big college football fan. So he’s a good sports fan.”
That fandom even caused the president to clash with Major League Baseball offiicals when he threw out the first pitch in last week’s All-Star Game. “There was a big controversy,” said Axelrod. “I think Major League Baseball wanted him to wear the All-Star jacket, and he was intent on wearing his White Sox jacket. He prevailed in that.”
Not such a big fan, according to Axelrod? Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Axelrod joked that Emanuel isn’t really serious about his allegiance to the North Siders: “He’s a duffer. He’s a poseur. But he grew up on the North Side. He has the tribal thing, and the Cubs were in his [congressional] district.”
