Column Archive

Montreal: Adopted Home of Jackie Robinson, John Carlos, and Now Michael Sam

When it was announced that free agent linebacker Michael Sam was signing with the Canadian Football League’s Montreal Alouettes, many people’s thoughts turned to Jackie Robinson. Robinson famously spent a year playing for the minor league Montreal Royals before making his way to the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was believed by Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey, quite simply, that Montreal was less bigoted than the United States. Jackie Robinson would have the experience of playing without the weight of a dominant culture casually putting his humanity on trial with every at-bat. But I didn’t think right away of Robinson upon hearing news of Sam.

Will the FIFA Raids Scuttle the Vote to Suspend Israeli Soccer?

As the 2015 FIFA Congress remains roiled in disarray following the dramatic arrests of leading officials on corruption charges, the Palestinian Football Association is not deterred. They are still moving forward with a Friday vote to suspend the Israeli Football Association unless they pledge to push their government to cease the detentions, imprisonments, and targeting of Palestinian players and clubs (here is a comprehensive list of their concerns). As PFA president Jibril Rajoub said, “Nothing has changed, the vote is still on the agenda.”

An NBA Player Is Missing the Playoffs Because the NYPD Broke His Leg—Why the Sports-Media Silence?

The NBA Finals may be determined by an act of police violence. This is an incendiary fact, yet a curious media silence surrounds the saga of injured Atlanta Hawks guard Thabo Sefolosha. The nine-year pro has been absent from the playoffs after a group of New York Police Department officers broke his leg in April following a late-night confrontation outside a Chelsea nightclub. The police accounts about what took place conflict dramatically, with video that emerged of a group of officers surrounding Sefolosha, with one brandishing a nightstick.

Having a Wedding? A Sweet 16? Consider One of Brazil’s World Cup Stadiums!

In Brazil, a debate raged throughout 2013 about whether two plus two equals four, or if in fact the correct answer was five. Those arguing that two and two was four were the millions of workers, students, academics, and citizens who said that spending billions on building new stadiums for the 2014 World Cup was a criminal use of resources. They said that every shred of data we have shows that mega-events require mega-spending, which leads to mega-debt, mega-displacements, and mega-militarization. The other side said that the World Cup would be a glorious affair providing not only international acclaim but an economic tide that would lift all boats.

It’s Not Tom Brady We Should Be Worried About—It’s Roger Goodell

For most of this week I’ve resisted delivering a steaming hot take about this “deflategate” story because I could not force myself to give even the slightest of fucks. It’s been difficult to care about the bereaved and aggrieved Patriots nation of fans who are in full froth over their Super Bowl–winning team being branded as cheaters. I also wasn’t overly concerned with the tarnishing of quarterback Tom Brady’s legacy. If anything, this story only mattered to me insofar as I truly wondered—since the NFL believes that the Patriots swindled their way through the playoffs—why they didn’t have to just give up their precious Lombardi Trophy. After all, forfeiting the championship was the brutal judgment delivered unto the USA Little League ChampionsJackie Robinson West.

Why Are We Paying the NFL to Help the Pentagon Recruit Troops?

All-star first baseman Carlos Delgado was not a fan of the numerous military appreciation events taking place at the ballpark a decade ago. These were staged to bolster support for the Iraq war and doubled as recruitment stations, using sports to increase the ranks of the armed forces, which had thinned dramatically after George W. Bush decided to call for a permanent era of armed conflict. As Delgado said, “I won’t stand for this war.… It’s a very terrible thing that happened on September 11. It’s [also] a terrible thing that happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. I just feel so sad for the families that lost relatives and loved ones in the war. But I think it’s the stupidest war ever.”Now we can not only see that these events were politically transparent propaganda for a flagging war effort.

Israel and Palestine Agree: Keep Politics Out of Soccer

We have before us a point of agreement between Netanyahu’s Israel and the militarily vivisected area of land at times referred to as the Palestinian territories: the idea that sports and politics should not mix. Tragically—not unlike words such as “life,” “liberty,” and that whole “pursuing happiness” thing—the phrase means far less as it journeys from abstraction to reality. Israeli Football Association Chairman Ofer Eini and Chief Executive Rotem Kamer traveled to Zurich, Switzerland, last week to meet with reptilian FIFA chief (and self-described women’s soccer “godfather”) Sepp Blatter. Their mission? To change a meeting agenda item.

James Dolan’s Epic WNBA Fail

Given the myriad ways that the teams we love don’t always love us back, it’s a wonder more sports fans don’t abandon the squads of their youth. A sports organization can have a criminal owner or an economic agenda that involves syphoning millions of dollars in public money, or employ players that are genuinely awful human beings, and we will still irrationally love them. Yet everyone has a line that if crossed, will cause them to say goodbye to the team of their prepubescent heart.

‘The Game Done Changed’: Reconsidering ‘The Wire’ Amidst the Baltimore Uprising

Most assembly-line entertainment is a variation on the shopworn theme of lone heroes confronting obstacles and then overcoming them. The connective thread of every Wire season, as described by show co-creator David Simon was that when individuals, no matter how heroic, fight to change entrenched power structures and bureaucracies—whether in the form of City Hall politics, police, or organized crime—the individual is going to lose.That’s why I always shoved it to the back of my mind when my friends in Baltimore—I live about 45 minutes from the city—almost uniformly would tell me they either did not like or would not watch the show.

Makayla Gilliam-Price and Baltimore’s Debt to a Remarkable Family

The much-worn quote from Faulkner that “The past is never dead. It’s not even past” has never felt less clichéd and more searing to me than last night. I was at a packed town hall meeting in Washington, DC, featuring organizers and activists from Baltimore, and one of the speakers was a 17-year-old Baltimore City College high-school student named Makayla Gilliam-Price. Standing in front of 300 people and speaking without notes like she was alone in her living room, she potently communicated what it has been like to build a movement alongside a youth justice organization called City Bloc amidst the National Guard and curfews enforced at gunpoint.