Wednesday evening’s final presidential campaign debate between President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry – or “Alfred E. Newman” and “Lurch,” respectively, as an irreverent colleague refers to the political duo – was a real test of the television remote control gizmo’s durability.

That’s because the debate ran opposite the second game of major league baseball’s American League Championship Series between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees, and for many viewers it would have been un-American not to have been tuned to both events.

Viewers with an interest in politics and baseball – and too technologically challenged to program VCRs to record one event while watching the other – kept clickers in high-alert mode, ready to jump ship at the first hint of a lull in the action. Since both performances conspired to set a viewer’s teeth on edge at times, there presumably was a whole lot of clicking going on across the country.

Baseball fans saw two innings of the game before being pulled away, with the Yankees leading 1-0, to catch the opening of the debate at Tempe, Arizona. Before long, Kerry’s incessant citing of statistics involving everything from the number of welfare recipients in Arizona to how many hanging chads it takes to change an election in Florida had sent many viewers clicking back to the ballgame in search of relief.

Onetime Red Sox pitching ace Pedro Martinez quickly caused most of them to soon return to the debate when he served up a two-run homer to Yankee first baseman John Olerud that put the Evil Empire up 3-0 in the sixth inning, causing the rampant paranoia that fuels Red Sox Nation to grow ever deeper. For long-suffering Red Sox fans it was the usual post-season omen signaling that yet again nothing was going to turn out OK, championship-wise.

When Bush incongruously alluded to the “buggy and horse days” and attempted to make a weak joke about the perils of trusting television news reports, it presented an opportunity to return to Yankee Stadium, via clicker, just in time to see hairy Red Sox centerfielder Johnny Damon – who tries his damnedest to look like the psycopath Charles Manson, and succeeds admirably – line out to center field after a 16-pitch at-bat. Close, but no cigar. Back to the debate.

And so it went, deep into the cool October night.

Debate: Kerry, answering a question concerning homosexuality, steps on a land mine in gratuitously mentioning that a daughter of Vice-President Dick Cheney is gay. Bush, ducking a question about raising the federal minimum wage, promotes his plan to educate America’s kids. Ballgame: Red Sox shortstop Orlando Cabrera grounds out in the top of the eighth inning, drives in Trot Nixon with the only Red Sox run of the game.

Debate: Bush launches a favorite refrain concerning Kerry’s allegedly shaky Senate voting record; Kerry continues to blame Bush for every national ill except the summer’s lousy weather. Ballgame: Two outs in the eighth, a Red Sox runner on third base, potential tying run at the plate. Ace Yankee closer Mariano Rivera jogs in from the bullpen to take command. Ballgame over. Yankees lead series, two games to zip.

Folklore has it that the Red Sox have not won a World Series since 1918 and are not destined to win one any time soon because of the Curse of the Bambino, hatched 80-something years ago when numbhead Boston management sent a young Babe Ruth (The Bambino) to the Yankees for some beads and a few trinkets, only to have the future Hall of Famer icon rewrite baseball history while wearing detested New York pinstripes.

Proof that the curse continues is the season-ending ankle injury to Boston pitching ace Curt Schilling, signed as a free agent for more money than Teresa Heinz Kerry has stashed in ketchup futures to bust the curse and hand Red Sox Nation a World Series championship.

Schilling won 21 games before the curse kicked in, rendering him null and void. Without him, only an October Surprise of Mammoth Proportions can save the bacon and put the Sox in the World Series, which, if it goes the full seven games, will end on Oct. 31.

Two days later, weary voters will elect a president following one of the more divisive election campaigns in history. No offense to Red Sox fans, but, all things considered – including dirty tricks yet to be sprung by either political camp – if there is to be an October Surprise of Mammoth Proportions within the next two weeks it’s not likely to occur on the baseball diamond.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is

olddawg@bangordailynews.net