Being a rebel is fun!

I notice this in two aspects: baseball and politics.

Since my pre-school years, I had been a New York Yankees fan.

Except for two one-year hiccups, I have been a registered Republican and, for good measure, a conservative Republican.

No more.

Last year, I got tired of the Yankees’ elitist attitudes (Just look at their ticket prices) and their pathetic attempts to use their glorious past to hide their mediocre current teams.

In the past, their retired uniform numbers reflected legendary greatness: Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio Mantle, Berra Ford, and Stengel.

Last year, the Yankees retired the numbers of admitted drug user Andy Pettite, good-but-not-great outfielder Bernie Williams, slightly above average catcher Jorge Posada. None are Hall of Fame players, or even close.

Why retire the numbers? This was simply an occasion for another “day” to trade on past glories and fill empty stadium seats.

I got tired of it.

At the beginning of last season, I hung my Yankee jacket in the back of the closet and broke out a Pirates’ jacket.

What fun!

The Pirates and the Yankees both performed at about the same level last year, above average but losing quickly in post-season competition. But while Yankee fans were moaning, Pirates fans were cheering. I could afford seats in PNC Park. I could talk baseball with many people in west-central Pennsylvania without feeling as though I was supporting, say, Donald Trump.

Trump leads us to politics.

Sixteen years ago, I voted for the “compassionate conservative,” George W. Bush, in the hope that he and his party would change the slide of the United States into Third World status: Enormous national debt, a country ruled by a privileged elite, the rest of us worse off than we were in the 1980s – and the 1980s began under the malaise of Jimmy Carter!

Under Bush, nothing changed for the better, but plenty changed for the worse. An unnecessary invasion of Iraq that succeeded was followed by a horribly botched attempt to put Iraq back on its feet. A necessary invasion of Afghanistan was followed by a stupid and impossible attempt to impose democracy from the top down on a territory (I won’t call it a “country” in the accepted sense) that treasures tribal warfare as we treasure Christmas.

So I changed a bit.

Eight years ago, I voted for the “hope and change” of Barack Obama. We got more rule by the wealthy, more American military engagements abroad, the Guantanamo Bay prison still open, an Obamacare health care program that we can’t afford – and a national debt that pushes us even closer to economic collapse.

Changing “a bit” doesn’t work.

I got tired of it.

I sent $100 to Bernie Sanders.

Sure, he’s a socialist. He calls himself a democratic socialist, but he is running as a Democrat. More, he is a seasoned politician, a mayor, a Congressman, a senator. He knows how to work with other politicians to produce consensus.

And, boy, am I having fun!

My wife, a lifelong liberal, loves Bernie Sanders. So this year, instead of fierce disputes between a liberal and a right-winger, we have a series of Bernie lovefests. My digestion is better. We watch Presidential debates together, without one or the other of us storming out of the room.

At this writing, I am still registered as a Republican.

On April 26, we will do more than nominate candidates for President – if, in fact, the Presidential nominations have not already been decided by the time we Pennsylvanians hold our primary.

We will also nominate people for the state and federal Houses of Representatives and for the state and federal Senates.

And we will choose an attorney general (hopefully, not the incumbent political shipwreck Kathleen Kane), plus an auditor general and a state treasurer.

I have Republican friends who now hold some of those offices. I might want to vote for them in the primary election, since the primaries might well determine the November election winners.

Then again, with sadness, I might want to vote against my friends, because in my view, the state-level officials, Gov. Tom Wolf and incumbent members of the Legislature, get grades of “F.” They can’t even pass a balanced budget, which is the most fundamental job they have.

So I’ll wait until mid-March and see whether it makes more sense for me to vote in the Republican primary or the Democratic primary.

But in the meantime, I am a political rebel.

What fun!

I feel exhilarated, freed from bondage. I didn’t move away from the Republican Party. Its inability to govern effectively, either in Pennsylvania or in Congress, moved it away from me.

So I love Bernie Sanders.

I love the Pittsburgh Pirates.

And I look forward to the coming seasons, in politics and in baseball, instead of feeling depressed and chained down to outdated allegiances.

As I said – what fun!

Denny Bonavita is a former editor at newspapers in DuBois and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: denny2319@windstream.net.