GREENER GRASS: Cuba, Baseball and the United States, by Aaron Woolf, Rudolph Callegari and Nancy Roth
The passion for the sport on both sides of the Straits of Florida was evident in 1999, when a historic two-game series pitted the Baltimore Orioles against the Cuban National Team. For the first time in 40 years, a major league team played in Havana, and the Cuban team traveled to Baltimore. In packed stadiums, cowbells and fans, and protesters and conga drums provided a backbeat for the series. But, behind the excitement lay a complex history of competition and cooperation that stretches back to baseball’s 19th century origins.
Greener Grass: Cuba, Baseball and the United States highlights the defection of Cuban pitcher Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, who was signed by the New York Yankees in 1998.
By looking at more than a century of baseball history, Greener Grass: Cuba, Baseball and the United States illustrates the ways in which the game has served as a common ground and a test of strength between politically estranged countries. It also reveals how the sport can be seen as a microcosm that reflects divergent national identities, as well as underlying tensions of race, democracy, and opportunity.
Featured interviews include Tommy Lasorda of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who was a former player in the Cuban Professional League; Wilfredo Sanchez, Cuba’s all-time hits leader; Rudolfo Fernandez, former coach of the Almendares and Habana baseball clubs in Cuba and star player for The New York Cubans in the Negro Leagues; and many others.
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson tells the story of the first African-American boxer to win the most coveted title in all of sports and his struggle, in and out of the ring, to live his life as a free man. Part One follows Jack Johnson's remarkable journey from his humble beginnings in Galveston, Texas, as the son of former slaves, to his entry into the brutal world of professional boxing, where, in turn-of-the-century Jim Crow America, the heavyweight champion was an exclusively "white title." Johnson lived his life out loud, wearing fancy clothes, driving fast cars and openly flaunting the conventions of the time by dating and then marrying white women. Despite the odds, Johnson was able to batter his way up through the professional ranks, and in 1908 he became the first African-American to earn the title Heavyweight Champion of the World. Johnson's victory set in motion a worldwide search for a "white hope" to restore the title to the white race. On July 4, 1910, in Reno, Nevada, ex-champion Jim Jeffries, the new "Great White Hope," came out of retirement to challenge Jack Johnson. Johnson easily won the contest, billed as the Battle of the Century, despite a hostile crowd and a steady stream of racial epithets hurled from Jeffries' corner. Johnson's victory provoked race riots all around the country, but his troubles were only just beginning.
A Washington Post article, "Frontline: Money and March Madness: NCAA’s in the money — but athletes aren't" by Rick Maese states:
There is no trickledown economics when it comes to college sports. While the money swirls all around them, the athletes at the center of the hoops spectacle are strictly out of bounds. PBS’s “Frontline” turned its dogged correspondent Lowell Bergman loose on the topic for Tuesday’s segment, “Money and March Madness,” and the result is a report that pokes gorilla-size holes in the antiquated idea of amateurism, comparing today’s college basketball players to indentured servants.
The details and arguments are not new. Generations of college athletes have generated revenue for their schools, for the NCAA and for television networks, while pocketing only a chance at a four-year education. The “Frontline” segment hinges on its voices, and that’s where the report is both lacking and illuminating.
There are any number of down-on-their-luck former college stars who could illustrate the hypocrisy of the NCAA and its refusal to financially compensate its employees — er, its student-athletes. Instead, the segment features just two athletes: Joakim Noah, a millionaire basketball player for the Chicago Bulls, and Ed O’Bannon, who played 10 years of professional basketball and is now a marketing director for a car dealership in Las Vegas. O’Bannon is also the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA. Instead, the most compelling voice is an unwitting one: Mark Emmert, the NCAA president who has the unenviable task of defending the organization's outdated position.
“We provide them with remarkable opportunities to get an education at the finest universities on Earth,” Emmert says in an explanation that feels stripped from a 1950s black-and-white infomercial. The wide-eyed viewer should drink a tall glass of milk and perhaps hold a balloon on a string, too.
The NCAA clings to the romantic image of students wearing letterman jackets and smiles without acknowledging that the entire landscape has changed. In the past three decades especially, college sports has become big business and its profit margins remain remarkable because it features an unpaid workforce. Emmert fails to explain why virtually the only thing unchanged is the compensation for the athletes.(Washington Post)
PBS's Frontline's "Money and March Madness: If everyone else is profiting from the multibillion dollar college sports business, why shouldn't the athletes?"
PARIS -- Ghanaian soccer player Solomon Opoku heard the Serbian fans screaming racist insults and turned around as they set upon him, hurling punches and abuse.
The attackers were supporters of Opoku's team, determined that a black player shouldn't take the field for their club.
Two days later, Olympique Marseille President Pape Diouf got a firsthand look at what his black players endure when he traveled to the team's UEFA Cup match at Zenit St. Petersburg in northern Russia.
Solomon Opoku
"What we went through was hideous," Diouf, who is black, said in an interview with the Associated Press. "It was the classic stuff, the bananas thrown at black players warming up, the monkey chants, obscene gestures. Not only does Zenit not hide the fact that no black player could play for this club, the fans say so themselves."
Zenit St. Petersburg in northern Russia
Racism has become the scourge of European soccer stadiums. Whether the supporters are watching a minor league in Serbia or a major European competition such as the Champions League, matches are stubbornly plagued by prejudice from the Mediterranean Sea to the Ural Mountains.
Anti-racism campaigns aimed at fans have met with limited success at best, leaving the problem to FIFA, the sport's governing body, and the Union of European Football Associations to clean up.
Zenit St. Petersburg in northern Russia
Soccer officials have condemned fan racism and issued fines. But penalizing clubs or nations in ways that would hurt both them and their fans -- such as disqualification from tournaments, forfeiting points or stopping a match -- is something they have been reluctant to do.
"You have countries, [like] Russia today, where racism is a quasi-official doctrine," said Pascal Mignon, a French sociology researcher at the INSEP sporting institute. "In Russia, xenophobia is quite strong. So you will see it in a more powerful way, like you will in southern European countries like Spain or Italy."
Mario Balotelli has admitted he is growing weary of hearing racist abuse when playing football, and is asking for help in the fight against racism in the Italian game.
Americans aren't exempt from the abuse.
Midfielder DaMarcus Beasley, a black player from Indiana, was taunted by fans who made monkey chants after he scored his first goal for Glasgow Rangers in a 2007 Champions League qualifier at FK Zeta in Bijelo Polje, Montenegro.
Midfielder DaMarcus Beasley
"It's something that shouldn't be in football," Beasley said. "You get it everywhere. You still get it in Spain. I got it in Belgrade. I got it Montenegro and the Netherlands as well."
During his successful bid to oust Lennart Johansson as UEFA president two years ago, Michel Platini earmarked anti-racism as a key priority in his election campaign.
"We're at a turning point in our sport," Platini said at the time. "My idea would be to stop the match completely. There should be no half measures when dealing with racism."
However, Platini has turned down multiple requests for an interview on the subject since last November, pledging to address racism in a speech next month at Warsaw, Poland.
Ukrainian skinheads and nationalists gesture as they take part in a rally in downtown Kiev. The London-based Amnesty International warns of an "alarming rise" in racially- and ethnically-motivated attacks in this ex-Soviet republic of 46 million in recent years. The group says 60 people were targeted in racist violence last year, and six of them died.
The location is notable. The 2012 European Championship will be co-hosted by Poland and Ukraine, two nations with visible racist groups.
Banner in Poland with a "no hook-nosed Jews" icon
In Poland, sociologist Rafal Pankowski fights racism as a member of Nigdy Wieciej -- or Never Again.
"To a greater or lesser degree, this problem has come up at almost every club," Pankowski said, explaining that there have been anti-Semitic banners and chants at games, as well as monkey chants. The BBC reported last year that Leszek Miklas, the president of Polish team Legia Warsaw, acknowledged up to 20 percent of the club's fans were neo-Nazis. Speaking to the AP, Miklas accepted that individuals at his club have extreme fascist views, but wouldn't estimate how many.
"Polish society is fairly homogeneous, we don't have a lot of foreigners," Miklas said in an interview. "So Poles are less accustomed to other races and people who look different than in countries like Britain or the United States."
London-based Amnesty International, meanwhile, warned in a November report of an "alarming rise" of hate crimes in Ukraine. Much of the violence has been blamed on ultra-rightist groups such as the Ukrainian National Labor Party.
The party leader, Evhen Herasymenko, once said attacking dark-skinned foreigners is like "the immune system -- the reaction of a healthy body to the infection that got into it."
Some players and team officials say they're fed up. But even they don't know what to do.
At England's 2010 World Cup qualifying match last September in Croatia, English forward Emile Heskey was abused throughout the match with monkey chants.
FIFA fined the Croatian FA 30,000 Swiss francs (about $32,700), a relatively small amount. England vice-captain Rio Ferdinand angrily told the BBC that "football authorities need to take a look at themselves."
Diouf was similarly outraged when UEFA fined Zenit about $58,000 for the fans' behavior last March.
"There is a gulf between declarations of intent and real actions. It's double-talk," Diouf said. "You can't scream from the rooftops and say that racism has to be eradicated ... and then when proven racist acts happen, the measures taken are always weak."
Racially harassed Brazil striker Neymar
A banana was thrown on to the pitch and landed near Brazil's striker Neymar, who scored both goals including a late penalty as Brazil won 2-0, and Metropolitan Police have concluded it was hurled by a German student sitting in the area of the stadium reserved for Brazilian supporters. (UK Telegraph, 1 April 2011). What is utterly unbelievable is that the Scottish Football Association demands an apology from the Brazilian striker Neymar who was racially abused by fans in the stadium. According to the Telegraph the fan was German, so that's okay. WTF! The soccer officials need to act like the Americans. In the USA fans can't bring outside food into the stadiums, all bags are checked. The banana incidents would be easily resolved. Furthermore, abusive fans are routinely ejected from the stadiums and ball parks.
Some players, including Barcelona forward Samuel Eto'o, have threatened to walk off the field after being racially taunted. Yet others, such as Arsenal defender William Gallas, who is black, says making such a move is a complex decision.
Barcelona forward Samuel Eto'o
So are other measures, such as taking points away from a team in league standings.
"You have to hit harder. With points, yes. But unfortunately ... taking points away from a team punishes the team" and not just the fans who support the team, Gallas said. "It might not be the team that's racist, it's the people in the stadium."
In the end, though, Gallas said, there's a point when enough is enough.
"If UEFA or FIFA do nothing, yes, leave the pitch" because "it's tough to be insulted when you're not able to react."
Samboized caricature of Barcelona forward Samuel Eto'o
Some nations are better than others in prosecuting racist fans.
The situation in England has improved since the 1980s, thanks in part to aggressive anti-racism advertising campaigns and coverage of the problem by the British press.
So after Portsmouth defender Sol Campbell, who is black, was abused last September by Tottenham supporters -- whose insults included the image of Campbell "hanging from a tree" -- four fans involved were banned from attending soccer matches for three years after pleading guilty to indecent chanting.
To complete the dehumanizing spirit, there must always be a darkened grinning Sambo caricature of Barcelona forward Samuel Eto'o
Still, it hasn't stopped such incidents from happening. Egyptian forward Mido played for Middlesbrough against Newcastle in November, he was subjected to Islamophobic chanting.
Egyptian forward Mido
Opoku was attacked while he was having a trial with the Serbian club Borac Cacak last year.
"I turned 'round to see a few Borac fans screaming they did not want blacks," Opoku told the Ghana Football Association. "They hit me a few times, but I ran, scaled a wall."
Opoku left Borac shortly afterward, and four of the attackers wound up sentenced to prison for a total of four-and-a-half years. It wasn't the first case involving Serbian fans and non-white players.
Three years ago, police arrested more than 30 Borac fans for abusing Zimbabwean striker Mike Temwanjira. A year later, UEFA fined the Serbian FA after England's black players were abused during an under-21 match played in the Netherlands.
If it's hard to protect players at the top level of game from racism, what hope is there for the likes of Opoku? "We can worry about the lesser-known players," Diouf said. "They could actually be killed on a street corner. ... That is why it's time for the international authorities to tackle this problem full on."
Beautiful Game Turned Ugly: Racism in Europe's Soccer Arenas
From the sports pages of the Miami Herald, posted on May 29, 2011, "Le Batard: We may as well just call it the Miami Hate," by Dan Le Batard: Dan Le Batard writes, I was jarred by how the conversation felt with my radio audience last week.
[ Dan Le Batard] Me: Try to be classy, Miami Heat fans.
[Miami Radio]Audience: No.
[Dan Le Batard] Me: Isn’t there a high road to be taken here?
Audience: No.
[Dan Le Batard] Me: You can’t be throwing things at Charles Barkley.
Audience: Shut up.
It is ugly, and it is beautiful, and it is sports — tapping into emotions on the extremes. There isn’t very much, in other parts of life, that makes you scream curses at the TV while the baby sleeps in the other room. And I’m as guilty of being obnoxious about the Heat as anyone this season. This team, a symbol of civic pride in the only city I’ve ever loved, has made me unusually loud, defensive and emotional as America and its sports media roots against it. So I’m not wagging a parental finger from my soapbox at you, Heat fans. I’m just interested in exploring what it is about this team and city that mixes like gas and fire to produce this unprecedented Heat — and a rabid connection unlike any I’ve ever felt between our community and a sports team.
Joy is usually enough. Gratitude, too. But that’s not all you’ll find here. “Thank you!” is glued to “Bleep you!” The joy is mixed with anger, defiance and hostility. Grace, humility and civility are noble but not quite fun. And sometimes sports make us irrational, emotion trampling logic on the way to the party. Burning cars in a championship riot? That seems like a way to protest something, not celebrate it. It also speaks to a larger unhappiness in the homes and lives away from that arena.
If LeBron James ends the season holding up the trophy, our city runs the risk of becoming so unhinged that it will put off even more people from sea to shining sea. When we throw things at Barkley, a beloved icon, and shower him in curses during the Chicago series, we are just giving the media and America the snapshots and ammunition to smear all of us as barbaric, bandwagon baboons.
There is so much criticism in the coverage of this team that the Heat players get ripped for overcelebrating against Boston, changing the narrative almost immediately after the triumph. What is going to happen if a defensive, angry city overcelebrates with a radiator’s hissing relief after an entire season of abuse?
What is a hater?
This is all America’s fault. That’s what you are saying, right? Miami didn’t feel angry and defensive like this when the Heat won in 2006. How good and pure, and only good and pure, did Livan Hernandez's “I love you, Miami” feel in 1997? But America has been overly critical of this Heat team for months, rooting against it in a way so polluted that you can hear it even in the voices of an allegedly objective media. That’s a pretty negative way for America to experience sports, rooting for the other guy to lose instead of for your guy to win, but it is only part of the explanation.
The term “haters” is a plague. It is so dismissive. Lazy. It is either a conversation ender or an argument starter. It closes open minds. And the great soothing in it is that it never requires a mirror. It puts 100 percent of the blame elsewhere, on others, and wraps it in envy.
There is plenty of that at work here. Surely, anyone who cares about sports would want this team on its side. But we participate in exacerbating the envy the moment one frustrated fan throws something at Barkley to combat it, and we perpetuate it when the angry mob concurs that, yes, that is the proper rebuttal for haters. It is why the announcer kept pleading at the end of Game4 against Chicago, as debris filled the air, that anyone who threw things would be subject to arrest. The line between passion and stupidity gets crossed when you go from “In your face!” to “at your head.”
This team is a fascinating civic symbol. It is loud, flashy, cool, famous, passionate, envied, hated. Vanquished Chicago Bull Joakim Noah called the Heat “Hollywood as hell,” but “Miami as hell” would have been more accurate. Led by sugar daddy Pat Riley, the only way this team could be more Miami is if LeBron dunked while wearing Gucci sunglasses, Dwyane Wade smoked a Cohiba on his way to the rim and Chris Bosh played the post while sipping a cortadito (Erick Dampier, for the record, already holds up his end by playing as if wearing chancletas).
Best behavior
So even though these players have behaved honorably in representing the city all season, showing uncommon grace under uncommon pressure, it is easy to see why outsiders might think this team of ours wears too much cologne. Miami knows how to party, and these guys introduced themselves with a swaying, loud fiesta you don’t normally see before a ball has bounced. James, Wade and Bosh have said they don’t regret a moment of that introduction — that it was for Miami, not for anybody else. But too much of our city was built with drug money and is now plagued by foreclosures, so America views the assembly of this team as just another flashy Miami shortcut. And that stinks and stings if you have to witness it thrown in your face while shoveling snow from your driveway and trying to cheer Jamario Moon.
It is worth noting that Heat players, the ones who have actually carried the weight of criticism, have not reacted with defiance, though it would be understandable. In fact, after beating Boston, James not only knelt but took that moment of triumph, of validation, to finally apologize to Cleveland. It was a rather remarkable contrition, given what he has endured this season, choosing the moment you were right to concede where you were wrong. Many of us, after having our image run over by a convoy of 18-wheelers for a single Decision, might have spent the entire postgame constructing a parade float out of middle fingers.
But here’s the disconnect between James and the city that celebrates him so zealously now: He has a voice, a platform, a scoreboard and inordinate fast-twitch muscle fiber with which to defend himself. The Heat fan? Not as much. It’ll make you insane, not really having your desperate voice heard, and that is true whether you are at the bottom of a well or at the top of sports. New media like Facebook and Twitter has exploded in part because people just want to be heard — to have the platform old media has.
So poison and T-shirts and expletives get hurled at Barkley, ESPN personalities and all the media members who appear to be rooting against this team. Why? Because those people are a face and voice and symbol and punching bag. They represent every faceless “hater” in America who has rooted against this team. Barkley, meanwhile, can spew all over every newspaper, radio and TV platform without rebuttal — and be very popular everywhere outside of Miami while doing it.
When it escalates
The result? Hostility. Defensiveness. Frustration. Helplessness. (Until LeBron James dunks on your behalf.) And that leads you down an emotional path that is just a few exit ramps from taking pleasure in the pain of others. Just like those old Hurricane football anarchies, it isn’t just about your own team; it becomes about inflicting pain on someone else’s. I’m not certain if mixing the love and hate makes for a better sports experience, but it certainly makes for what feels like a bigger one.
I have a friend who travels the United States. He isn’t invested in this. He is impartial. He isn’t attached to this team, city or basketball. Everywhere he goes, when the NBA comes up, he hears, “I hate the Heat. I hope they lose.” When he asks them to articulate what they hate, exactly, they tend to sound dumb. Still, something about this team bothers people in a visceral way, and there are too many people that feel it, really feel it, to simply dismiss the legitimacy of it while filing it under hater.
But here’s how hostility escalates: Even Gandhi is going to get worn out if he hears “I hate you” over and over from every angle of America. People on the receiving end of “I hate you,” understandably, aren’t going to hear anything above that, no matter how rational, nuanced or muted the criticism becomes. And at some point, the basic human response simply morphs into this:
