You know what’s the most naive thing we hear in sports writing? Stick to sports.

It’s hard to do during campaign season.

Politics and sports have been intertwined for decades. Set aside the political significance of events like Jackie Robinson smashing Major League Baseball’s despicable color barrier or NFL players taking a knee for the national anthem.

Politicians have inserted themselves into sports for decades. They’ve been throwing out first pitches, tossing coins, dropping pucks and waving start flags. And for generations they’ve been dancing around the question of which team is their favorite so as not to offend voters whose allegiance lies elsewhere.

You couldn’t stick to sports if it was even remotely possible. You might as well try to fly.

A year ago, five-term incumbent Sen. Susan Collins watched the Caribou High girls and boys basketball teams win the Class B championships from a spot courtside. She cheered on her hometown alma mater, and even gave a halftime interview to Maine Public Broadcasting, which was televising the games live from Portland’s Cross Insurance Arena. They tossed her softballs. There was no attempt to question Collins on her recent vote to confirm Robert Kennedy Jr. to the post of Health and Human Services Secretary, a job for which he’s less qualified than roadkill.

If you’ve tried to watch live sports on television anytime recently, you’ve seen the campaign ads. Each party and their surrogates buy up the time.

We owe the rest of New England an apology for having the most-watched U.S. Senate race in the nation. Both Collins and Graham Platner, her presumed Democratic challenger come November, have filled NESN’s space between innings of Boston Red Sox games with ads.

Thanks to ads that run so often during Red Sox broadcasts, even my father in Vermont, whom the last time I checked has no plans to vote in Maine, is well-versed in our Senate candidates.

The deep field of candidates from both parties in Maine’s gubernatorial race have made sure to get their ads on during games, too. The primary is June 9, just a couple weeks away. That will narrow the field, but probably won’t cut the number of commercials we see. The airtime will just get divided up among fewer candidates.

The strategy of advertising during live sports works. Representatives from the Platner and Collins campaigns said the Red Sox are a passion in Maine. It might be the only thing on which they agree. Running ads during those games, which get so many views, is an easy way to get the candidate’s message out to a large number of potential voters.

“Advertising on sports is a natural fit for our campaign. Team Collins has a lot of sports fans and we know that Mainers love sports. Also, we would never miss an opportunity to point out that Senator Chuck Schumer — a diehard Yankees fan — is the person behind most of the nasty ads attacking Senator Collins,” Shawn Roderick, the Collins campaign’s spokesman, said in an email.

Just wait until the fall, when the political ads form the glue that holds a football broadcast together. New England Patriots, college football, it won’t matter.

Now, Platner is taking his fight directly to Red Sox fans in the form of an ad going after team owner John Henry and his private equity firm and the way it has mishandled shaping the Red Sox roster in recent seasons. Platner taps into the frustration fans have in the team’s direction, noting in the ad that the team has been stripped for parts, and also noting that private equity buys up Maine homes. He says he’ll reverse the private equity curse, a nod to the Curse of the Bambino we put to bed more than 20 years ago.

“I approve this message, because I miss Mookie Betts,” Platner says to close the 15-second spot.

It tugs at the nostalgic heartstrings of Sox fans who miss Mookie, too. You almost expect the PAC that’s saturated the airwaves with anti-Platner ads will soon offer a rebuttal along the lines of “Platner says he misses Mookie Betts, but in a Reddit post he said both ‘Sweet Caroline’ and ‘Tessie’ are garbage songs. If we can’t trust Platner on our favorite Fenway tunes, can we trust him on anything?”

It’s all competition, and many of us are riveted to both.

Turn on the political ads. There’s a game to break them up.

Stick to sports. Yeah, you crack me up.