How do you take politics — and politicians — out of sports?
Note to Coach’s Box readers: This is my weekly column for the Cincinnati Enquirer and Cincinnati.com.
By Mike Bass
mbass@mikebasscoaching.com
Rick from Blue Ash was not happy, and he wanted Bob Castellini to know. So he emailed the Reds owner and later sent it to me after reading my column last week.
“I am sick and tired that pro-sports continues to tread on its fans,” Rick wrote. “The most recent example is MLB moving the all-star game because elected officials changed the voting laws in Georgia. I’m sure there were some good and bad changes to these new voting laws, but it doesn’t matter. It isn’t pro-sports or MLB’s responsibility to decide how each state wants to run their business. If pro-sports or MLB doesn’t like certain state’s rules and regulations, then don’t have a pro sports team in that state, obviously, they aren’t worthy. Are pro-sports and MLB trying to turn each state and this country to something of their own liking? We have a democracy with elected officials in each state, who decide how they want to run their state, not how MLB wants things run.
“It’s gotten to the point where pro-sports and MLB has lost my allegiance. I’m looking for pro-sports and MLB to allow me to forget my worries and be entertained. They aren’t doing this anymore. Moving the all-star game is the straw that broke the camels back. You have totally lost your purpose and lost me as a fan.
“Please change, so I can be a fan again. This is one time that I would love pro-sports and the MLB to return to the good ole days.”
Rick wonders whether sports has enough knowledge or understanding to step into social and political issues.
“Sports,” he wrote to me, “needs to stick with playing sports, period.”
I understand such sentiments. I hear them a lot. And not just about professional sports. The idea of sport just for sport’s sake can seem noble, all things being equal.
But how do you remove politics — and politicians, from both sides of the aisle — from sports?
How do you remove society from sports?
And is that what you really want?
* * *
Pining for an innocent time when sports operated in a separate, apolitical, socially neutral world is like reminiscing about the days unicorns roamed the Earth. This never happened. Innocence was just a perception. Sports can be wonderful, but it never was color blind.
A “gentleman’s agreement” effectively banned Blacks from baseball until Jackie Robinson in the 1947. A “reserve clause” contractually sentenced baseball players to teams for life until Marvin Miller and Curt Flood in the 1960s and ’70s. Girls’ and women’s athletics were basically afterthoughts until Title IX in 1972.
The turbulent 1960s and early ’70s brought us the likes of Muhammad Ali and Billie Jean King, Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Black players arrived to such racism in New Orleans for the 1965 American Football League All-Star Game that they forced the event’s move to Houston.
Social advocacy veered more to player advocacy behind Miller, as baseball’s union head empowered players in his and other sports to more money and freedom. Strikes and lockouts always worked for Miller’s players, although not always for other sport’s unions. Or for you as fans. And where was the innocence when steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs brought scandals and a Congressional investigation?
Sports generally tiptoed around racial and social issues for decades, although Braves vice president Hank Aaron told me this about the baseball establishment in 1987: “To be very honest with you, I think some of these guys don’t wear sheets and hoods. They just wear neckties.”
Social issues would come up, of course. The NFL took the 1993 Super Bowl from Phoenix when Arizona voted down Martin Luther King Jr. Day being a paid state holiday. MLB kept its 2011 All-Star Game in Phoenix despite Arizona’s controversial new immigration law. Did either league take the right stance? Did both?
In 2012, everything changed. It started with NBA players speaking out about the shooting death of Black teenager Trayvon Martin. In 2014, their outrage turned to the racist comments of Clippers owner Donald Sterling, and the league quickly banished him (quite a contrast to how MLB and players reacted to Reds owner Marge Schott’s insensitive comments in a pre-Twitter society). Then the focus turned back to violence against Black people, particularly involving white police officers.
This is our world: NBA players took the lead in the Black Lives Matter movement to change sports and society. And Colin Kaepernick accused NFL owners of boycotting him for kneeling during the national anthem to protest racism. And the Washington football team dropped its nickname, with the Cleveland baseball team next. And President Joe Biden declared nobody should be denied access to school sports over gender identity or sexual orientation. And MLB moved the All-Star Game.
This also is our world: Then-President Donald Trump pushed college football and then the Big Ten in particular to return faster amid COVID-19. And Trump implored NFL teams to fire players who kneel during the national anthem. And Mississippi joined Idaho in barring transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s teams.
And some members of Congress want to strip MLB of its antitrust exemption for moving the All-Star Game.
Which side is being political? Which is being responsible? Which is going too far? Which is not going far enough?
If you want to rid sports of politics, what do you do about presidents? When should they butt out, and when should they step in? And who will stop them?
Teddy Roosevelt tried to save college football in the early 1900s and ease the brutality. Bill Clinton tried to broker an end to a baseball strike in 1995. Richard Nixon tried to change the NFL’s TV blackout policy so he could watch Washington in the playoffs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to give the country a diversion during World War II by telling MLB play on. George W. Bush tried to help the nation heal after 9/11 by throwing out an opening World Series pitch at Yankee Stadium. Jimmy Carter led a U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
How do you keep politics and politicians out of the international Olympics when you can’t keep them out of national sports? How do you know where to draw a line?
Where do we draw it today?
* * *
Everyone wears Jackie Robinson’s No. 42 once a season to honor the color barrier breaking.
I am not here to say whether MLB went too far in moving the All-Star Game. You are entitled to your opinion.
You have every right to boycott watching MLB, which is what Frank from Norwood emailed that he is doing.
“It doesn't matter to me what the actual political reasons are,” he wrote. “It's just that they decided their political views are more important than the game.”
The players, he wrote, should be able to speak freely about any issues they choose, but this is a corporation playing politics and he won’t stand for it.
Mike from Norwood emailed that MLB is just doing what a corporation does, acting in its best interest after gauging what is in society’s best interest.
“Some might prefer to keep the game of baseball itself inside a bubble of fan interest, but that train is leaving the station,” he wrote. “It started pulling away with Jackie, continued with Hank and then with Colin’s knee.
“Those choosing to ignore reality risk falling off.”
That is his opinion. You have yours. Whatever it might be, if you accept the world of sports as it is, politics and all, reflecting and sometimes influencing society, might decide to make different choices on how to follow it.
Or whether to boycott it.