Column Archive

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.

Apartheid Games: Baltimore, Urban America, and Camden Yards

If you don't understand Oriole Park at Camden Yards, then you can’t understand why Baltimore exploded this week. If you don't understand Oriole Park at Camden Yards then you can’t understand why what happened in Baltimore can replicate itself in other cities around the United States.

Baltimore Oriole Adam Jones and the Power of Seeing Pain

On Wednesday, I gave a lecture at the Community College of Baltimore County on the topic of sports and social change. It had been planned for months, but this morning, with encouragement from the terrific professors on campus, I changed my talk from one about the history of sports to one about the history being made a short ride from campus. Instead of talking about Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King and the movements that shaped their desire to use sports as a political platform, we talked about the police killing of Freddie Gray. Instead of a “lecture,” we had a conversation.

Camden Yards and the Baltimore Protests for Freddie Gray

I was at the Saturday protests in Baltimore aimed at seeking justice for Freddie Gray, the young man who died while in police custody, his spine severed and neck broken. This column is about what took place inside Oriole Park at Camden Yards, where fans were told on orders from Baltimore’s Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Police Commissioner Anthony Batts to stay inside the stadium following the Os’ extra-innings victory over the Boston Red Sox, rather than risk the “violence” of protesters.

Now That the Justice Department Has Struck Out, It’s Time to Put Barry Bonds in the Hall of Fame

Fifty-five million dollars. In sports terms, that’s not a great deal of money. It’s a healthy NBA contract or the kind of deal a Major League Baseball team would hand to a quality third baseman. But in the real world, as opposed to the sports world, $55 million is one hell of a stack. In governmental terms $55 million builds a new school. It reopens a public hospital. It repairs miles of roads. It saves lives. $55 million is also what the US Justice Department—mostly spent under Bush but finished under Obama—has wasted on what we can now officially call the failed prosecution of Barry Lamar Bonds.

The Debt Owed to Eduardo Galeano

In Sunday night’s premiere of the HBO series Game of Thrones, two of the more admirable characters are speaking about the future and one says, “Perhaps we’ve grown so used to horror, we assume there’s no other way.” I mumbled to no one in particular, “Some screenwriter’s been reading their Galeano.”