Maybe this is a bad example, considering the vice president's well-documented appetite for shoe leather. But once again a politician has gone where no politician should ever go and got burned.

Really, Joe Biden? You don't know the difference between the San Francisco Giants and the New York Giants?

A short primer, then, Mr. Vice President: One team plays baseball, that game where people try to hit a little white ball into open spaces and then try to touch three white bags ("bases") in a circular pattern that brings them back to where they started ("homeplate"). If you're successful, you get one point (called a "run").

The other team plays football.

In one of my recurring fantasies, I often imagine myself as a political advisor, because I'm arrogant enough to believe I'd be better at it than 99 percent of the goofballs doing it now. I base that on some of the incredibly bad advice said goofballs pass on to their clients, and some of the really good advice they never seem to.

Here's one example of that good advice: Under no circumstances should any politician ever talk about sports. They don't know anything about it, and so they invariably wind up sounding dumber than bricks or looking like pandering phonies trying to touch a common chord they couldn't find with search planes and a GPS.

So, shut up, already. Stick to what you know, people: Begging for money.