Column Archive

The Collapsing of the Commonwealth Games

Injury. Death. Destruction. Despair. Deficits. None of these things have stopped the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. But risk to the health of the athletes? Strike up the concern.

World Cup Hangover Hits South Africa

The 2010 World Cup was without question a major sporting success for South Africa. The gleaming fields opened on schedule, new airports welcomed scores of visitors and disparate groups of South Africans who usually self-segregate exalted together in public. But the party's over. The country was recently hit with massive strikes involving 1.3 million public sector workers, including the teachers, civil service workers and health workers. The public sector strike contained a series of particularly shocking moments for South Africans and international observers. This included scenes of striking workers marching through a police line while sounding the World Cup’s iconic vuvuzela, only to be shot by the police officers' rubber bullets.

NFL Opener Becomes Site of Solidarity

The opening of the NFL season witnessed perhaps the most public display of solidarity in US history. Seriously.

The Summer of Our Sporting Discontent

By any measure this country is in an ugly mood. Double-digit unemployment and a growing sense that the environment, economy, and empire are heading south, has Americans walking with a stoop and a scowl. We have seen this mood become a temper-tantrum in the world of sports.

Bud Selig: A Civil Rights Icon for Our Times… just like Beck

A group of Milwaukee activists asked Bud Selig why the 2011 All-Star Game was going to be played in Arizona. The answer issued by his public relations firm needs to be read to be believed.

Don’t do it Albert! A Plea for Albert Pujols to not attend Glenn Beck’s Rally on the Mall

As a person who believes strongly that athletes shouldn’t just “shut up and play,” and have a responsibility to speak out on political issues, I’ve been asked if it’s hypocritical to ask Pujols not to attend Beck's rally. Hardly. Pujols is more than just the finest Major League hitter of his generation, and the third youngest man to ever hit 400 home runs. He also emerged recently as the most prominent voice in Major League Baseball against Arizona’s anti-immigrant racial profiling law SB 1070.

Revelations of Rot: Behind Baseball's Corporate Crime Wave

Let’s look at what we have before us: leaked documents that by all accounts should be part of the public record; an alarming snapshot of corruption, waste, and fraud that connects the seamiest worlds of politics and big business; calls to prosecute whoever might be responsible for daring to drag truth into the light of day.   No, this isn’t a summary of the “WikiLeaks scandal” that exposed the brutal facts that surround the US quagmire in Afghanistan. It's Major League Baseball...

Enrique Morones: The Man Who Would Move the Game

Enrique Morones has been at the heart of the movement to move the 2011 Major League Baseball All-Star Game from the state of Arizona.  As much as anyone in the United States, he is uniquely positioned to provide leadership on the connection between baseball and the rights of immigrants. For six years, Morones worked for the San Diego Padres as a Vice President in charge of connecting the franchise to the Latino community, Major League Baseball’s first Department of Hispanic Marketing. In addition, Morones is the founder of Border Angels, an organization that leaves blankets, food and water on the rough desert terrain to provide tools of survival for people crossing the border. Here I speak to Mr. Morones about his work.

Clemens Shouldn't Have to Take the Fall

Roger Clemens is about as popular in baseball circles as jock itch. The man is such a pariah, he makes Barry Bonds look like Justin Bieber. Yet we should hold the cheers over the recent news that Clemens has been indicted on perjury charges for lying in front of Congress on questions related his much-denied steroid use. Not one owner has ever been called to account for the steroid era in Major League Baseball. Not one person who has called an owner's box home has had to answer questions about steroid use. Until that changes, our eyes are focused on the wrong targets.

Rain, Risk Takers, Racists, and Rancor: Demonstrating Against the D-Backs

On Sunday in DC, I attended the seventeenth ballpark protest of the Arizona Diamondbacks during the 2011 baseball season. As in the other actions—in cities from Houston to San Francisco to Milwaukee—people chanted a loud and clear message to Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig: move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Arizona and make the state pay a price for enacting legislation that sacrifices immigrant families at the altar of election-year politics. But this demonstration was also deeply different from the sixteen others. It was a day of rain, risk-takers, racists and rancor. And it couldn’t have been more terrific.