You Can't Separate Sports from "Real Life"

After writing 25 articles for Bleacher Report, one "truth" has become more and more plain to me: You can't separate sports from the world around it.

Inevitably, I have found the prejudices, quirks, intolerances, ignorance, fears, biases, and hatreds come forth in both myself and others.

Part of the reason is the subjects I choose to write about. With one exception, "Top 10 Unreleased Sports DVDs," all of my subjects have been controversial. What has attracted me is to try and get into the subtleties, the casual thinking that sometimes even the person doing it doesn't realize can have far reaching consequences.

One example is Gary Bettman's thinking about trying to make the NHL one of the "big four" sports in the United States symbolized by a rich American TV contract. This helped him expand into areas unfamiliar with hockey, instead of cities in Canada and the northern United States.

This has led to the loss of two Canadian franchises and Hartford, and 10 money-losing American franchises. Bettman has even blocked the relocation of Nashville to Hamilton, preferring to keep a money-losing city instead of a guaranteed financial success.

In this case, my stand was popular, with most of the submitted comments being overwhelmingly in my favour. Other topics have not fared so well.

I wrote a series of articles about NHL expansion into Canada. 

One of the main ways Canadians like to display "anti-Americanism" is to blame the Americans for "taking over" the NHL and reducing their role in hockey. Symbolically, this is seen by the loss of the two franchises and Bettman's efforts to block relocation into Canada.

In my articles, I took the theme that while there is some truth in this view, Canadians are greatly to blame for allowing this to happen through their craving for American money and American TV praise.

One of these articles was about the situation in Winnipeg, which lost its franchise and wants to get it back. 

I would like to see Winnipeg get a team again, but when I pointed out the fact that Winnipeg's new arena was too small and would hamper efforts to get an NHL franchise, I was denounced by a lobby group as being "anti-Winnipeg." One member even said I would be beaten up if I ever went back there again.

The other controversy I found myself getting involved in is that I am anti-American.  Coming from Canada and growing up in the 1960s, when it seemed that every "normal" behavior and belief was called into question, I suppose that it was inevitable I would get involved in such a controversy.

As an "outsider," a person gets to see the quirks, hatreds, prejudices, and ignorance of other people, and it is largely a one-way street. 

Most Canadians live near the U.S. border and have had access to their media since the 1950's. 

Canadians can know Americans through their television media, as well as Americans know themselves, but with the detachment that they are not entirely "one of them" and can make judgements without fear of consequences.

In contrast, except for the very few Americans who live along the Canadian border and sometimes watch Canadian TV, few have ever bothered to see what Canadians are like.

Canadians themselves have prejudices that can be criticized. They like to hide behind the Americans so they won't have to take responsibility. An example of this is the current war in Afghanistan, which the Harper government finally admitted was not winnable.

On a personal level, last year I was diagnosed with a coronary heart disease but managed to find an "alternative medicine," which removed the heart plaque in my body and saved my life. Such remedies are discriminated against on both sides of the border.

When I went to the Ontario Heart Association to find out their views on this subject, they took the usual cowardly Canadian way, pretended they had never heard of such a thing and referred me to the American Heart Association's Web site.

Their opinion was full of lies and garbage, but this does not excuse the Ontario group. 

A proper test of these kind of medications by Health Canada would have made them available to be recommended by doctors across the country. 

Two prominent CFL members, Ron Lancaster and Bobby Ackles, died of heart attacks when they could have been saved.

There have been two ways I have become involved in an anti-American controversy. 

First, I have exchanged comments and read articles by people complaining about NHL coverage. There was a lot of ignorance displayed on this subject.

Most Americans blamed the NHL for not doing enough to promote the game in the United States, when, in fact, this is the last thing that is going on. 

As I mentioned above, Gary Bettman ignored sure success markets like Seattle and Hamilton in favour of unfamiliar American markets.

But the public has not responded and now the only cable TV the NHL can get is with VS and not a better one with ESPN. 

I have tried to explain this to some American commentators, and pointed out the contrast of hockey coverage in Canada and the U.S. Yet, somehow I've run into contrary opinions and have ended up being branded anti-American.

The other way was my articles on and comments about the recent World Baseball Classic. American arrogance and ignorance about foreigners is nothing new. One blatant example was the recent NFL game in Toronto between Buffalo and Miami.

The NFL's attitude was made clear by the ticket prices that it would be a "privilege" for Canadians to see an NFL game on their own turf. 

Tickets were $200, causing even the most mind-worshiping Canadian NFL fan, who wants a franchise at any cost, to pause and consider what he was getting for his money. To put things in perspective, the cost of a ticket to the Minnesota-Philadelphia playoff game was $40.

And I was to see more of this ignorance during the World Baseball Classic. The games in Toronto were heavily promoted by the local media, most of the articles speaking of the games with respect and hope for the development of the tournament in the future. 

Many local writers, and much of the media from the countries outside of America, many of the foreign players, and even some members of the American team, hope this tournament will gain in prestige and become something like the World Cup of soccer.

But many articles in the Toronto media have also pointed out that American indifference and ignorance has hurt this development. Several top American stars refused to participate.

I read a recent article from the YardBarker sports blog that showed this attitude. The writer belittled the tournament as an "exhibition", not worthy of American notice. It said that the games should not be taken seriously, and it criticized Kevin Youkilis for speaking out against the American attitude.

Sorry Americans, but reading such things can goad "an outsider" to get overheated himself. You are not going to make friends abroad when you dash their hopes to have a proper world tournament set up. 

They are not going to react favorably when their efforts to create teams that are going all out to win are reduced to the level of an unimportant exhibition.

Still worse were the comments to the article about Youkilis and the WBC. One responder called the tournament a "Canadian Baseball League."

Another, on a sports blog that gives instructions to be "civil and no cursing," openly swore using * to get away with it, denouncing Youkilis for speaking out.  He was also called an "idiot" and a "sexual predator."

Many of the commentators used Youkilis as a symbol for their own economic difficulties. 

He was seen as a rich fat cat urging Americans to support an "unimportant tournament" while they were starving at home. 

The WBC was unfairly singled out as a symbol for rich indifference when in fact ALL major North American sports leagues are far more guilty of this.

But again you see ignorance and hatred showing, the kind of stuff as I've tried to point out that can lead to serious consequences abroad. All nations used ignorance and xenophobic nationalism at the beginning of the 20th century. The result was World War I. 

German and Japanese xenophobia led to World War II. And Bush used ignorance and scare tactics like fake "weapons of mass destruction" to create the present situation in Iraq.

These things carry over into sports.  One of my earlier articles, "Sports Build Hatred," was an attempt to show the negative effects of sports on the human mind. 

It tried to explain things like bean balls, the Latin America "soccer war," hooliganism, "Tonya and Nancy," and deliberate attempts to injure.  Sadly, it was one of my least read articles.