Bleacher Report - Articles by Dave Zirin

Donovan McNabb, Eagles Give Vick Second Chance—Will Philly Fans?

Dave Zirin — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 19:15:54 -0400

When a high school football star named Michael Vick visited Syracuse University, he was hosted by the big man on campus, quarterback Donovan McNabb. Today, McNabb is once again going to be hosting Vick and Vick will need his old friend to steer him through the rapids to come.

We now know that Michael Vick will be a Philadelphia Eagle and the shock waves are causing the sports radio blabbocracy, animal rights activists, and even Vick supporters to twitch with concern.

Many thought Vick wouldn’t be signed at all. And no one—repeat, no one—thought it would be the Eagles, one of 26 teams that had said publicly they wouldn’t touch the former No. 1 pick. Not after 23 months in Leavenworth for underwriting a dog fighting ring.

But there are the Eagles, with the most skilled back up quarterback since Tom Brady was waiting his turn behind Drew Bledsoe. And without McNabb, the big man on campus, it doesn’t happen.

"I pretty much lobbied to get him here," McNabb told the Associated Press "I believe in second chances and what better place to get a second chance than here with this group of guys.”

Andy Reid, whose own sons have had repeated and very public run ins with the law said, "I'm a believer that as long as people go through the right process, they deserve a second chance. He's got great people on his side; there isn't a finer person than (Vick adviser) Tony Dungy. He's proven he's on the right track."

The “right track” includes more than those 23 months in Leavenworth. Vick is already undergoing a full image rehab. He will be expressing full remorse on 60 minutes this Sunday. He will be working with the Humane Society.

He will be speaking out on cruelty to animals, using his profile in the league to reach those many thousands—yes thousands—of people in this country for whom dog fighting is tragically a part of normal life.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) however did not even wait for the ink to dry on the contract before saying, "PETA and millions of decent football fans around the world are disappointed that the Eagles decided to sign a guy who hung dogs from trees. He electrocuted them with jumper cables and held them under water," PETA spokesman Dan Shannon told The Associated Press.

"You have to wonder what sort of message this sends to young fans who care about animals and don't want them to be harmed.” It sends a message that spending almost two years of Leavenworth might not entitle you to a second chance.

I don’t know if PETA thinks that Vick should be locked in a cage for life, or shot, but either way they look to be picking up from their ugly demonstrations held outside the courthouse during Vick’s trial.

But PETA is going to be the least of Vick’s problems. Sal Paolontonio, the veteran Philadelphia based sports reporter was on the grand concourse of a packed Philadelphia football stadium when the news broke.

He said, “In 25 years of covering sports in this town, this is the most shocking story. This is visceral. There is lot of anger (in the fans). It is 90 to 95 percent negative. There is a lot of anger. I have been listening to sports radio. It is overwhelmingly negative.”

The great sportswriter DK WIlson from the website Sports on my Mind reported that Philadelphia sports radio host Dan Schwartzman was saying, “From a football standpoint it makes sense.

"But he’s coming into our community. I’m thinking of the larger picture...I don’t think I’m being harsh in calling Vick The Boogeyman. I don’t think I’m being harsh in saying you don’t want Michael Vick around your kids...”

One caller said, “This only goes to prove how hypocritical this scumbag organization is…. and they bring in Public Enemy Number one? This guy is a scumbag…There’s no forgiveness in my heart.”

Later, according to D-Wil, another caller said, “To let go of the heart of this organization and in the same offseason you bring in the Boogeyman in Michael Vick?”

The cover of the Philadelphia Daily News is an unflattering picture of Vick and the headline, “Hide Your Dogs.”

Hide your dogs and hide your kids because there are clearly people in Philadelphia ready to make Vick football’s Willie Horton. Maybe these health care townhall’s have inspired the fringes of the sports world to embrace their hatred and fears as virtues. Maybe in this climate the fringes just crave their Boogeymen, like a drug addict shaking for their fix.

Ron Jaworski, the former Eagles quarterback and Monday Night Football commentator, said with far more insight, “I think he deserves a second chance without question. But when you look at the 32 cities where Vick could fit in, Philadelphia is No. 32.”

Jaworski referenced the “passion” of Philly fans creating a difficult environment. But this passion cuts both ways. While Philly has a history of hostility toward “controversial” African American players, they also embraced the passion and wicked fury of former 76er Allen Iverson.

If Vick gets it done on the field, I can see the Philly fans flipping from hostility to being fiercely protective of No. 7.

It helps to have Andy Reid and Donovan McNabb in Vick’s corner. It helps that people like Tony Dungy and Warren Moon have Vick’s back. It helps that Vick is working with the humane society. But it helps the most that the players have his back.

Eagles cornerback Ellis Hobbs said, “He’s definitely going to be embraced. The NFL is a fraternity of brothers. When you bring in a guy who’s been through the things that he’s been through, you want to surround him and protect him as much as possible because everybody’s out there throwing stones at him.”

It would help even more if we all collectively realize that in a country of 2.3 million people behind bars, being an ex-felon shouldn’t mean having an F tattooed on your chest for eternity.

Life Imitates Sports: Kobe/Cheney Vs. Melo/Obama

Dave Zirin — Wed, 27 May 2009 18:35:13 -0400

Competition becomes riveting when opponents complement each other’s strengths and flaws. Two imperfect adversaries can match up and forge something memorable. Ali vs. Frazier. Magic vs. Bird. Navratilova vs. Evert. Tom vs. Jerry. This past week we witnessed a set of battles –in politics and sports – that eerily mirrored one another. In one corner we have Kobe Bryant and Dick Cheney. In the other there is Carmelo Anthony and Barack Obama.

Bryant and Anthony, leaders of their respective basketball teams - the Los Angeles Lakers and the Denver Nuggets - have been locked in a playoff series that has the makings of a classic. The Lakers have a 3-2 series is lead. Through the first two games alone, the cumulative score was 209-208. Bryant scored 72 points in the series and the man they call “Melo” countered with 73. Last Thursday’s heart-thumping game went down to the last play.

Cheney and Obama had their own Thursday battle, delivering back-to-back speeches on national security, torture, and the closing of the prison on Cuba’s Guantánamo Bay. As Cheney sneered at the world and Obama spoke softly, with his eyelids at half-mast, the parallels with their hoops brethren were overpowering.

In one corner, Cheney and his long lost twin Kobe Bryant. In the other, Obama and his brother from another mother, Carmelo Anthony.

The facts speak for themselves:

Cheney and Kobe both live to scowl and a sneer. Their opponents, Obama and Carmelo, have trademark smiles that would shame sunshine, inspiring media and colleagues alike to gush.

Cheney and Kobe give off vibes like they have lived through authentically tough times. Cheney speaks with the rumbling gravity of a scared Marine Corps vet, while Kobe tries to come across like he is a hard case with a short fuse. In reality, Cheney avoided Nam because, as he said infamously, he had “better things to do;” Kobe was raised in Europe by his basketball playing father, becoming fluent in Italian in the process. In contrast, in his youth, Obama and his family relied on food stamps for a time; ‘Melo was raised on the roughest edges of Baltimore. But both are also known for their “mellow” manner, playing it cool, attracting a crowd and making people feel at ease. Cheney and Kobe are more known for making people feel like they were just wedgied. They aren’t there to be your buddy, but to get you to perform through your own discomfort.

There are other similarities as well. Kobe conserves his energy these days, shooting long jumpers and then - before you know it - exploding to the rim and sucking the oxygen out of an arena. Cheney has been largely silent for years, and on a good day had a pulse. But the man known as vice has emerged in recent weeks to control the news cycle by staunchly defending the legality and morality of torture. By contrast, Carmelo plays the whole game at the same pace. He doesn’t explode to the rim. He glides. He would sooner attend a go-go show than overextend himself. What can sometimes be mistaken for lackadaisical play is really Melo just being mellow and lulling opponents into a false sense of security before he takes them to the rack. Obama, for all his oratorical gifts, will more often happily drone on until opponents don’t know how to respond.

We saw this clearly on Thursday. Cheney came out acerbic and brazen but seemed to lose steam as his own 5,500-word speech meandered on. Kobe as well came out strong but didn’t shoot a free throw in the fourth quarter and couldn’t even get the ball on the last play. He looked spent. Also on Thursday, Obama spoke softly and without urgency. But he ended by giving a 6,000-word speech that carefully constructed his every angle. In it he maddened many supporters who long for him to start breathing some fire and find Cheney some handcuffs. Melo as well came out soft in the first quarter, maddening fans with his absence of urgency. He is also a player who has made it difficult for longtime Denver supporters by appearing disinterested in “the fight.” This is the first year in his six-year career that Anthony’s team has made it out of the first round of the playoffs.

In the weeks to come we will no doubt get more drama from Cheney, Bryant, Obama and Anthony. One debate has life or death implications, the other only feels that way. One is a metaphor for life, the other is life itself. The sports contest is exemplary. But on the political side, one thing is certain. We need to be able to blaze a more urgent progressive path, so our choices are not confined to being a passive Melo or a mega Dick.

Not So Easy: The Super Bowl Returns to New Orleans

Dave Zirin — Fri, 22 May 2009 18:55:57 -0400

Only in New Orleans could this be classified as "a return to normalcy." The Crescent City, torn asunder by Hurricane Katrina, stamped by federal neglect and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's neoliberal experimentation, will once again collide with the freewheeling, hard-partying frenzy of the NFL's crown jewel: the Super Bowl.

It was announced this week that New Orleans will host their tenth Super Bowl in 2013, to the cheers of journalists with bionic livers and expense-account executives the nation over. It's also being celebrated across the sporting spectrum as an act of altruism. It shouldn't be, but that hasn't stopped the soundtrack of salutations.

ESPN's Len Pasquarelli wrote, "The Super Bowl was made for New Orleans. And as anybody who has attended a championship game there knows, New Orleans was made for the Super Bowl.... Great move owners!"

Governor Jindal said, "This is a huge win for New Orleans but also the entire state of Louisiana." Previously, Jindal has decried federal spending on disaster relief, which is somewhat like a governor of Nevada making a push to outlaw gambling.

The NFL wants to play up the choice as an act of post-Katrina missionary work, with commissioner Roger Goodell saying, "I think this is a great statement about the spirit and people of New Orleans and the great relationship the Saints and the NFL have in that community."

"No city has been through more than New Orleans," said Rita Benson LeBlanc, a part owner of the New Orleans Saints. "This is just a true testament to what an entire community can do."

Pasquarelli added, "Playing host to a Super Bowl should address some of the city's lingering problems." By "lingering problems" he must mean sky-high poverty and unemployment. Much has been made about the city's comeback, on the basis of healthy employment numbers (relative to the rest of the country) and a mini-construction boom buoyed by post-Katrina reconstruction.

But many New Orleans residents still feel compelled to celebrate any infusion of business, particularly the business of unlimited expense accounts and debauchery the Super Bowl inevitably brings with it. This is because the poverty in the city is still persistent.

In March, the metro area lost jobs for the first time since Hurricane Katrina. And New Orleans, with some families still living in federal trailers and others still trying to return, remains the murder capital of the United States.

This is because the city has become profoundly dependent on its service economy since 2005.

This is also because the Obama administration has to date done nothing to help the Gulf Coast despite his repeated assurances to do otherwise. A look at politifact.com shows a depressing litany of broken promises straight from Obama's mouth on everything from strengthening the levees to rebuilding hospitals and schools.

As New Orleans resident and commentator Harry Shearer wrote:

“The farther we get into this administration, the clearer it becomes that New Orleans is now enjoying its second consecutive federal administration which, far from offering to fix what it broke, far from offering a hand of support, is merely offering one finger.”

This is why, in the absence of alternatives, the Super Bowl money train looks all the more seductive.

Scott Fujita, a star linebacker for the Saints who lives within the New Orleans city limits, said to me, "I'm thrilled about it.... You'd be hard-pressed to find a city that throws a better party, or a city that deserves the business more than New Orleans."

He is correct on both counts. But this is one party that will come with a price tag which should make us more than skeptical.

To paraphrase John Reed, the NFL never wants something for nothing. It will mean at least $85 million more in taxpayer money for Superdome improvements, including more luxury suites plus other bells and whistles.

This investment is being pushed hard by Jindal and the New Orleans business community. Jindal is very fond of saying that "government can't solve our problems." However, it can provide Jindal's corporate backers with more luxury suites.

The Super Bowl decision perpetuates the status quo in New Orleans. The city will be forced to rise and fall on the basis of an external service economy.

Jobs and wages will fluctuate rapidly based on whichever circus happens to be in town that week. Taxpayer dollars will pour into amenities for moneyed tourists and not into building the kind of stable industrial base that can stabilize the community. This will be another sporting shock doctrine.

Saints owner Tom Benson said after the announcement, in a moment of unvarnished truth, "It won't be all trickle-down, but it will definitely help."

Someone needs to ask, When the Super Bowl party leaves town, who will really be helped and who will be left on the sidelines?

Home Runs and Hypocrisy: The Shaming of Manny Ramirez

Dave Zirin — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:27:28 -0400

You would think that Manny Ramirez was caught fighting pit bulls alongside Martha Stewart.

ESPN's Bill Simmons says that he is "confronting my worst nightmare." Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports believes that it is time to talk about "lifetime bans." Boston Globe writer Tony Massarotti says "everyone is guilty until proven innocent."

The sports radio and comment boards have been cesspools of racism. It's always easy to hate, especially someone who plays a game for a living and makes millions of dollars.

All I know is this: Thanks to Major League Baseball's hypocritical, idiotic, and altogether morally bankrupt steroid policy, the sport will be without one of its premier attractions for 50 games, someone I would pay to watch at batting practice. Yes, Manny Ramirez, the finest right-handed hitter of his generation, has been sent to the showers and forced to surrender $7.7 million in salary after testing positive for what was initially called a "performance-enhancing substance."

The decision ends a stretch where the former World Series MVP was reviving baseball in Los Angeles, leading the Dodgers to a 21-8 start and a record 13 straight wins at home to open the season.

Los Angeles, a town built on artifice and home to hordes of performance-enhanced entertainers, not to mention led by a performance-enhanced governor, now demands purity of its athletes.

This is not a column that aims to "defend" Manny Ramirez, but condemn Major League Baseball's steroid idiocy. Besides, the quizzically quirky Ramirez is not at this point defending himself. Ramirez will not appeal the suspension and apologized, issuing a brief statement, which read in part: "I saw a physician for a personal health issue. He gave me a medication, not a steroid, which he thought was okay to give me."

But MLB, in a typically classy move, has leaked to the press that Ramirez tested positive for the female fertility drug hCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin. Steroid specialists have fanned out across the airwaves explaining that hCG is used to increase testosterone levels, usually after a heavy steroid cycle.

Former AL MVP, author of Juiced, and admitted steroid user Jose Canseco, who pleaded guilty last November to a misdemeanor of trying to bring hCG across the Mexican border illegally, also weighed in: "It could be that a player used it because he used steroids and went cold-turkey and needed hCG to get his [testoterone] levels back to normal."

The use of a "female fertility drug" also has sports radio hosts in a pubescent tizzy asking if "Manny is a mommy" and ESPN's Jayson Stark making an "octo-mom" joke.

From the juvenile to the pious, President Obama's press flack, Robert Gibbs, took time out from explaining why torturers are above the law to tell us, "It's a tragedy, it's a shame."

There is a tragedy and a shame afoot, but it is not rooted in the choices of one player. It's in a baseball culture that continues to think embarrassing individual players and feeding on the resentment of fans is the best path to cleaning up the sport.

Manny has now joined Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and many others as permanently stained with a scarlet S. No Hall of Fame, no old timers' games and a life as a cautionary tale.

Meanwhile, we all get taken to the cleaners. We have billionaire owners making scapegoats of millionaire players to soothe our anxieties about the game and our lives. Meanwhile, these same owners sit like pashas in a baseball palace that could be called "The House That Steroids Built."

The man who wrote Juiced knows when a cycle has run its course. Canseco said that he believes the coverage on steroids in baseball has become "overkill" and the spotlight should now be on MLB and the players association.

He called it "a complete conspiracy." He's absolutely correct.

Baseball owners love conspiracies. For more than 20 years they have conspired to attain public funds for ballparks. In 2008, they collectively conspired not to sign the best hitter in the game, Barry Bonds. Now they are committed to the project of keeping the focus on the players, and off of themselves. We shouldn't let them. If Manny Ramirez is guilty of anything, it's being caught in between baseball's clubhouse culture and public sanctimony.

During the baseball's Summer of Love in 1998, when Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs and Sammy Sosa smacked 66, the money came pouring in. No one cared that McGwire and Sosa looked like a pair of defensive tackles.

Soon, publicly funded stadiums were included in budgets for Washington, DC, New York City and Minnesota. The home run became the most marketable baseball item since peanuts and crackerjacks and no one wanted to look behind the curtain.

It was sports. It was entertainment. It was an escape.

Then came 2001, when Barry Bonds hit 73, and all of a sudden we were supposed to be collectively sick at the thought of a home run. As baseball writer Adrian Burgos (Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line) said, "What continues to fascinate me is how MLB leadership is willing to allow individual players to take the full brunt of the collective failure of leadership.

"Today, pundits have ranted in at times rabid tones about the players who make millions for their role while those who make the hundred of millions (and even have billion-dollar stadiums constructed for them on the public dole) continue to profit. How many stadiums have been built since then and at what cost? All the wealth that has been accumulated at that level is in my mind just as, if not more, offensive, since the owners act as if they were not enablers and co-dependents as their players shot up, ingested and otherwise partook in performance-enhancing drugs."

We should always remember that former Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush made steroid persecution a recurring theme of his time in office, as long as owners were spared the spotlight. The hypocrisy should shame owners toward contrition—but they will happily crack some golden eggs, as long as it means that the goose that laid them lives. Even though come contract time, it's all about the numbers on your stat page, and not the number of clean tests.

As baseball fan and poet Martin Espada told me, "Baseball is the Main Street of sports. (Think Cooperstown.) It's full of history and nostalgia, and paved with the bricks of hypocrisy. Now it's the rhetoric of the 'Drug War,' handed down from the Nixon White House forty years ago to MLB and ESPN today."

He is absolutely correct. We are supposed to tsk-tsk at players who are supposed to "just say no" to their addictions to fitness and monster stats, when their success at the park is our addiction as well. We also have yet to truly take owners to task for their addictions to public money and send them to detox.

The Kentucky Derby: Seabiscuit Meets Syriana

Dave Zirin — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:56:51 -0400

Some folks think the Kentucky Derby is one of the sports world's signature events, where horses are athletes to be appreciated for their power and beauty. Others consider the so-called sport of kings ostentatious nonsense, cruel to the animals and one more occasion for the super-rich to throw their money around.

And then there are the little people—fewer and fewer as time goes by—the racetrack touts, the little old ladies and assorted winners and losers lined up at the OTB, making $2 bets and hoping to catch a break.

Each of those constituencies found something to believe in at the 2009 Kentucky Derby. This was an underhorse story of cinematic proportions: one part Syriana and two parts Seabiscuit, as the unknown gelding Mine That Bird came out of nowhere to win the Run for the Roses by eight lengths, overcoming greater odds than any horse in six decades.

Competing against Hall-of-Fame trainers, the Sultan of Dubai and horses that are catered to like Texas debutantes, Mine That Bird was the tough and tiny horse that could.

Coming out of the gate, the diminutive gelding was squeezed by two larger horses and soon pushed so far to the the rail that he could barely be seen by the 153,000 in attendance. But jockey Calvin Borel used that inside track to his advantage, hugging the rail so closely there were practically sparks between the horse and the edge and rode to victory on the soggy track.

Before the race, the only press Mine That Bird received was for his journey to Kentucky, not his prospects. The horse from Roswell, New Mexico didn't land via flying saucer. He came 1,700 miles in a trailer hitched to the back of trainer Bennie "Chip" Woolley Jr.'s forty-year-old pickup truck.

Woolley, a former bareback jockey, had driven the horse to the Derby despite having broken his leg several weeks earlier in a motorcycle accident. Wooley's crutches, black cowboy attire, and camera-unfriendly dark glasses stood in stark contrast to the ostentatiously hatted Derby crowd.

And to the media who didn't know what to make of him before the race, the laconic Woolley broke out a smile beneath his broad, black Stetson. "They'll know me now, won't they?''

In an unscripted moment as he encountered Borel after the race, Woolley literally cast his crutches away to embrace the horse and jockey. "To be honest, I didn't have any real feeling that I could win the Derby. All I knew is that we'd be more competitive than anybody thought we would.'' In a sport where trainers have egos that would rival heavyweight-boxing champions, such an admission is more than remarkable: it's cinematic.

Such was the emotion of the race, Borel broke down in tears after crossing the finish line, recounting the recent death of his mother. "You got a hole, you got a shot,'' Borel said, of the way he skillfully guided Mine That Bird through the gaps between horses. "I rode him like a good horse.''

All of this cinematic drama unspooled against a backdrop of recession that saw the lowest attendance at Churchill Downs since 2004. Purel was flowing as fast as mint juleps as health officials issued assurances that swine flu would not impact the race.

Just as Seabiscuit thrilled Depression-era crowds in the 1930s, recession-plagued America now has its own thoroughbred. But while the humble, injured trainer, the volatile jockey, and little horse from nowhere all may all seem to be from central casting, one of the guys who owns Mine the Bird is more connected to central booking.

Mine that Bird is the property of Mark Allen, who, with a partner, bought the horse for $400,000. According to the Anchorage Daily News, Allen bought the horse with proceeds from the sale of VECO, his father's Alaskan oil business. His father, Bill Allen, was a central player in the Sen. Ted Stevens corruption trial and pleaded guilty in 2007 to bribing Alaska politicians. Part of his plea agreement was immunity for his son. Once Bill had Mark in the free and clear, he testified that the Mind That Bird owner was his personal bagman, paying off Alaskan legislators.

Part of Stevens's 2008 conviction—since voided because of prosecutorial misconduct—was failure to disclose gifts given to him by Bill Allen. (Stevens also once co-owned a piece of another Mark Allen horse, So Long Birdie.) Yikes. But as long as Mark Allen wasn't riding Mine That Bird to the payoff spots, the memories of a remarkable day will probably remain intact.

A Pinstriped Patriot Act

Dave Zirin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:06:42 -0400

One fine day last August, Bradley Campeau-Laurion just wanted to leave his seat and use the bathroom at the old Yankee Stadium. The 30-year-old New York resident had no idea that nature's call would lead him down a road to perdition where he would be accused of challenging God, country, and the joys of compulsory patriotism at the ballpark.

Under the 36-year watch of George Steinbrenner—and now his offspring—the New York Yankees have always wrapped their fans, like it or not, in red, white and blue bombast. This is the team that so loves God and country that it mandates the singing of two national anthems—Francis Scott Key's 1814 epic, "The Star-Spangled Banner" and Irving Berlin's 1918 anthem, "God Bless America."

For a while after 9/11, "God Bless America" was standard fare in major league ballparks. But while most ball clubs have let the practice slide, the super-patriotic Steinbrenners have ramped up the flag-waving, extending the seventh-inning stretch to include "God Bless America" along with the traditional "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

Sometimes "God Bless..." is performed live by Irish tenor Ronan Tynan, but most often the tune is delivered over stadium loudspeakers via a scratchy vintage recording by the operatic warbler Kate Smith, who first popularized the song in 1938.

But no matter who's singing, the Yankees have been known to cordon off the aisles and put off-duty police officers in place to ensure the multitudes stand at respectful attention. (Fans of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but a long-dead singer and the chains on your bleachers!)

Not only do the Yankees expect fans to stand during the singing of patriotic songs, but during the Bush era, they virtually mandated fan support for the Iraq War, all the while extorting tax breaks and other public subsidies from city, state, and federal governments to build their new $1 .5 billion cathedral of baseball. (Separation of sports and state, anyone?)

For the Steinbrenners and the high-rollers who occupy Yankee Stadium's $2,500 top-shelf seats, this kind of power patriotism wedded to corporate welfare must be sweet as champagne.

But as the global economic meltdown has proven, there ultimately comes a time to put the brakes on corporate execs—to say nothing of mindless patriotism.

And while some Yankees fans have grumbled and a few intrepid sports bloggers, like former Deadspin editor Will Leitch, have raised concerns, it took one man's full bladder to hoist the Yankees organization with its own petard.

All Campeau-Laurion did was try to go to the men's room during the seventh-inning stretch. In swooped two New York Police Department officers working security detail, who reportedly roughed him up and threw him out of the ballpark. Now Campeau-Laurion has filed a civil suit against the the city, the cops, and the team for violating his rights.

"New York's finest have no business arresting someone for trying to go to the bathroom at a politically incorrect moment," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Campeau-Laurion in the lawsuit.

According to the complaint, Campeau-Laurion drank two beers and took the seventh-inning stretch to mean he could actually go stretch.

"As he walked toward the tunnel leading to the concourse, a uniformed New York City police officer put up his hands and mumbled something to Mr. Campeau-Laurion," according to the complaint, blocking his way to the bathroom during the singing of "God Bless America." As Campeau-Laurion tried to move past the officer, the policeman grabbed his arm and said, "He's out!" to another officer, who twisted his left arm behind his back, hustling him down the ramp and out of the stadium.

NYPD tells a different story.

"The officers observed a male standing on his seat, cursing, using inappropriate language and acting in a disorderly manner while reeking of alcohol, and decided to eject him rather than subject others to his offensive behavior," NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said in an e-mail reply to my query.

This account strains credulity. If it were standard procedure for the NYPD to kick out every drunken fan from Yankee Stadium, the place would be emptier than a John Ashcroft concert at the Apollo Theatre.

Campeau-Laurion disputes the NYPD account. "Not a word of that is true," he told Bloomberg News. "The whole incident didn't occur at my seat. It occurred at my section when I went to use the restroom.

"I don't care about 'God Bless America.' I don't believe that's grounds constitutionally for being dragged out of a baseball game...I simply don't have any religious beliefs...It devalues patriotism as a whole when you force people to participate in patriotic acts," he continued. "It devalues the freedom we fought for in the first place."

This ugly incident raises a series of inconvenient questions: Why does America feel compelled to bind sports to patriotic ritual? Why are publicly funded facilities like stadiums used to promote private religious or political beliefs? And given the putrid start of the Yankees' season, shouldn't management be more concerned with what's happening with the players than with the fans?

All should stand with Campeau-Laurion until we get some answers.

Geno and Gender: Huskies and the Perils of Perfection

Dave Zirin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:49:38 -0400

Let's talk about the power of perfection. The University of Connecticut Huskies just won the NCAA women's basketball title, capping a season where they went 39-0.

No men's team has finished a season undefeated since the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers.

Led by Wooden Award-winner Maya Moore, Final Four Most Outstanding Player Tina Charles and senior guard Renee Montgomery, they trounced Louisville 76-54.

This team was more than unbeaten. It won every game by double digits. After the game, that fact was repeated over and over by UConn's coach, the unabashedly arrogant Geno Auriemma. Auriemma has won six NCAA championships since 1995.

What's more impressive, even shocking, is that since he became head coach in 1985 the team has graduated 100 percent of its players. After his latest triumph he was still making eardrums bleed, braying, "At Connecticut, there is no next time, there's only this time, there's only this time. Every single game was won by double digits. That's never been done before in the history of college basketball, men's or women's."

He's earned the right to brag, but his tactics of criticizing his players and setting up power dynamics where they feel like they have to please their demanding coach has raised eyebrows since he dragged the UConn program to national prominence.

In the past, his caustic, scowling, megalomaniacal style has earned tremendous praise. Aditi Kinkhabwala of Sports Illustrated summed up the conventional wisdom last year in an article subtitled "Auriemma is brash, but he's good for women's hoops."

Kinkhabwala wrote that "the goading, the gamesmanship, the guarantees to grab headlines in a game that doesn't get nearly enough are all fabulous. The media laps it up, and the true genius of it all is that it's real."

It's real, all right. But now that he has a team even grander than his ego, Auriemma should—for the good of his players and the women's game—take a step back and cede the spotlight.

This should be a moment to praise a team that for my money is the best NCAA women's team ever, and in the conversation as the most dominant college team, men's or women's in history.

The fact that their exploits haven't received more attention is just another instance of the way women's sports get the fuzzy end of the lollipop. Auriemma isn't helping. There was a prime example of this right before the Huskies Final Four matchup with Stanford. At a packed press conference, Coach Geno "stood up" for Stanford, saying:

"I know this is going to get played out the wrong way, but I'm going to say it anyway, and I know I'm going to get criticized for this: white kids are always looked upon as being soft. So Stanford's got a tremendous amount of really good players who, for whatever reason, because they don't look like Tina Charles or Maya Moore [who both are black] the perception out there is going to be, 'Well, they must be soft.'

"Well, I think that's a bunch of bull. I watched them play, and nobody goes harder to the boards. Nobody takes more charges. Nobody runs the floor as hard. Those kids are as tough as any of the kids in the country. But people in the sports world like to make judgments on people by how they look. And it's grossly unfair."

The statement was bizarre but it was also pure Auriemma. First it made no sense. No one had made any such statement about Stanford.

Also, if there is a tired stereotype about white players, from baseball's David Eckstein to basketball's Kevin Love to football's Wes Welker, it's that they are "scrappy, hard-nosed" and "would go through a wall to win." Every sportswriter knows this, which is why the reaction of the press corps was that Auriemma's statements were more quizzical than controversial.

He ended his rant by saying, "So those West Coast people—you know what, the West Coast in general has a reputation of being soft. But that's to the East Coast people."

So he decries stereotypes by issuing another stereotype? This was another case of "Geno being Geno." The 55-year-old coach needs to be careful, or the proud rugged individualist will be labeled senile as the years pass.

Tina Charles in the past has defended these tactics by saying, "the pressure's off us and on him." Whether Auriemma was trying to take the pressure off his team or just has no internal censor, this moment should be about giving all the credit in the world to the team, not him.

Playing for the mercurial, temperamental, volcanic coach isn't something I would wish on any women's player not named Sarah Palin. As Diane Pucin wrote, "There's only a handful of players in the country talented enough both mentally and physically to handle Auriemma and somehow he finds them all."

But even with Auriemma's overpowering ego, his program has over the years created real stars: Diana Taurasi, Swin Cash, Sue Bird, and Nykesha Sales. This year it was remarkable Maya Moore.

Blake Griffin, the men's AP Player of the Year, was asked if Maya Moore was the Blake Griffin of the women's game, and he said, "More like the LeBron James." That's respect.

But even more respect would be if Auriemma turned down his volume and the sports world took notice of history being writ large on the hardwood. Gender should be irrelevant when we reckon with perfection. But perhaps we should accentuate it even more and recognize that the Huskies right now are as good as it gets.

The Meaning of Michigan State's Tournament Run

Dave Zirin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:13:14 -0400

Monday night, in front of nearly 73 thousand at Detroit's Ford Field, the North Carolina Tar Heels fulfilled almost every preseason prognosis and became the NCAA men's basketball champs.

The Heels dominated this tournament, leading by double digits for a staggering 154 of the 200 minutes they played.

But shed no tears for their vanquished foes from Michigan State. The Spartans finished a surprise run to the finals that singed every nerve ending in the state. They played two games in three days in front of tens of thousands of adoring home-state fans and millions around the country rooting for the underdogs to cut down the nets.

Michigan State, the team that traveled a mere 90 minutes to Detroit from East Lansing, may have lost to a better and more experienced North Carolina team.

But this isn't the story anymore than the story of Jackie Robinson's first baseball game was that he went hitless but scored the winning run.

The buzz about how much the success of the Spartans meant to their state has added a sobering note of class politics to the usual commercial trappings. This has been seen perhaps most dramatically in the comment sections of mainstream sports websites.

Normally, these corners of the Internet are allergic to introspection, but not for this game and not now.

On Sports Illustrated's Fan Nation site, one person wrote, "I'm an MSU alum living in Michigan, working for a struggling company and praying that I keep my job...but those guys put a smile on my face every time they go out on the court."

Another posted, "I live in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan and the whole state needs this championship. We are hurting bad...This means tons to the people of Michigan. Go State!"

Even North Carolina fans were caught in the moment. "Born and raised in Chapel Hill, naturally a Tarheel fan...Obviously I'm pulling for the Heels, but a Spartan victory would not upset me in the least."

Something more substantial than a basketball contest was taking place.

It was rooted not in the economic insecurity and hardship of one state, where unemployment is listed conservatively at 12 percent, but instead rooted in an entire country.

Michigan, for most of the last two decades, was viewed and discussed as a remnant of this nation's past—high unemployment, an aging infrastructure, and an auto industry whose best days had passed.

Unless Michael Moore was pointing his camera in the state's direction, few noticed the rust.

But now when we look at Michigan, we don't see a nation's past. We see its present and maybe its future. The banks haven't been nationalized, but Flint sure has.

We empathize because we sympathize.

As difficult as things are nationally, and as inspired as many have been about Michigan State's run, Detroit still stands at the forefront of pain.

I was in the Motor City when the news came down that the government had fired General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner. It was a good thing CNN was within earshot because that Monday was the day the Detroit Free Press ceased home delivery to save a few bucks.

Wagoner walked away with millions, but a city can't walk away from itself.

Even some of the surrounding suburbs on the other side of 8 Mile are in tough straits. That could have been said any time in the last twenty years.

What makes now different is that the pockets of gentrification that developed in the 1990s are also seeing shuttered boutiques, coffee shops and galleries.

For working people, it's been a generational journey from union jobs, to service jobs, to no jobs.

The people of Detroit reminded me in some ways of the people from New Orleans and even a friend I have who is Vietnamese.

Just as those from New Orleans resent being defined by Katrina, and my buddy from Vietnam says "We're a country not a war," people from Detroit don't want to be defined by crisis, abandoned factories, and unemployment.

But at the same time, as in each case, it's impossible to talk to anyone not affected by disasters both natural and man-made. Everyone has a story to tell and everyone hates having a story to tell.

In Detroit, autoworkers are being told that the bankers' bonus contracts are immune to criticism, while their union contracts aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

People in the city get on a boat to go to across the border to Windsor, Ontario to buy prescription meds.

The many casinos that flash their bright lights at the blight across the river seem like a realistic road out of poverty.

But the Spartans aren't just another shining bauble of success out of people's reach.

They matter.

As Jemele Hill wrote, "I know some journalists inevitably will write the traditional Detroit is a disaster zone" columns. And if any crime happens during the Final Four, the media conveniently will forget that crimes occur in the background of every major sporting event in this country—not just in Detroit."

"I just ask that people be fair to Detroit and understand what this means for the entire state. Sports won't bring new industries to Michigan or solve its enormous unemployment problem. But this week, no one in Michigan will be feeling blue. Just green."

She is right.

In hard times, sports can play a role that's both positive and progressive. On Monday night, the Spartans shot enough bricks to rebuild the Motor City and turned over the ball as if they were just leasing it from Carolina.

But still, they fought tough, cutting a 24-point North Carolina lead to 13, and banged away until the last minute of action.

As the game ended and Michigan State players began to hang their heads at the inevitability of their loss, play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz said "This State has been hit especially hard. They are trying to find a way to make so many people happy."

They did, and as long as we can keep our heads up, we have a chance to see the bigger problems and demand solutions.

Those people in Detroit that had grown accustomed to limping during this recent economic downturn were walking tall, and they owe it all to the Spartans.

“Like We Were Dogs”: The Story of Ryan Moats

Dave Zirin — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:02:01 -0400

The first time Ryan Moats touched a football in an NFL game he ran it 40-yards for a touchdown. That was part of an 11-carry 114-yard debut for the Philadelphia Eagles rookie.

This would seem to be a charmed life. Currently, Moats plays for the Houston Texans in the football mad Lone Star State. But none of that protected Moats from one of the uglier cases of DWB (driving while black) that’s come across the wires. Moats’ money and fame couldn’t insulate him.

But a police dashboard video camera recorded the ugly interaction shedding light on a practice all too common in these United States.

Moats was rushing, hazard lights on, with his wife, Tamishia and her family to the Baylor Regional Medical Center. Tamishia’s mother, Joanetta, Collinsworth, was dying from advanced breast cancer, and the hospital put out the word that they had to get to her bedside right away if they wanted to say good bye.

But then their lives collided with the 25-year-old Powell, and the Moats family ordeal became something more than a personal tragedy.

Powell pulled the Moats family over in the hospital parking lot for rolling through a red light. Tamishia jumped out of the car to rush to her mother, and Powell drew his gun, yelling, “Get in there! Let me see your hands!”

“My mom is dying,” she shouted back.

“I saw in his eyes that he really did not care,” Tamishia Moats said. Ms. Moats and her great-aunt ignored the officer and headed into the hospital. (Powell says he “merely” drew his gun, while Ms. Moats says it was pointed at her as she rushed in the facility. Ryan Moats has said that he feared for her life.)

Ryan Moats and his grandfather in law—the father of the dying Ms. Collinsworth, were then kept for 13 minutes. “You really want to go through this right now?” Moats pleaded. “My mother-in-law is dying. Right now!”

The response was the threat of arrest. “I can screw you over. I would rather not do that. You obviously will dictate everything that happens; and right now, your attitude sucks.”

Moats tried to explain why he rolled through a red light: “I waited until no traffic was coming. I got seconds before she’s gone, man.” Powell responded that he wanted a license, registration, and proof of insurance.

Moats began to lose patience and said, “Just give me a ticket or whatever.” “Shut your mouth,” Powell told him. “You can cooperate and settle down, or I can just take you to jail for running a red light.”

After Moats urged him to hurry up so he could be there with his wife, Powell—in a slow cadence—spoke down to Moats like he was a toddler. “If you want to keep this going, I’ll just put you in handcuffs,” Powell said, “and I’ll take you to jail for running a red light.”

Moats began to say “Yes sir” repeatedly, clearly trying to be done with the Officer.

But Powell wasn’t done. “Understand what I can do,” he continued. “I can tow your truck. I can charge you with fleeing. I can make your night very difficult.” “I understand,” Moats responded. “I hope you’ll be a great person and not do that.”

As this is taking place, hospital security guards rushed to the scene to tell Powell that Ms. Collinsworth was on death’s door.

Powell ignored them, wasting several more minutes checking Moats for arrest warrants. Then a nurse ran to the car insisting that the Moats family be allowed inside.

“Hey, that’s the nurse,” another officer can be heard telling Powell. “She said that the mom’s dying right now, and she’s wanting to know if they can get him up there before she dies.” “ All right,” Powell replied. “I’m almost done.”

Moats and the father of Jonetta Collinsworth, then ran inside, but unlike Ms. Moats, did not make it to Ms. Collinsworth’s bedside in time to say goodbye.

The furor generated by the videotape has led Powell to be reassigned and the ticket to be dismissed. Police spokesperson Lt. Andy Harvey said, “There were some things that were said that were disturbing, to say the least.”

This wasn’t the first “high profile arrest” for Powell. He placed Maritza Thomas, the wife of former Dallas Cowboy linebacker Zach Thomas in cuffs and then prison for three hours.

The crime: an illegal u-turn. "This in no way compares to what happened to Ryan Moats and his family," Zach Thomas told The Dallas Morning News. "But we wanted to tell our story, not knowing how many others have been affected by Officer Powell….”

Moats said after the fact, "For him to not even be sympathetic at all, and basically we're dogs or something and we don't matter — it basically shocked me," he said.

It is shocking, but it isn’t rare.

According to the most recent Justice Department report, Blacks were almost three times as likely as whites to be searched at a traffic stop. They were also twice as likely to be arrested, and almost four times as likely to be the victim of “excessive force.”

This is also the latest of a series of high profile confrontations between cops and jocks.

When you layer the “driving while black” pandemic on top of the dynamic of pro athletes more comfortable on a pedestal than in a police car, you have a recipe for future tragedies. Let the Moats’s ordeal serve as a warning and not a harbinger. And let Officer Powell be compelled to find another line of work.

"Branded": Myles Brand and the Madness of March

Dave Zirin — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:31:48 -0400

There is nothing like March Madness. In your typical American workplace, no event unites sports fans with non-sports fans quite like it.

Every year, it's practically a rite of spring to find overheated business articles lamenting lost productivity attributed to the art of bracketology. For Las Vegas oddsmakers, it rivals the Super Bowl in gambling revenue.

And even in these hard times, CBS can charge $1 million for every commercial in the Final Four. Eight hours of coverage and extra commercial breaks are the cure for the media recession blues.

The NCAA inked a deal with CBS in 1999 worth $6 billion over 11 years. The network stands to make nearly $600 million from the tournament, which matches and eye-popping 96 percent of the NCAA's revenue.

When it comes to profit margins, there is nothing like it. But for the student-athletes, there is simply nothing.

For years, players have been the commercial face of the tournament, yet calls for some form of player compensation have fallen upon deaf ears. It's particularly galling that the man who blithely refuses to hear the call is the current NCAA president, Myles Brand.

This man cultivates a liberal facade by speaking out for minority hiring and publishing missives on the Huffington Post. But personal politics aside, he presides over the worst labor deal since Reconstruction and is doing nothing to reverse its course.

Brand just gave his "State of the Association Address," and it was an exercise in chutzpah not seen since George W. Bush assured us the "mission had been accomplished" in Iraq. His central theme was "student-athletes should not be commercially exploited" because "they are students, not professionals," and "exploiting student-athletes for commercial purposes is as contrary to the collegiate model as paying them."

Brand railed against "crass commercialism" but spoke in favor of "commercial activity...undertaken within the context of higher education." So it's immoral to generate money from unpaid labor, but (in Brand's eyes) it isn't crass?

The NCAA sent out a press release for the speech, totally lacking in irony, headlined, "Brand Calls for Increased Focus on Commercialism." One would be forgiven for assuming that this would mean Brand wants to figure out how to get more than the $1 million per ad.

He's like a parody of Captain Renault from Casablanca, "shocked" to find gambling occurring on the premises before collecting his winnings. Every moment that a player is on the court without compensation is a moment where the "exploitation" Brand decries is on display.

Brand likes to rail against the "cynicism of college sports" and calls himself a "pathological optimist," but his optimism actually comes across as a profound exercise in cynicism. He calls college sports "one of the great subcultures in America" while mindlessly ignoring the rot beneath.

The solution is a simple one: take a portion of the money from the tournament and put it into a trust for players to have access to when they are 25 years old. Halt the use of a college athletes' likenesses to sell products unless there is compensation.

Take the shoe money and make it available for athletes to continue their education, whether they graduate or not. This would bring a measure of fairness to a process that often ends up in the gutter.

Southern Mississippi coach Larry Eustachy said when he was at Iowa State that "[players] hardly have enough money to eat properly, (yet) they create a lot of revenue. A lot of people get rich off them, including the coaches."

When Brand was promoted his current position running the NCAA, he was termed the "education president." If he really wants an education, instead of regurgitating platitudes about "student-athletes," he should listen to Walter Byers, the executive director of the NCAA from 1952 to 1987.

Now in retirement, Byers has seen the light. He said to writer Steve Wulf, "The coaches own the athletes' feet, the colleges own the athletes' bodies, and the supervisors retain the large rewards. That reflects a neo-plantation mentality on the campuses."

Byers believed that "the wheel of fortune is badly unbalanced in favor of the overseers and against the players."

It's ironic that Brand rose to prominence as president of Indiana University; he became nationally known by challenging and dismissing their infamous coach, Bobby Knight.

Knight may have been unsavory for a host of reasons, but he had a well-earned reputation for standing up for his players. To Brand, these "student-athletes" are mere instruments of publicity, just waiting to be branded.

Charles Barkley and the Fight for Immigrant Rights

Dave Zirin — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 01:21:44 -0400

If you tuned into CNN last weekend, you may have seen a press conference with NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley and a plump, hatchet-faced lawman who calls himself "the toughest sheriff in America," Joe Arpaio.

You may have caught Sheriff Joe making clear with a feral smile that no, Barkley would not be required to "wear the pink underwear." It was American law enforcement at its ugliest.

Barkley, the fast-living, big-drinking, loud-talking NBA player turned commentator, was pulled over on Dec. 31 for driving while intoxicated. The former hoops superstar was fined $2,000, sentenced to an alcohol treatment program and ordered to install an ignition interlock device on his cars.

He also had to spend three days at Sheriff Joe's notorious Tent City prison. Barkley's experience was hardly typical for Tent City. He was given his own tent, where he could eat meals in privacy.

He wasn't served food surplus like the prison's infamous green bologna for meals. He didn't have to listen to the prison radio station, KJOE, which plays all of Sheriff Joe's favorite hits.

He could wear a red Nike tracksuit instead of the prison jumpsuit. He also participated in the press conference where Arpaio plugged his book, "America's Toughest Sheriff: How We Can Win the War Against Crime."

And, as mentioned, he didn't have to wear the pink underwear Sheriff Joe favors for those under his thumb. But there was even more "Chuck" didn't have to do as a resident of Tent City.

Sheriff Joe doesn't only enjoy the thrill of knowing that his prisoners are pretty in pink. He has been known to parade the undocumented immigrants among them in shackles, wearing only their state-supplied pink underwear in front of a bevy of armed guards and a gaggle of television cameras.

The mainstream media didn't travel into the dry desert heat to expose Sheriff Joe's tactics. They came because they received the press release, written by Sheriff Joe himself.

In one of Sheriff Joe's "advisories," he made note of the state-of-the-art electric fence, promising that it would give "quite a shock...literally" to any escapees.

The Tent City also subjects the underwear-clad prisoners to the crushing Arizona heat, something Barkley, who was on "work release" from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., was able to avoid.

It can get blisteringly hot. Sheriff Joe's response to safety concerns was to say, "It's 120 degrees in Iraq and the soldiers are living in tents, and they didn't commit any crimes, so shut your mouths."

This attitude is the reason why Maricopa County has had to pay out $43 million under Sheriff Joe's leadership in wrongful death and injury cases.

But not everyone has the resources to issue lawsuits. Sheriff Joe, a man with his own reality program and his own "civilian posse," has made a national name for himself by being on the front lines of attacks on undocumented immigrants.

Sheriff Joe's methods have led the Justice Department to announce on Wednesday that it is investigating his department for "patterns or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures."

The Arizona Republic reports that David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor, believes it is the department's first civil rights probe related to immigration enforcement.

Not surprisingly, Sheriff Joe justifies his treatment of immigrants on the most racist and intellectually specious grounds.

He says that the Tent City is "a financially responsible alternative to taxpayers already overburdened by the economic drain imposed by a growing number of illegal aliens on social services like education and health care."

This blithely ignores the fact that undocumented workers actually put more back into the economy than they extract, since they pay into Social Security and payroll taxes without getting anything back.

Barkley was shielded from the true ugliness of Sheriff Joe. But now that he is out of prison, the Arizona resident should do what he does best and speak his mind.

Make no mistake, Barkley would have something to say. There was a time when Barkley was a proud Republican and entertained the idea of running for governor of Alabama.

In fact, when Sheriff Joe's book came out in 1996, the blurbs on the back cover included praise from Rush Limbaugh, John McCain and, yes, Charles Barkley.

But since those days, Barkley has undergone a transformation. He now says Republicans have "lost their minds." Last summer Barkley said, "What do the Republicans run on? Against gay marriage and for a war that makes no sense. A war that was based on faulty intelligence.

"That's all they ever talk about. That and immigration. Another discriminatory argument for political gain."

Barkley most likely understands that anti-immigrant policies are discriminatory nonsense, that the politics of poverty are critical in the United States and that there is more to life than material gain.

Now that he is away from the watchful eye of Sheriff Joe, it's time for Barkley to apply those principles and call for the closing of Tent City, the removal of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and the end of criminalizing the undocumented as a spectator sport.

Barry Bonds in Context

Dave Zirin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:35:24 -0500

As he has done with countless pitchers over the last quarter-century, Barry Bonds made the Justice Department sweat, cower and blink. Faced with entering a court of law with a losing hand, the US Attorney's office in San Francisco has delayed the case of The US v. Barry Bonds indefinitely.

Efforts to prove that the home-run king lied in grand jury testimony about his anabolic intake have for now been benched. The prosecution will now start a lengthy appeal of Judge Susan Illston's devastating pretrial dismissal of most of their case.

It had wanted to submit reams of evidence seized from Bonds's trainer Greg Anderson, without having Anderson testify to its authenticity. Illston refused to let them. This left the prosecution with nothing but scatological testimony from Bonds's ex-mistress that dwelled more on testicles than test results, so they chose to retreat and regroup.

The Justice Department wins 95 percent of the cases it brings to trial, and make no mistake: this case was about to become part of the other five percent. The only thing the Justice Department had in its favor is what it always has, unlimited time and funds, so it's rolling the dice in hopes that a three-judge panel rules against Illston. It wants the wiretaps, the illegal search and seizures and the acts of intimidation against Anderson's family all to stand legally.

This is frightening, but prosecutors will likely find themselves very disappointed.

The page appears to be turning on the entire Bush era of outlaw justice, and Barry Bonds will likely benefit. The case started when Attorney General John Ashcroft, the great champion of the Patriot Act, held a press conference in 2004 to announce that the investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative was officially underway.

Having the Attorney General convene a grand jury to look into steroid use was extreme overkill, but as commentators remarked at the time, it was a shot across the bow at Bonds. Most sports fans were very comfortable with seeing the despoiler of the national pastime get crushed. Bonds has had notoriously difficult relationships with the press, fans, teammates and management throughout his career.

He is also black, which makes him an easier target.

But the desire to see Bonds punished came at a terrible collective cost. The Bonds case has always been about more than the sports media have chosen to dwell on. It's not about the scourge of anabolic steroids, or a surly, arrogant athlete getting his comeuppance.

It isn't even about perjury. It's about how the Justice Department under Bush became untethered from the Bill of Rights. This week, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder has released a series of post-9/11 memos that chill the spine. As the Washington Post reported:

“Justice Department appointee John Yoo argued that constitutional provisions ensuring free speech and barring warrantless searches could be disregarded by the president in wartime, allowing troops to storm a building if they suspected terrorists might be inside. In another, the department asserted that detainees could be transferred to countries known to commit human rights abuses so long as US officials did not intentionally seek their torture.”

And as Michael Isikoff wrote in Newsweek: “In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department secretly gave the green light for the US military to attack apartment buildings and office complexes inside the United States, deploy high-tech surveillance against US citizens and potentially suspend First Amendment freedom-of-the-press rights in order to combat the terror threat, according to a memo released Monday.”

Bonds has been the most public victim of this frightening approach to law and justice. But while Americans followed the Bonds saga, and many cheered his professional demise, the real damage to civil liberties was being done.

Shamefully, underreported throughout the last decade were the stories of hundreds of Arabs and Muslims imprisoned and harassed through the Patriot Act, or the persecution of Sami Al Arian, or the hundreds of Maryland activists, who were spied upon for being environmentalists or anti-death penalty.

They were all caught in the same net. It is a very good thing that Holder is releasing these memos. But it's not enough. Repealing the Patriot Act is the best way to truly turn the page on a shameful era in the history of US law.

Still, the ruling of Judge Illston and the backstepping of the San Francisco US Attorney's office is a good start. If they want to prove Bonds perjured himself, let's see if they can do it without torching the Bill of Rights in the process.

The United States v. Barry Bonds

Dave Zirin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:40:25 -0500

This is a story about garbage. There's the actual garbage overzealous federal investigators examined in their efforts to prosecute a surly sports celebrity. There's the shredding of the Bill of Rights, crudely ignored by the government in the name of obsession and ambition.

Finally, there's the thorough trashing of people's reputations, not to mention the game of baseball. Welcome to The US v. Barry Bonds; please disregard the stench.

The case to prove that slugger Barry Bonds perjured himself in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) steroid investigation begins Mar. 2. Yet after seven years of investigation, millions of dollars in work hours and countless ruined reputations, the US Attorney's Office will arrive in court with virtually no leg to stand on.

Judge Susan Illston struck down most of the prosecution's case, a move ESPN legal expert Lester Munson called a "devastating" setback for prosecutors. The ruling was an indictment of not only the government's case but its entire approach toward Bonds from day one.

John Ashcroft's Justice Department always seemed irrationally determined to prosecute Bonds. It was as obsessive as the fisherman Santiago attempting to bring home the great marlin in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea.

The embodiment of this obsession was IRS agent Jeff Novitzky. He broke open the BALCO case after spending a great deal of time, to the adulation of the press, literally sifting through garbage and sewage.

Novitzky was given the green light by President Bush and Ashcroft to go for the jugular. In 2004, accompanied by eleven agents, he marched into Comprehensive Drug Testing, the nation's largest sports-drug testing company.

Armed with a warrant to see the confidential drug tests of 10 baseball players, he walked out with 4,000 supposedly sealed medical files, including every baseball player in the major leagues. As Jon Pessah wrote in ESPN magazine, "Three federal judges reviewed the raid.

One asked, incredulously, if the Fourth Amendment had been repealed. Another, Susan Illston, who has presided over the BALCO trials, called Novitzky's actions a 'callous disregard' for constitutional rights. All three instructed him to return the records. Instead, Novitzky kept the evidence...."

It was a frightening abuse of power, all aimed at imprisoning a prominent African-American athlete. Yet despite the landfills of trash, the government's case always rested on a flimsy premise. Bonds's contention under oath was that anything illegal he may have ingested was without prior knowledge.

The only person who could contradict Bonds was his trainer and longtime friend Greg Anderson. The government pressed Anderson to give testimony.

He refused, citing a promise made by the feds that he wouldn't have to testify after pleading guilty to steroid distribution and money laundering in 2005. The feds stuck him in jail for thirteen months to soften him up, but he didn't crack.

Anderson has remained firm even though in January, 20 FBI and IRS agents raided the home of his mother-in-law and threatened to punish her for tax evasion if Anderson didn't spill. Similar threats have been made against his wife.

Mark Geragos, Anderson's attorney, told Yahoo Sports, "It's such a blatant and transparent attempt to intimidate Greg. They're acting like the Gestapo. Even the mafia spares the women and children."

Without Anderson, the state's case was always weak. But now it is on serious life support. Illston ruled most of Novitzky and the government's case inadmissible, for good reason.

The prosecution wanted to submit a surreptitiously recorded statement from Anderson as well as notations on what it calls his "drug calendar," even though he would not testify to authenticate any of the evidence.

Illston, to her credit, said no dice and declared those items inadmissible. The government has raised the specter of jailing Anderson again, but Illston remarked in a raised voice that jailing someone twice for refusing to testify would be beyond the pale.

The government is hinting that it will appeal Illston's ruling, but that would indefinitely delay the trial.

If the US Attorney's Office does continue the case, it has made clear its next line of offense: It will have Bonds's former mistress, Kimberly Bell, testify in detail about the alleged "shriveling" of Bonds's testicles. Jeff Novitzky should be proud.

It's way past time to say enough is enough.

Whether or not you are a Barry Bonds fan, or consider him to be just a step above a seal-clubbing, pitbull-fighting bank executive, every person of good conscience should be aghast at the way the Justice Department has gone about its business.

Barry Bonds, Greg Anderson and maybe thousands of others have had their rights trampled on, all for the glory of a perjury case that looks to be going absolutely nowhere. Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama have strongly indicated that the government is getting out of the steroid-monitoring business.

That is welcome, but after so many years, so many tax dollars and so many reputations destroyed, it all feels positively Pyrrhic.

At the end of The Old Man and the Sea, when Santiago finally returns to shore, his 18-foot catch has been reduced to a skeleton. A crowd gathers to gawk and imagine what the magnificent marlin once was. Santiago completed his journey with nothing, but he felt purified for the battle and slept deeply and proudly.

As we pick through the bones of Barry Bonds, I can't imagine Jeff Novitzky feels the same.

Barack Obama's Unfortunate Hoop Dreams

Dave Zirin — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:10:57 -0500

"I think we are putting together the best basketball-playing Cabinet in American history." So said Barack Obama upon naming Arne Duncan his nominee for Secretary of Education.

There is no doubt that when it comes to hoops, Duncan has game. The man stands 6'5". He was an Academic All-American baller at Harvard University and played professionally in Australia for four years.

Long before becoming "Chief Executive Officer" of Chicago Public Schools, Duncan put in time in the United States minor league hoops circuit with teams like the Rhode Island Gulls and New Jersey Jammers.

No question, if I was on the court choosing teams, I'd pick Duncan in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately, we aren't selecting a pick up squad. What is at stake is the future of public education. And when it comes to our schools Duncan's record brands him as a scrub.

Take this critique as something who taught in DC Public Schools for four years and whose wife still slogs through the crumbling infrastructure of our schools.

If you believe that "we can't just throw money" at schools, that unions are a block to reform, that the military should have open access to our kids, and that charter schools are the greatest thing to happen to education since corporal punishment, then you will probably disagree with what will follow and Arne Duncan should warm the cockles of your heart.

Duncan might not have fulfilled his dreams of scoring 20 a game, but he has converted roughly 20 Chicago public schools a year over to private operations. He has rejected many of Chicago's "Local School Councils", loves the stultifying test taking used to judge national standards, and stands firmly with the notion that teachers at poorly-testing schools should be canned.

Duncan has also turned a blind eye to addressing a study from his alma mater, Harvard University, that Chicago's Public School's are "only a few percentage points from an experience of total apartheid for Black students."

But the experience of Chicago teacher Jesse Sharkey are more damning that anything I could write. Sharkey teaches at Senn High School where students, parents, and teachers organized together in a high profile campaign to keep the city from installing a Naval Academy inside the school.

As Sharkey wrote, "We asked Duncan to postpone the decision to put the military school at Senn. Duncan's answer was a classic. He said: 'I come from a Quaker family, and I've always been against war.

But I'm going to put the Naval Academy in there, because it will give people in the community more choices.' "He's just the kind of person who will look at you with a straight face and tell you that, as a person with a pacifist background, he supports a military school."

Well, at least we know Duncan will fit in well in Washington, where personal conviction means little when up against political objectives. (See Warren, Rick.)

Make no mistake about it: I like the fact that hoops will be part of the culture of the new White House. Duncan, AG nominee Eric Holder, National Security advisor General James Jones and ambassador to the UN nominee Susan Rice all have a serious basketball pedigree.

And as someone who grew up in New York City playing hoops only slightly less that I breathed, I strongly relate to the passage in Obama's 1995 book Dreams From My Father, where he wrote, "I could play basketball, with a consuming passion that would always exceed my limited ability...On the basketball court I could find a community of sorts, with an inner life all its own. It was there that I would make my closest white friends, on turf where blackness couldn't be a disadvantage."

For me as well, in a divided New York City, the basketball court was where walls felt like they could come down. But I have far more faith in the sacred power of hoops than I do in an education secretary who presides over an apartheid system and attacks teachers and public education in the name of reform.

If Duncan tries to bring that into my lane, I won't be the only person ready to smack that junk back into the third row.

A-Rod and More Anabolic Agonistes

Dave Zirin — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:06:07 -0500

However, the list of frauds and history defamers extends far beyond the Yankee third baseman. Before we gather the torches and pitchforks, let us round up some of the real villains. When it comes to steroids, no one, as A-Rod’s alleged paramour Madonna might say, is like a virgin.

For instance, there’s league commissioner Bud Selig, who touted A-Rod as the man who would replace the “unclean” Barry Bonds as the all-time leader in home runs. Then there is the Major League Baseball Players Association. Once arguably the most powerful union in the United States, the MLBPA has in its possession the infamous list of 104 players tested in 2003.

That year a deal between the owners and the union was supposed to be based on anonymity and trust.

If more than five percent of the players tested positive, more testing with suspensions would ensue. The union promised its members that it would destroy the list. Instead it inexplicably held onto the list long enough for the government to seize it for the BALCO investigations.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Steinbrenner family also have anabolic egg on their faces. They were depending on A-Rod to be the cherry atop the sundae of the new billion-dollar Yankee Stadium expected to open this year. Hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars have gone into this public works project, with specious promises of economic renewal.

Now it may just set the stage for a season-long, agonizing fall from grace.

Finally, there are the owners-at-large, who have yet to have to face any kind of Congressional subcommittee, grand jury or operatic media melodrama for their role in cheapening the sport. Stark, in his piece blaming A-Rod for shredding the very fabric of baseball history, writes:

In baseball, we love our numbers. And we love our heroes. And that brings us to Alex Rodriguez, a man who has committed a crime he doesn’t even understand: a crime against the once-proud history of his sport.

What Stark and his misguided minions ignore is that if we are upset about the way numbers and hallowed records have become cheapened over the past fifteen years, ownership is the problem—and it extends far beyond steroids.

Owners actually had a multifaceted strategy to try to make baseball more like beer-league softball—and it was about as subtle as a tabloid’s back page. As legendary baseball writer Bob Klapisch said, “Somewhere someone decided that baseball needed more runs. It was made at a very fundamental level. And little by little, step by step, this became the new reality. There has been too much to write it off as coincidence.”

The reasons for the home run boom extend far beyond the steroid dealer. The boom reverberates in every urban budget, every underfunded school and every library that closes early. In the past 20 years, more than fifteen publicly funded baseball parks have been built in the United States.

They are supposed to be fan-friendly—that is, unless your child happens to go to a school whose shrinking budgets were paying the tab. The shorter fences at these parks are engineered to yield more home runs.

Then there are the balls and bats. Countless baseball insiders believe that the ball is now wound tighter than it was 20 years ago. As for the bats, as recently as 15 years ago, players used untreated ash bats. Now the bats are maple and lacquered. That means the ball goes farther.

Then there is the strike zone. The area where a pitched ball can be called a strike has shrunk, in the words of retired pitcher Greg Maddux, to “the size of a postage stamp.” The owners consciously engineered this trend toward the microscopic strike zone. When umpires refused to agree to a uniform strike zone, Major League Baseball crushed their union and instituted a machine to monitor their abilities.

Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer said, “The loss of the high strike has changed the game more than any pill.”

But an equally big reason home run numbers are up is that the game finally shed its nineteenth-century view of strength conditioning. The training standard until the 1990s was that if Joe “Ducky” Medwick didn’t do it in the ‘30s, then it shouldn’t be done. For example, it has been the conventional wisdom for most of baseball’s history that weightlifting would destroy your swing.

Many teams even fined or suspended players if they were caught pumping iron. Weightlifting is now as much a part of every team’s regimen as shagging fly balls.

Alex Rodriguez is set to be the next former slugger torn to pieces by columnists, fans and the sports radio blabbocracy. They all need to crack open some Michael Phelps medicinal magic and relax. Rodriguez may not deserve your pity, but he hardly deserves your scorn. Reserve that for the owners, political leaders and Bud the commissioner—who robbed our cities blind and distracted us with dingers so we wouldn’t notice.

All Hail the Recession Bowl

Dave Zirin — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:55:05 -0500

In the most jaw-dropping, gut-twisting Super Bowl ever played, the Pittsburgh Steelers escaped by the skin of their gold and black unis, winning 27-23 over the Arizona Cardinals with two lead changes in the last 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

In normal times, it would be a staggering upset for the actual game to overshadow our annual Mardi Gras for millionaires and carnival of commercialism that attends it. But in penny-pinching 2009, football was at the center of the spectacle. And a good thing, too: Otherwise, in living rooms across America, the enormity of America's first Recession Super Bowl would have been just too grim.

For much of the week, the spectacle seemed doomed to be engulfed in gray confetti: the global economic crisis became the National Football League's own. The annual orgy of commerce and excess was as stripped down as an i-banker's portfolio.

The city of Tampa took in $30 million less than expected, and there were empty hotel suites in Super Bowl Florida in February. Tickets to the game were being hawked in the shadow market for below retail. Even the Playboy and Victoria's Secret parties were canceled: who would tell the nation's sportswriters how impossibly handsome they are?

Super Bowl commercials reflected the new economic reality as well, with the usual frat-house sexism (partially) surrendered for ads that reflected the concerns of working class Americans.

There was Avon cosmetics sales woman—Daryn from Texas—saying, "If someone asks me how they can make money right now, I say do what I'm doing, sell Avon." There were those endlessly creepy talking babies from e-Trade grousing about how the "economy is a little rough." I don't think many of us are rushing to do e-trading these days.

General Motors and FedEx, longtime Super Bowl advertisers, didn't have their game faces on this year, which put a crimp in NBC's expected ad revenues, despite an in-house business reporter crowing about their "record ad sales."

A Budweiser ad put corporate types in a boardroom, wondering where all the profits had gone, with not one explosively gassy horse in sight. Production budgets were set to low all around. Matt Lauer's pre-game interview with Barack Obama suffered from audio malfunctions (far less exciting than a wardrobe malfunction.) There was even a representative of the only growth industry in the United States right now: the armed forces, as the Great Imperial Occupier himself, Four-Star General David Petraeus, tossed the coin.

Even the halftime show was recession-oriented, featuring our Troubadour of Hard Times, Bruce Springsteen. (Is there a rule in the post-Janet Jackson era that all halftime performers must be men over 50?) The Boss didn't fulfill the wishes of New York Times sports columnist Harvey Araton and "[go] rogue and rail against...those corporate fat cats." In fact, Bruce was in the unlikely position of fending off his own critics before the big game, with an apology for signing an exclusive deal with the anti-union Wal Mart corporation.

Unaddressed was the downside of his decision to take part in a halftime show sponsored by Bridgestone-Firestone, a company that sees unions the way Dick Cheney sees the International Criminal Court. But musically speaking, Springsteen was in fine form, sliding crotch-first into the camera in a fashion even Janet Jackson would have found startling.

But then came the finest fourth quarter ever played, and the entire affair was dipped into a Lombardi-infused Lourdes. In the end, football fans won't remember the off-key commercials or the economic overcast. The night belonged to Ben Roethlisberger, Kurt Warner, Santonio Holmes, and Larry Fitzgerald, as it should.

Times are tough, and any hope we may be feeling by changes in Washington is tempered by the millions out of work, out of their homes, and out of luck. The game had to take center stage. And this year, football—the very sport itself—rose to the challenge. Now the rest of us have to do the same.

When Tiger Woods Came to Washington

Dave Zirin — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:38:57 -0500

Among the many quirky, independent movie stars and suave entertainment icons appearing at the pre-inaugural Lincoln Memorial concert for Barack Obama, Tiger Woods stood out like George Will in the West Village.

Talk about change.

Normally, Woods sees the political world the way Dick Cheney sees the Bill of Rights: frightening and to be avoided at all costs. He's probably never even been to the nation's capital without a golf club in hand or a Nike swoosh on his clothing. His presence at the inauguration—while bracing—was, in a bizarre way, all too fitting.

Barack Obama has been compared to Tiger Woods numerous times. Their backgrounds as multi-racial men achieving success in predominantly white fields are far too tempting for lethargic editorial writers to overlook.

During the 2008 general election, McCain supporters also embraced the comparison. In April, former Army staff sergeant David Bellavia told a rally of right-wing veterans, "You can have your Tiger Woods, we've got Senator McCain."

So there Woods was, squaring the circle and coming to DC to say his piece.

At first, I was glad to see him there.

I have been critical of the superstar, whom many consider history's greatest golfer, because even though he usually shies away from politics, he has often callously embraced political imagery when it serves his endorsement needs.

Woods has even occasionally sought to commodify the very civil rights movement that made it possible for him to waltz through country club doors as a young man.

Most infamously there were the "I am Tiger Woods" ads, in which a rainbow coalition of children told the world that they, too, could be Tiger Woods. This harkened back to the finale of Spike Lee's film Malcolm X, where black children from both the United States and Africa stood up and said, "I am Malcolm X."

An old Black Panther film about the police assassination of Fred Hampton, in which one child after another said, "I am Fred Hampton," inspired that scene.

If Woods deems the black freedom struggle appropriate enough to exploit while selling Nike products, then he ought to highlight it in more relevant ways as well.

So I was hopeful that Woods would attempt to repay a debt with his appearance in the shadow of the Great Emancipator. The press has been rapturous in its reviews of the Woods speech. John Canzano of The Oregonian wrote:

"Gone is the hollow, old Woods who was so concerned with his marketing capital that he refused to take a stand on women in golf, much less on race, religion, politics or human rights. He was replaced with a guy who talked intelligently about Obama, the country's future and his father's military friends, who Woods said showed dedication and love for their country."

He then praised the 33-year-old Woods for "coming of age." But the actual content of the speech was tepid as weak tea, a bland tribute to standing for the troops that could have been given by any Republican or Democrat at any point over the last 50 years. He said:

"Each day—and particularly on this historic day—we honor the men and women in uniform who serve our country and protect our freedom...Just as they have stood tall for our country, we must always stand by and support the men and women in uniform and their families."

To praise this speech as a political coming-out party is to set the bar so low a ladybug couldn't limbo beneath it. Woods also spoke about his father, a veteran, who had served two tours in Vietnam.

The irony is that the late Earl Woods returned from Vietnam with an Asian wife and a dream that his son Eldrick could leverage a golf career to become the next Gandhi. I don't think Gandhi would have made the speech that Tiger made.

What was most troubling about Woods' words was that they were an extended tribute not to the troops but to the military itself. It was almost a recruitment pitch. Woods said, before introducing the US Naval Academy glee club, "I am a son of a man who dedicated his life to his country, his family, and the military and I am a better person for it."

I couldn't help thinking that the Pentagon announced Jan. 18 that all active-duty and reserve components, as well as the Army National Guard, met or exceeded their goals for the first time since 2004. The main reason? The tanking economy.

At a time when the US is fighting two wars, flirting with another in Pakistan, and indirectly funding the carnage in Gaza, we need to be building movements against militarism, not cheering on the Pentagon just because Barack Obama is in charge or because Tiger Woods says so.

Let's save our cheers for those who walk in the path of Muhammad Ali, John Carlos, Steve Nash, Etan Thomas, and Athletes United for Peace—all of whom say, without equivocation, "Bring the troops home."

Politics on the Pitch: When Gaza and Sports Collide

Dave Zirin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:49:18 -0500

In January 2008, Egyptian soccer star Mohamed Aboutreika followed a goal by raising his shirt to reveal the slogan "Sympathise with Gaza." His actions were meant to put a spotlight onto the economic embargo that Israel had imposed on Palestinians in Gaza after the election of the Hamas government.

Days before the ceasefire halted the carnage in Gaza city this month, history repeated as Sevilla (Spain) striker Fredi Kanoute raised his shirt after scoring a goal to reveal a shirt that said "Palestine" in multiple languages. Kanoute is not an obscure player. In 2007, he was named African player of the year, even though he was born in France (his family is from Mali).

After earning a £3,000 fine for his political gesture, famed Barcelona coach, Jose Guardiola stood up for him, saying: "The fine is absolutely excessive. If they always banned these type of things, then journalists would not be able to write columns...Every war is absurd, and too many innocent people have died for us to be fining people for things like this."

Welcome to 2009, when Israel's offensive on Gaza, ceasefire or no, is finding expression in the sports world. It's a development that should give supporters of Israel's actions in Gaza a great deal of pause.

Kanoute's actions come on the heels of an event in Ankara, Turkey, when the Israeli basketball team, Bnei Hasharon, had to flee the court from what the Associated Press described as "hundreds of fist-pumping, chanting Turkish fans."

Before the game could begin, angry chants of "Israeli killers!" came down from the crowd, as Palestinian flags appeared in their hands. Then, in a scene that would look familiar to George Bush, off came the shoes, and footwear rained down from the stands (the shoes didn't hit any players).

A melee then began between 1,500 police officers and Turkish fans, as the fans advanced toward the court. Both Hasharon and the Turkish team Turk Telecom were hurried to the locker rooms where they remained for two hours.

Hasharon forfeited the contest. It says something that Israel found reckoning on the basketball court long before any kind of International Criminal Court.

According to sports historians, a sporting event hasn't been actually stopped in such a manner—with fans turning the stands into a site of protest—since July 25, 1981, when South Africa's Springbok rugby team had to cancel a game in New Zealand when fans occupied the field of play to protest apartheid.

Israel has historically been adamant that any comparisons between the Israeli state and South Africa are absolutely false and even anti-Semitic. Jimmy Carter provoked their outrage of course when he published his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

But this parallel, when related to sports, should not be taken lightly. One of the most effective tools against apartheid South Africa was the South African Non-Racialised Olympic Committee, which attempted to use sports as a way to highlight and broadcast the inequities of the South African government.

Sports can bring a political spotlight and unwanted attention onto a society like few other forces in the international community, galvanising, attention, passion and, as we saw in Turkey, anger.

Israel hasn't helped itself in this regard by making sports a target in the war. On Jan. 9, the IDF bombed Gaza's Palestine National Stadium. The stadium was also the head of the Palestinian Football Association. The structure was built in 2005 partially with funds from Fifa.

The facility will now need to be rebuilt again (in 2006 it was also bombed). It was meant to be a symbol of a Palestinian state, something that united the West Bank and Gaza as an expression of unity. Now it is rubble.

In addition, perhaps fearing a repeat of Ankara, the Israel Football Federation is preventing any club matches from being played in Palestinian towns. As Jimmy Johnson, who works in Jerusalem for the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions told me: "These are not Palestinian clubs from the West Bank, East Jerusalem or Gaza, but for Palestinian citizens of Israel, sometimes called Arab Israelis, who are almost 20 percent of the population, vote in Israeli elections, etc."

This has gotten little press in the US, but in the soccer-mad Middle East, it is altogether insult on top of injury.

Sports, which we are told repeatedly represent a sacredly apolitical space, a place to flee the headaches of the real world, has now been thrust into the heart of a conflict raw with politics in a way we haven't seen in quite some time.

Protests against Israeli actions in Gaza are sure to continue in sporting events outside the US. But the ramifications could very easily be felt inside our borders, as political leaders come to the White House and tell the new administration tales of sports fans gone wild.

Alonzo Mourning: The Edge of Sports Interview

Dave Zirin — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 15:32:14 -0500

Retired NBA All Star Alonzo Mourning was renowned for the ferocious glare he wore on the court. He is one of the few players—Kevin Garnett is another—who has been chided for perhaps being too intense. But Mourning's intensity wasn't an affectation for game-time purposes.

It's allowed him to navigate a life that's been filled with personal and medical hardships. It compelled him to make the Dean's List at Georgetown. It's forced him to engage with the world like few other athletes, running a youth center in his adopted home of Miami and working on the Obama campaign.

I spoke with Mourning about politics, health and his book, 'Resilience: Faith, Focus, and Triumph.'

DZ: Could just tell us where you were on election night and what your reaction was when you heard that Obama won.

AM: Well, I was sitting in my little TV area in my house, and my children were asleep, and my wife, she was sleeping with my daughter. It was an emotional moment for me, man, because just watching Barack and our future First Family come on stage, I just thought about all my family that are not here today to witness this.

And I thought about all the individuals that lost their lives to make this possible. It's a blessing. We've come so far. So any people made tremendous amounts of sacrifices. And it was just an emotional moment. I'm just happy to have been a part of the whole campaign process.

DZ: You were part of that process. Why?

AM: I was because our world right now is in turmoil, and it starts with our leadership. You got over 1.2 million Americans this year who've lost jobs; thousands and thousands of people who've lost their homes, education is in total disarray, as well as our health care system.

So, I knew there needed to be some type of change for the better. And if you close your eyes and listen to Barack Obama speak, you can just feel the sincerity in his voice, and you knew that he was going to make the right decisions; every decision humanly possible to make and create a better life for everybody, and try to change the current atmosphere that we're living in.

So, I felt confident. I felt confident about supporting his policies and his efforts. And my wife and I are huge advocates of what he does and I'm fortunate and blessed and honored to have been a part of the whole process.

DZ: I want to jump right into the book here. Why did you choose to call the book Resilience: Faith, Focus, and Triumph?

AM: Well, resilience is a very powerful word, and I think we all have that in us, that resilience, that ability to comeback, to overcome.

And I wrote the book to utilize my life experiences in hopes that individuals would be able to use my story to help them overcome different adversities, obstacles, and challenges that they may face in life.

Because regardless of how bad you got it or how good you got it, you're going to continue to face different challenges in life.

Pat Riley once told me that 'adversity introduces a man to himself'. We're going to all go through different adversity, but I think we all find strength in each other. We all find strength, words of inspiration; we find it in one another, you know?

And I felt like with all the individuals who planted seeds in my life that enabled me to be the person that I am today, whether it be family members, coaches.

[Former Georgetown Coach] John Thompson played a very intricate role in my development as a person as well as a player so we all have those individuals, and I feel like that my story, using those experiences to share with other individuals is going to help other individuals overcome some of the challenges that they may face, and encourage them to never give up.

I mean, that's the key: just never giving up. Tough times don't last, but tough people do. And I've been through some tough times, and I know a lot of people can recall tough times, and maybe are going through some tough times right now, but they don't last.

It's your approach, the positive approach, mental approach to it that will help you overcome, and not feeling sorry for yourself.

DZ: Now that's one of the things in reading the book is that throughout your life, starting at a young age, you're faced with a series of very difficult choices.. And just to give people a taste of the book, you were 10 years old when you petitioned to get yourself into foster care.

How were you even able to make that decision at that time?

AM: Well, I wasn't happy. When a child's not happy, a child makes decisions that sometimes they go off of feeling and intuition, you know? I wasn't happy at that particular time. My mother and father were going through some pretty tough times, and emotionally, I was affected by it.

I went through counseling. And I was rebelling as a child. I was the only child at that particular time. The situation just wasn't pleasant at all. So, in the counseling system that we were going to, they had a group home connected to the place, and they asked my mom and dad, 'Look, now, let us keep him for a couple of days'.

And I went through some sessions there to help me deal with my problems there I was dealing with at home. They asked me did I want to go back home. And I told them, 'No, I don't want to go back home'.

And when my mother and father came to get me after a couple of days, I said, 'Hey, you know what? I'm fine here. I don't want to go back.' So, to make a long story short, when my mother and father separated, got a divorce, I had to decide in the courtroom, who I wanted to live with.

Now, I love my mother and father dearly, and I still keep in contact with them to this day. I told the judge, 'It's difficult for me to choose because I love them both. I can't choose so I'd rather stay where I am.' So, it was very difficult for me, and I took a leap of faith at that particular time.

Fortunately enough with the foster care system, I fell into the hands, social services, they find families for these children in group homes, and I fell into the hands of Fannie Threet. This is a woman who fostered 49 kids in her lifetime.

She's an amazing woman. She planted a lot of amazing seeds in my life helping me understand the importance of walking by faith and not by sight, and she's a retired school teacher so, helping me understand the importance of getting my education, and just how to be a productive citizen, and how to be a man.

She played a great role in my life, and I'm happy to have spent six years in her household.

At that particular time, there were three other kids in the household as well, plus two of her biological kids who were much older and they went on through the military and all that, but looking back on my life, I know it was very disheartening and very disappointing to my biological parents that I made that decision and I've had countless conversations about it with them to this day, but we're very close and I love them.

One of the things that my father has said in my book Resilience is that 'the Threet family did more for him than we could have done for him at that particular time.' That was pretty powerful.

They are all very, very close. So, looking back on my life, I wouldn't change one bit of it. I think in every lesson there's a blessing, and there's so many blessings from all the lessons I've had to go through in life.

DZ: Another difficult choice: you could've gone to the pros out of high school. You could've left after your freshman year. Not only do you stay at Georgetown for four years, you make the Dean's list That is not a decision that 99 percent of 6'10" basketball prodigies would make. Why make that decision?

AM: Well, first of all, back then, it wasn't the in thing to leave high school and go straight to the pros, and at that particular time when all the college coaches were visiting my home, I narrowed my list down to five schools. It was Georgetown, Maryland, Georgia Tech, Virginia, and Syracuse.

All the coaches, [Jim] Boeheim, Terry Holland, Bob Wade, Bobby Cremins, and "Big John" [Thompson] came to my home. And they sat in front of my high school coach and Miss Threet.

And one of things that stood out from all the coaches [is that] all of them promised me all these material things, promised me all this stardom and things of that nature, but Big John said, 'Look, Miss Threet, he's going to have to work for everything he's going to get, but I will tell you this: he's going to get his education and if he doesn't go to class, he won't be at my school'.

So, that was it. That put him above everybody else because, I mean, obviously that was an important part of my development for Miss Threet and for my high school coach Bill Lassiter.

So, again, I had angels in my life. I had individuals in my life to help me make the right decisions because it wasn't about them accepting handouts. It was about them making the right decisions for me.

So, when I got to school at Georgetown, it was a country kid [from] Chesapeake, Virginia coming to Washington, DC, I was overwhelmed, I mean, the No. 1 player in the country at that particular time, everything was coming at me and I was being praised, almost making the Olympic team.

To this day, George Raveling who was a assistant coach of the Olympic team, who was a coach at Iowa and USC, he told Big John, 'You know that boy should've made the Olympic team.' I keep telling Big John, but Big John knew that it was important for me to start school on time because I would've missed orientation and what have you.

So, at that particular time when I started school, Big John told me, 'Son, you're not putting forth the effort in the classroom that I see in you.' He said, 'I see more in you than what you're putting out'.

And I said, 'What do you mean? 'm passing. I'm doing enough to stay on the team.' He said, 'No. No, you can do a whole lot better than what you're doing.'

He said, 'If you had the cure for cancer, you wouldn't even know it because you're not putting forth the effort It's not even about basketball, and its not about you playing, doing enough to stay, being able to play basketball and staying on the team.'

He said, 'It's about the same effort you're putting forth on the court, it's about you putting forth that effort in the classroom.'

So, he made a valid point, and I thought about it. And the next semester, I made the Dean's List. I wasn't consistent with it, but it let me know what I was capable of doing, you know?

So, that was one of the things that Big John had always stressed, and always placed about everything, basketball, everything. His practices [were] his classroom, and not only did he teach us about basketball, he taught us about life.

And I'm so happy. Even though we didn't win a National Championship or what have you, it was some of the best four years of my life, and I wouldn't trade them in for anything.

That's why I tell anybody who has the opportunity to go to an institute of higher learning, take advantage of it because it is a tremendous developmental opportunity for you that will set a beautiful foundation for the rest of your life.

DZ: You're the only athlete I've heard in a post-game press conference quote Frederick Douglass which is a product of education of course.

AM: Oh yeah. Most definitely. Well, I do a lot of reading and that's why one of my biggest initiatives here in South Florida is trying to tackle this vicious cycle of illiteracy. And you think about it and you have close to 50 percent of the kids here in Miami-Dade [county] who won't graduate from high school.

That's a disgusting statistic considering how rich in resources we are, and it lets you know where we place our priorities. I feel like in America, we don't have a kid problem. You think about all these issues that these kids are dealing with, we have an adult problem.

We have adults that do not place the priority on our kids to get a valuable education. We got babies raising babies, and its important for us as responsible adults to go out and do what we can to make sure that our kids are steered in the right direction.

And you start with literacy. That's the only way we're going to be able to survive in this particular environment that we're living in right now, in this world we're living in right now.

We're living in a country that we're ranked 19th in the world in graduations, but we're ranked 1st in incarcerations. That's a terrible statistic. I realize the value of education, and I just hope that just through the conversation I'm having with you that I'm able to connect with enough people that we can continue to stimulate the goodness that we need for our children and helping them understand the education as a whole.

DZ: We haven't really talked about basketball. Moving forward from here: You obviously have a serious mind on changing the world. What's the next 10 years for Alonzo Mourning?

AM: Well, you know what? I want to continue my philanthropic initiatives. At the same time, I still have a desire to be connected with the game of basketball in some type of capacity, whether it be in broadcasting or somewhere in the front office. I feel like, well, I know that I'll always be connected to the Heat family, and the Heat organization.

I have a very good rapport and great relationship with Mickey Arison, the owner of the Miami Heat, and his family. But overall, you mentioned the fact that we didn't mention basketball at all during the whole conversation and just to bring you to light exactly my understanding my purpose here.

When I was diagnosed in 2001 with this kidney disease, and being able to overcome that, have a kidney transplant in 2003, a kidney being donated by my second cousin, Jason Cooper, God humbled me at that particular time because I was so consumed with the sport of basketball.

When I was diagnosed after being at such a high in life where I had just come off an Olympic gold medal in Sydney, Australia, just come off witnessing the birth of my child, just come off an NBA season with Defensive Player of the Year, All-Star honors, and runner-up MVP in the league and to get ready for the next year through a preseason physical I find out that I had a rare kidney disorder, it totally deflated me.

And I realized that It wasn't about, 'Why me? Why me? Why has this happened to me?' It was, ' OK, Lord. Evidently, you don't want me to play basketball now. What do you want me to do now?'

And He gave me the direction and helped me understand my true purpose in life. And I feel like just through the process of the last eight years from 2000 to 2008, I feel like I've touched more lives off the court than I have on. And I've done that through creating my foundation to help people who can't afford medications, and to be an advocate and a voice for organ donations, also helping to raise millions of dollars for kidney research.

So, you have 20 million Americans who are battling kidney disease, and another 20 million who are at risk. Forty-four percent of the 20 million are minorities. Also, you have a little over 80,000 who are waiting on transplant lists. So, this is a serious issue for our country, around the world.

So, by me going through what I've been able to go through and to be sitting here talking to you today, still being able to get back on the court and win a World Championship, I feel like I've touched more lives and I've stimulated some positive energy towards people understanding the importance of being an organ donor, and at the same time raising funds for that.

So, that's my true purpose here, and that's why we haven't even talked about basketball, brother. Because my purpose here is to continue to help others. So, I think that when you ask me for the next 10 years, what you think is in store for me, that's it's to continue to touch more people's lives.

No Justice, No Play? Gaza Anger Overwhelms Hoops Contest

Dave Zirin — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:45:18 -0500

We have officially entered uncharted waters. Never before in my years of reporting has a sports team been forced to abandon the field of play due to political protest from fans. Never before have fans become the central actors in turning a sporting event into a political melee.

But Tuesday evening in Ankara, Turkey, the Israeli basketball team, Bnei Hasharon, had to flee the wrath of what the Associated Press described as "hundreds of fist-pumping, chanting Turkish fans." What exploded was yet another protest against Israel's bombardment of Gaza. The shock here is the setting, a sports arena, and the target, a basketball team.

It may be surprising that this came to pass in such a supposedly apolitical environs--a Eurocup game against a team called Turk Telekom--but local officials knew this could happen and took every precaution. Thousands of police officers surrounded the court, and street demonstrations of 4,000 people were already taking place outside the arena.

Protesters shouted, "Israeli murderers, get out of Palestine!" and "Allah-u Akhbar!" as the Hasharon team bus entered the arena. Only 500 fans were even let into the arena and were also subject to intense searches, but it wasn't enough. Police made the mistake of not confiscating the shoes.

Before the game could begin, angry chants of "Israeli killers!" came down from the crowd as smuggled Palestinian flags were unfurled. Then, in a scene that would look familiar to a certain sitting president, off came the shoes as footwear rained down from the stands (the shoes didn't hit any players).

As both teams looked at the crowd, frozen in place, battles began between police officers and Turkish fans, as the fans surged forward to take the court. Both Hasharon and Turk Telecom were rushed off and spent two hours in the locker rooms while the battle for control of the arena raged on.

Hashoran captain Meir Tapiro spoke about the fear and chaos he felt around him to the Jerusalem Post: "The fans raced on to the court and ran towards us like madmen, but the police stopped them. It was really scary."

After ninety minutes all the fans were expelled, arrested or dragged from the arena. The referees attempted to get the teams back onto the court to play before an empty arena, but Bnei Hasharon, after two hours of being prisoners in their locker room, had no desire to play. Referees called it a forfeit, and the Turks were declared winners of the game by the official forfeit score of 20-0. Hasharon team chairman Eldad Akunis was understandably incensed.

"After such a trying ordeal, there was simply no point in playing. The players were just concerned for their safety. We were also given instructions by the Israeli embassy staff, who were monitoring the situation, not to play," said Akunis.

There is no doubt that it was "a trying ordeal," a frightening experience that not even Red Sox fans would wish on the Yankees. But to put it mildly, it pales in comparison to the situation in Gaza itself. With more than 500 deaths, 3,000 injuries and 100 tons of bombs dropped on one of the impoverished regions of the world, the trials of a basketball team seem trivial.

It's certainly true that none of the players—two of whom are African, five of whom are American-born—bear a hint of responsibility for any of this carnage. But it's difficult not to remember the famous telegram sent by playwright Arthur Miller to President Lyndon Johnson. Miller was invited for a gala of some kind and refused, saying, "When the guns boom, the arts die." Perhaps when the guns boom, sports should die as well.

We may recall January 2008, when soccer star Mohamed Aboutreika lifted his shirt to reveal the slogan "Sympathize with Gaza." He wanted people to stand up and notice that an economic blockade had triggered, for the Palestinians in Gaza, a humanitarian crisis. The new year begins with another instance where the reality of Gaza has unexpectedly interrupted the field of play. Only this time—fitting the new moment—it was altogether more livid, more dangerous and more desperate. No sympathy has meant no peace.

Breaking New Ground: Politics and Sports in 2008

Dave Zirin — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:17:12 -0500

There will be more than a few articles proclaiming 2008 the greatest "sports year" in decades, if not ever.

If the definition of sports is confined to professional sports played by men, then this hyperbolic statement could have a ring of truth. Tiger Woods won the US Open with a torn-up knee. The New York Giants shocked the unbeaten Patriots in a crackling Super Bowl. At the Beijng Olympics, swimmer Michael Phelps, and sprinter Usain Bolt redefined what's physically possible.

There was the reunion of the Boston Celtics and Lakers in the NBA Finals, the Phillies breaking the city of Philadelphia's near three-decade streak without a championship, and that barely scratches the surface.

Of course, for women athletes the terrain was far less forgiving. The female athlete with the most publicity was Indy racer Danica Patrick, who parlayed her trailblazing success into more money for Maxim, Stuff, and whatever yuppie-airport-porn magazines she posed for.

The Olympics also failed to bring attention to women athletes. The stories were there: We witnessed brilliance of hoops star Candace Parker, 41-year-old swimmer Dara Torres, and the upset of all upsets, the Japanese softball players who beat the US women for the gold, in an event the US had never lost. But this all received far less attention than the controversy over whether the Chinese women gymnasts were still in elementary school and the NBC-adoring world of beach volleyball.

But the free-flowing adrenaline of the last year shouldn't blind us to the real story: The wall between sports and politics, which we are told is as immutable as Gibraltar, was not only challenged, it was thoroughly breached.

The Beijing Olympics, throughout the year, raised questions about the role of politics in sports. International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge attempted to stifle this discussion, which proved somewhat difficult when George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, and Vladimir Putin were the honored guests at the opening ceremonies. He also said nothing when Team Darfur leader and 2006 Speed Skating gold medalist Joey Cheek had his travel papers revoked the night before he was to end.

The political campaign of Barack Obama also pulled an unprecedented number of high-profile athletes into politics.

Players were loud and proud about what it meant to them to see an African-American president in a nation built upon slavery. Even Michael Jordan, who famously once said that "Republicans buy sneakers too", made a small donation to the campaign.

Athletes didn't sit this presidential election out, and for that they deserve some serious cheers. They did it for the same reasons millions of Americans waited in lines to vote. As recently retired NBA star Alonzo Mourning said, "Our world right now is in turmoil, and it starts with our leadership. You got over 1.2 million Americans this year who've lost jobs; thousands and thousands of people who've lost their homes, education is in total disarray, as well as our healthcare system. So, I knew there needed to be some type of change for the better."

But the year 2008 started with a political moment that feels all too relevant. Israel's embargo of the densely populated strip known as Gaza was creating a humanitarian crisis. Egyptian star midfielder Mohamed Aboutreika felt compelled to do something. After scoring in the Egyptian national side's 3-0 victory over Sudan in the African Nations Cup, the player known as the Smiling Assassin lifted his jersey to reveal a T-shirt that read, "Sympathize with Gaza."

Aboutreika was facing suspension and fines for his actions, but after e-mails and letters flooded the soccer governing board FIFA, he was given a pass. Now that the war on Gaza has become something altogether more frightening, we may be seeing a return of the shirts in the year to come.

These small acts of solidarity may seem negligible. But they matter. Whether we like it or not, whether we agree with it or not, athletes are role models. We can disagree and say athletes shouldn't be cast in that role, but as the saying goes, you can disagree with gravity. It won't help you if you're falling out of an airplane.

Since athletes are role models, and since a microscopic fraction of young people will actually become pro players, it's worth asking the question: what are they modeling? If they're modeling that life is about making money, driving tricked-out car and getting on MTV cribs, that's a problem. If they're modeling the idea that life is a game and you keep score by the size of your bank account, that's destruction. If they're modeling that what you have to say is as important as what you can do on the court, and caring about the greater world is actually heroic, then that can make a real difference. It's an old expression: It doesn't matter who's sitting in the White House, it's who's sitting in.

When athletes break down the wall and speak, it becomes a living expression that we have entered an age where we will be reclaiming power from those who have abused the collective trust.

Latter Day Protest? Proposition 8 and Sports

Dave Zirin — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:05:59 -0500

As supporters of gay marriage have discovered, it's never easy to be on the Mormon Church's enemies list. The Church of Latter Day Saints backed the anti-Gay Marriage Proposition 8 in California with out-of-state funds, and gave the right a heartbreaking victory this past election cycle. But the Mormon Church has been challenged in the past. Just ask Bob Beamon.

If you know Beamon's name it's almost certainly because he won the long jump gold medal in legendary fashion at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Beamon leapt 29 feet, 2.5 inches, a record that held for twenty-three years. Great Britain's Lynn Davies told Beamon afterwards, "You have destroyed this event." This is because Beamon was not only the first long jumper to break 29 feet, he was the first to break 28.

But you may not know that Beamon almost never made it to Mexico City. Along with eight other teammates, Beamon had his track and field scholarship revoked from the University of Texas at El Paso, the previous year. They had refused to compete against Brigham Young University. Beamon and his teammates were protesting the racist practices of the Mormon Church, and their coach at UTEP, Wayne Vanderburge, made them pay the ultimate price.

They weren't alone. As tennis great Arthur Ashe wrote in his book, Hard Road to Glory: "In October 1969, fourteen black [football] players at the University of Wyoming publicly criticized the Mormon Church and appealed to their coach, Lloyd Eaton, to support their right not to play against Brigham Young University. . .The Mormon religion at the time taught that blacks could not attain to the priesthood, and that they were tainted by the curse of Ham, a biblical figure. Eaton, however, summarily dropped all fourteen players from the squad."

The players, however, didn't take their expulsion lying down. They called themselves the Black 14, and sued for damages with the support of the NAACP. In an October 25th game against San Jose State, the entire San Jose team wore black armbands to support the 14.

One aftershock of this episode was in November 1969, when Stanford University President Kenneth Pitzer suspended athletic relations with BYU, announcing that Stanford would honor what he called an athlete's "Right of Conscience." The "Right of Conscience" allowed athletes to boycott an event which he or she deemed "personally repugnant." As the Associated Press wrote, "Waves of black protest roll toward BYU, assaulting Mormon belief and leaving BYU officials and students, perplexed, hurt, and maybe a little angry."

On June 6, 1978, as teams were refusing road trips to Utah with greater frequency, and the IRS started to make noises about revoking the church's holy tax-free status, a new revelation came to the Book of Mormon.

Whether a cynical ploy to avoid the taxman or a coincidence touched by God, the results were the same: Black people were now human in the eyes of the Church. African Americans were no longer, as Brigham Young himself once put it, "uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable, and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind."

The IRS was assuaged, the athletic contests continued, and the church entered a period of remarkable growth.

Similar pressure must be brought to bear on the Mormon Church today for its financing of Proposition 8 in California.

One nonprofit crunched the numbers and found that $17.67 million of the $22 million used to pass the anti-gay marriage legislation was funneled through 59,000 Mormon families since August. It was done with the institutional backing of the church, though many pro-gay Mormons have spoken out defiantly against the church's political intervention.

The question now is whether this latest tale of social conflict and the Church of Latter Day Saints will also spill onto the athletic field. Men's athletics have been one of the last proud hamlets of homophobia in our society (although the attitudes of male athletes is more progressive than you might think). But women's sports has been historically more open around issues of sexuality.

Will any women collegians raise the specter of Proposition 8 if they have to travel to the schools of Utah? Will we see the ghosts of Black 14 emerge from the past? If any athletes choose to act, the ramifications could be "Beamonesque."

Burress and The Bloomberg

Dave Zirin — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 05:13:34 -0500

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week: all Plaxico, all the time. There's nothing like an NFL player shooting a hole in his own leg in a packed nightclub to become our latest walking, talking weapon of mass distraction.

Why ponder the global economic meltdown, two wars, and rising unemployment, when millionaire black athletes like Plaxico Burress walk among us...with guns?

Don't think that this is a defense of the New York Giants star wide receiver. Having a loaded gun in your pants, with no safety, in a crowded club, is about as smart as using a toaster as a bathtub toy. In fact, shooting yourself in the leg is really one of the more preferable outcomes. Now Burress faces three-and-a-half years in prison for carrying a loaded handgun in the city.

Right on cue, the moralists are slithering onto their soapboxes to hiss at the latest athletic bogeyman. Hypocrisy reigns supreme.

There's the now-suspended emergency room physician at New York Cornell Hospital, who was persuaded to treat Burress under a phony name and failed to notify the authorities of the shooting incident as state law requires.

There's the New York Giants organization: New York police officials say the Giants let at least 10 hours elapse before reporting the shooting. What were they thinking—that the cops wouldn't notice the wall-to-wall coverage on TV?

Next, the Giants self-righteously suspended Burress for the rest of the season "for conduct detrimental to the team"—easy to do when Burress has played next to no role for the first-place team. Suspending Burress is easy. They even did it earlier this season.

But there is no talk of suspending Giants middle linebacker Antonio Pierce, who was with Burress that evening, drove him to the hospital, and is alleged to have hidden the weapon from police. He was set to explain to police today exactly why he didn't report the shooting either. But Pierce is also an indispensable cog in the team. Suspend Pierce? That might affect their Super Bowl chances.

There's former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka, who has made a call for all NFL players with handguns to be suspended without delay. Ditka, who calls himself an "ultra-ultra conservative" and hosted rallies this fall for Sarah Palin, clearly finds the Second Amendment expendable when exercised by these ungrateful...athletes. Here are his comments to ESPN:

"This is all about priorities. When you get stature in life, you get the kind of contract, you have an obligation and responsibility to your teammates, to the organization, to the National Football League and to the fans. He just flaunted this money in their face. He has no respect for anybody but himself. I feel sorry for him, in the sense that, I don't understand the league, why can anybody have a gun? I will have a policy, no guns, any NFL players we find out, period, you're suspended."

But no one is deserving of more scorn than New York City Mayor-for-Life Michael Bloomberg, who excoriated Burress for violating city gun laws. On Monday, Bloomberg seemed to channel Vincent Bugliosi: "Our children are getting killed with guns in the street. Our police are getting killed. If we don't prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law, I don't know who on earth would. It makes a sham, a mockery of the law. And it's pretty hard to argue the guy didn't have a gun and that it wasn't loaded. You've got bullet holes in and out to show that it was there."

All right, Mayor Mike. But there are a few people—including ESPN columnist Jemele Hill—who detected more than a whiff of hypocrisy in the mayor's rant:

"Why wasn't the mayor as willing to stand on his soapbox when New York City police officers shot and killed Sean Bell?" she wrote. "Bloomberg called for a 'thorough' investigation at that time, but he didn't damn those police officers the way he did Burress. (All three officers were acquitted earlier this year.)"

Rage as he has against Burress, Bloomberg displayed no such anger in 2004, when police beat and jailed protesters by the hundreds at the Republican Convention at Madison Square Garden.

Bloomberg's friends on Wall Street have helped precipitate a crisis which we will spend a generation digging ourselves out from. But there have been no sermons on the greed and lawlessness of the financial sector heard from the mayor's bully pulpit.

There's no defending the stupidity of bringing a loaded gun to a place where people party. And so far, Burress hasn't given much of an explanation about his motives. But contributing factors are obvious—growing up in the slums of Virginia Beach, VA, he saw plenty of violence.

And athletes make easy targets: Giants teammate Steve Smith was robbed at gunpoint just a couple of weeks ago. And it's a terrible irony that the Burress imbroglio happened almost a year to the day that Washington football all-pro Sean Taylor was shot to death in his home by an intruder.

Far too many players feel like they have targets on their backs, and they refuse to surrender their freedom to walk the streets of the country where they are told they are living the dream. Hiring bodyguards or staying home just aren't choices many players want to make.

Guns can't protect professional athletes from real or imagined harm, especially when the gun owner has no clue how to use them. But three and a half years in prison for Burress hardly seems like a solution either.

We need less moralistic prattle and more serious discussion about how we have gotten to this point. Too many athletes are like gated communities with legs: fearful, isolated, and looking over their shoulder.

Mark Cuban Libre

Dave Zirin — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 05:07:19 -0500

It's amazing how an eight-minute phone call can cloud a charmed life.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, like Martha Stewart before him, is officially in hot water with the SEC. They allege that Cuban sold 600,000 shares in the search engine Mamma.com Inc. in June 2004, saving him $750,000. Cuban has responded publicly and angrily on his blog that the entire imbroglio is "a product of gross abuse of prosecutorial discretion."

The entire story has generated as much buzz as a battalion of mosquitoes. That's due to the Dancing With the Stars alumnus at the center of it all. To some, he is a hero--the only true fan/owner in existence. To others, such as sportswriter Tony Kornheiser, he's just a "preening schmo." But almost everyone in the basketball universe gives the flamboyant 50-year-old billionaire a measure of respect.

In the decade before Cuban took over the Mavericks, the team went 199-507, one of the most putrid records in all professional sports. They were owned, amid failure, by Ross Perot Jr. Texas money and a legacy of losing defined the franchise.

Then came Cuban, a son of working-class parents who decided to wear Mavs jerseys to games, sit in the stands, scream at refs, rev up the fans, pamper his players and even e-mail with hoi polloi. Despite a slow start this season, the Mavericks have been perennial championship contenders.

"He took one of the worst teams in the NBA and made it one of the best," Nets point guard Devin Harris said recently. "He gutted everything, changed the whole culture. He's very hands-on, obviously very good taking an organization and remaking it." He also earned respect when he took the racist e-mails directed at Mavericks all-star Josh Howard and posted them on his own "blog maverick" site--with the actual e-mail addresses of the senders.

How did Cuban become the ultimate owner-fan? It's less a Horatio Alger story than Cuban's becoming, as USA Today wrote, "the luckiest man from the dot-com era."

Cuban made his billions by getting out of the dot-coms before they bombed. He and partner Todd Wagner sold their company, Broadcast.com, to Yahoo! for billions of dollars, a ridiculously large amount for a company earning no more than $100 million in revenues.

Cuban was smart enough to see how idiotic this inflation was and cashed out before his company, like most of the industry, saw its stock price plunge. Some would call this smart business, but most in the media choose to see it as dumb luck. Others see Cuban as just plain dumb. Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Tribune wrote that Cuban proves "it's OK to be vapid as long as you're loud."

He may be loud, but vapid he is not.

Cuban was the executive producer of the Enron documentary The Smartest Guys in the Room. He was also behind George Clooney's Oscar-nominated McCarthyism drama Good Night and Good Luck, and the powerful look at sexism in Hollywood, Searching for Debra Winger. His independent-film streak earned him an enemy last year: David Horowitz, the radical turned reactionary.

Horowitz's website FrontPage blared this headline about Cuban: "World's Most Annoying Sports Fan Now Jihadist Propaganda Producer." Bill O'Reilly called for people to boycott the Mavericks after the release of an antiwar film produced by Cuban called Redacted.

And Cuban has taken on Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Hatch raised Cuban's ire by sponsoring the Induce Act, a bill that would allow a company to be sued if it was found to have induced individuals to download Internet music illegally. Cuban also abhors Hatch for saying that computers storing pirated downloaded music should be destroyed. On Salt Lake City radio station KCPW, Cuban said that he thinks the senior Republican is "the digital Joe McCarthy."

Cuban embodies a peculiar blend of politics. He touts the credo of the wealthy: that anyone can make it in America with desire, moxie and elbow grease. The literary muse of bootstrap billionaires like him is Ayn Rand, the sleep-inducing author behind Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Cuban's favorite book is, you guessed it, The Fountainhead. As he said to Slate, "It was incredibly motivating to me. It encouraged me to think as an individual, take risks to reach my goals and responsibility for my successes and failures."

But this hyper-libertarian bootstrap mentality comes into conflict with Cuban's Pittsburgh populism.

When Bush was planning the most expensive inauguration parties in history, in January 2005, Cuban wrote, "Could there be anything more confusing and shocking than to read that our country was offering $35 million in aid to the areas affected by the Tsunamis, but that the cost of inauguration parties would be about $40 million? Does anyone else think that this is wrong?"

Cuban has also bankrolled a website, Sharesleuth.com, the goal of which is "to create a new line of defense by using investigative journalism techniques and a worldwide network of amateur and professional stock detectives to identify suspect companies."

So far, so good. But he has also made clear that he could use information that the site uncovers to buy and sell stock.

"A journalistic conflict you say?" Cuban wrote two years ago. "Not anymore. Not in this world. It will be fully disclosed and explained. This site is for the profit of its owners and we will buy and sell stocks that are discussed, before they are made available on the site...if we can uncover companies whose stock is public and that can be bought or sold and that allows us to pay for more in depth research and effort. I'm good with that."

Maybe it's this very confusion, or conflation, of populism and personal profit that has gotten him into trouble with the SEC. Maybe an aspect of this has finally caught up with Cuban--the idea that since he lives a fantasy life, the rules of reality just don't apply.

Or maybe he's being targeted for lacking the bloodlines and birthright to skirt the law. Either way, Cuban finds himself in a world of trouble. But one thing is certain: when it comes to Cuban, we will all be able to follow the drama in digital real time.

Did Tiger Woods Pave the Way for Obama? Are You Kidding?

Dave Zirin — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:43:22 -0500

It's always dangerous, but never boring, when a newspaper sports columnist uncorks a political thesis. Enter Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel. Bianchi thinks that there are some unsung heroes who deserve credit for helping put a black man in the White House—and they are athletes.

"If you're searching for tangible reasons why it became possible for Barack Obama to make his historic run at the presidency ... look no further than the golf course, basketball court or football field."

Bianchi believes that, since sports have conditioned white America to accept African-Americans as heroes and leaders, black sportsmen deserve a pat on the back. He wonders: "Where else but sports can you go to Amway Arena and see 15,000 mostly white fans cheer and celebrate the accomplishments of a team that is mostly black?"

Sounds lovely. But it happens to be embarrassingly wrong—and an insult to the reason that millions waited on long lines to cast their vote.

For more than a century, masses of white audiences have cheered black entertainers and athletes. And for most of that time, blacks struggled mightily to climb the corporate or political ladder. Why? Because being wowed by the ability of blacks to perform on a field or stage is not in the same ballpark as accepting their political leadership. Not even close.

More to the point, the rare black athletes who have dared to make waves have been pilloried for not knowing their place. After men like Jack Johnson, Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith and John Carlos got too political, the phrase "just shut up and play" emerged—to smack down future jocks for trying to do more than entertain.

This is not just a hypocrisy of the musty past. On Thursday, Denver Broncos wide receiver Brandon Marshall caught the winning touchdown pass against the Cleveland Browns. He then—horror of horrors—wanted to take out a black and white glove to make a statement. "I wanted to create that symbol of unity because Obama inspires me, our multicultured society," he later said.

But we will never know how the public might have received even this tame message because teammates, led by Brandon Stokely, put the kibosh on him. Commentators then came down on Marshall like blitzing linebackers. ESPN anchor Neil Everett said, "It's not about you and what you think. It's about the team."

Our sport-mad culture has hardly softened the ground for black political leadership. If anything, it's produced a value system that prizes material gain and the almighty scoreboard over any kind of collective responsibility.

This is seen even more clearly when we look at the three figures that Bianchi holds up as the most crucial trailblazers: Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy.

Bianchi writes, "the two most successful product pitchmen of the modern era—Tiger and Michael Jordan—are both black men who won over white corporate America."

But at what cost? These are also the two most aggressively apolitical athletes to ever walk the earth. They live by the creed that taking serious stands gets in the way of good business. If anything, Obama has had to overcome the racial landscape these two have charted, which says you must wear the cool mask and betray nothing.

Dungy is a different case. One of the most respected coaches in the NFL, he is also an evangelical Christian who has raised funds for the Indiana Family Institute. IFI organizes anti-gay marriage initiatives and takes part in the process of what's called "praying the gay away."

In fact, when you think about it, Woods, Jordan, and Dungy—signifying respectively disengagement, corporate greed and the right-wing side of the culture wars—hold the values many voters wanted to repudiate.

No doubt, black American athletes unafraid to be political will be part of charting us out of this wilderness. But it will not be those content to be money-making sideshows when the main stage is a real-world battle for change.

No Obamamania for Brandon Marshall

Dave Zirin — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:15:52 -0500

Brandon Marshall wanted to be part of the moment. The Denver Broncos wide receiver wanted to feel connected to the thousands who flooded into the streets around the country and the millions in a state of shock around the world as they celebrated the election of Barack Obama.

Marshall's plan was to score a touchdown on Thursday night, take out a black-and-white glove, and hold it up to the sky. "I wanted to create that symbol of unity because Obama inspires me, our multi-cultured society," he said after the game, choked with tears. "And I know at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico,Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised that black glove in that fist as a silent gesture of black power and liberation. Forty years later, I wanted to make my own statement. I wanted to make my own statement and gesture to represent the progress we made."

Unfortunately, we will never know what would have happened, or how the crowd would have reacted. We will never have that image of a football player bringing historical politics to the field. Marshall did score a touchdown, but as he removed the glove from his pocket, his teammates stopped him.

The problem was that Marshall's touchdown came with only one minute and twenty-two seconds left to play, putting the Broncos ahead, 34-30. His teammates—particularly fellow wideout Brandon Stokley and tight end Tony Scheffler—saw what he was about to do and stopped him, fearful of an automatic fifteen-yard penalty for "unsportsmanlike conduct."

One can understand where Stokley and Sheffler were coming from, given the moment in the game—although the image of two white players surrounding a black player to block his political statement is the antithesis of the very ideas Marshall was attempting to communicate.

Yet the reaction from ESPN was even worse. The first talking head back at the SportsCenter headquarters took a shot at Marshall's emotional press conference saying, "Well, the sentiment is exactly right, even if the speechwriting needs some work." His partner then said of Marshall, "It's not about you or what you think. It's about the team and what they need to do." Ex-player turned broadcaster (and sometime soap opera star) Mark Schlereth called it, "The best play of Stokley's career." The Sporting News' Chris Mottram quoted Cleveland based blogger Vince Grzegorek,who called it "Marshall's Moronic Touchdown Tribute to President-Elect Obama."

Grzegorek then wrote of Marshall, "He's not bright, or flat out selfish, or a combustible mixture of the two."

There is no question that Marshall was taking a risk. There's no question he could have cost his team the game.

His coach, the stone-faced Mike Shanahan, has a written rule about not bringing politics into his all-business locker room.

Marshall could have risked the ire of the NFL, known as the No Fun League for cracking down on any hint, any whiff, of individuality on the part of players.

But maybe Marshall thought that the moment was more important than the game. Maybe he looked at basketball players like Kevin Garnett, who had the slogan "Embrace Change Vote '08" written on his sneakers, or Carmelo Anthony, who said that he would score forty-four points Wednesday in honor of the forty-fourth president. Marshall wanted to be part of the energy that has inspired more pro athletes to take part in this election cycle than ever before.

Instead of derision, Marshall merited our respect—sports fan or not—which should actually be exponentially higher since he was willing to take this risk when the game was on the line. The image of a pro football player raising a black-and-white hand to the skies forty years after Smith and Carlos and two days after the election of a black president in a country built on slavery could have echoed through the ages. Someone should tell the suits and ESPN: some things are actually more important than sports.

Merritt-Ocracy: The Paulson Sporting Doctrine

Dave Zirin — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:00:58 -0400

In the United States, politicians drill into our heads that there is no money for healthcare, no money for infrastructure and no money for schools. But thanks to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, we now know that there is cash aplenty for bailing out his brethren on Wall Street.

It's bizarro-world Marxism, where the workers own the banks until they are restored to profitability. Socialize debt and privatize profit: call it the Paulson doctrine.

Like father, like son. Meet Merritt Paulson, the offspring of Henry Paulson. I suppose naming his child "Legacy" would have been too blunt.

The 35-year-old Merritt owns the Portland Beavers, a minor-league baseball team, and the Portland Timbers, a USL First Division soccer squad. While his father is demanding $700 billion of our money to bail out the banks, Merritt wants his own little piece of our hide. He is insisting upon $85 million in public funds from the city of Portland to build a new sports complex for the Beavers and an upgrade on the Timbers' stadium.

Merritt is not the sole owner of the Beavers and Timbers; he has only an 80 percent stake. The man with the 20 percent stake is his father, Hammerin' Hank. If you can keep the bile out of your throat for a moment, you have got to give the Paulson family credit for cheek. You can almost imagine the scene: the Paulsons sitting around the dinner table, munching on bald eagle pate, ruminating on their $700 billion credit line and saying, "What's $85 million more?"

We haven't seen a family of rustlers like this since Frank and Jesse James. Keep in mind that Hank Paulson is worth $700 million on his own (he just loves that 700 number). So forget the obscenity of any sports owner having the temerity to ask for public funds for a sports stadium at a time when we are collectively bailing out the nation's banks. Forget the lunacy of making the case for $85 million from a city that, despite its lush rose gardens and micro-breweries, has 16 percent of kids living below the poverty line. Forget all humanitarian and economic considerations. The fact is that the cash between the cushions at the Paulson family compound could pay for the new stadium in Portland and yet Merritt wants more. These aren't masters of industry. They're grifters.

Merritt Paulson has laid the groundwork for this budget grab by trying to present himself, in the best liberal Portland tradition, as a community-minded idealist with a belief in local responsibility. (This is a city where even the airport can only have stores that are local businesses... although one of those "local" businesses is Nike.)

In an interview with Biz of Baseball, Merritt said, "I think sports is such a unique vehicle in terms of being able to shine light on areas of the community that could use the help. It's something that everybody relates to. I think that players getting out and making appearances and using the media attention that follows them to really focus on areas that could use a lot of public support--that's terrific, and it's not all about money." He also, as the glowing puff piece made clear, gave $10,000 to the local little league. This is a very modest investment if you have $85 million in public funds as an ultimate goal.

Of course, Merritt makes the case that such a public expenditure would be economic steroids for the community. But that's not holding water, not even with diehard local fans. As Jules Boykoff, a professor at Pacific University and former pro soccer player, and a big Portland Timbers fanatic who brings his 6-year-old daughter to the games, wrote in The Oregonian:

More jobs? Economic development? Sounds great! The only problem is that it's not true. Recently, sports economists Dennis Coates (University of Maryland) and Brad R. Humphreys (University of Alberta) carried out research asking whether cities that built new stadiums to entice professional sports teams experienced a boost in the local economy. In their study--which spanned nearly thirty years and examined almost forty attempts to lure teams--they couldn't find a single example of a sports franchise jump-starting the local economy....

This plea comes from someone who loves soccer: I played college ball at the University of Portland, professionally for the Portland Pride and was fortunate enough to play on the US Olympic team in international competition. And I would love for Major League Soccer to come to Portland. But it's unfair to have working people and their families pay for the venture when the already cloudy economic future is anything but a sure bet. If Merritt Paulson's affection for Portland is real--and I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that it is--it's time for him to step up and put his money where his mouth is. Should he do so...my daughter and I will be the first in line to buy season tickets.

I think there are many others like Boykoff who will happily support their local sports teams but don't want to feel like suckers in the bargain. Economic times are rough. Working people across the country are being forced to step up to save this system. It's time for Merritt Paulson to do the same.