Keller @ Large: Red Sox Offer Lesson For Our Political Leaders

BOSTON (CBS) - I was in Washington D.C. this weekend to visit family, and we drove up to Baltimore Saturday night to catch my first Red Sox-Orioles game.

The contrast was striking.

On the field at Camden Yards were the Red Sox, a season-long model of teamwork.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

Even some of their more emotional players have rarely been seen to sulk, and even when you do see a flash of anger or frustration, you never read about it in the papers the next day, a sign of maturity and self-control. Under John Farrell's management many of them have been forced to share playing time, and if there's been a single public temper tantrum about it, I've missed it.

Hard at "work" in the Capitol were our political elites, a dysfunctional mob of finger-pointers.

Posturing and bitter denunciations of one another are a daily habit. Interpersonal relations and patience are assigned no value in the rush to smear one another on TV. Their competition for hype, votes and money is cutthroat and constructive co-existence is apparently a non-starter.

This year's Red Sox play the game properly.

Instead of always swinging for the long ball, they are creative about scoring runs and finding ways to win; results-oriented, instead of obsessed with statistics.

In Washington, they have distorted their business into a partisan video game where the players compete for how much damage they can inflict on each other, with the nation as collateral damage. Creativity left town some time ago.

The Red Sox are now headed for big things.

Let's hope they're a lot better than where our political leadership is driving us – off the edge of a cliff.

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.