Political personal foul

There's always a lot of controversy regarding sports and politics. It's coming up a lot right now in relation to the Olympics.

There is a certain faction that feels that the Games should just be about the athletes, and that the Olympics is not the venue for politics and political protest.

Unfortunately, that should be the case in sports as a whole, but let's face it...politics and sport have always been intertwined, and not just in as much as the Kennedy family's joy in playing touch football on the East Lawn.

Whether meant to be or not, Jackie Robinson's rookie year in Major League Baseball was as much political statement as it was an opportunity for a talented ball-player.

In 1965 the American Football League pulled their All-Star Game out of New Orleans when the black players were treated poorly by local businesses, including the hotels in the Crescent City.

The NFL had to make decisions on whether to play their scheduled slate on Sundays based on national tragedies - the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They have made security decisions based on the invasion of Iraq in 1990. They have combined teams (The Eagles and Steelers in the 1940's) to keep the league playing games at a time of war.

All of these decisions were influenced by the politics of the times.

There was even, in the NFL, a controversy in hair in the late 1960's when Joe Namath came into the league. He represented young, rebellious America during a time of civil unrest in America, while Baltimore's Johnny Unitas represented the old guard.

But the Olympics are different.

The Olympics have always been political because governments have always been involved. Governments sponsor teams, they compete to host the event, and even when watched, it is about us against them. It's about which country can win the most. It is not about, what the Olympic Committee wants you to believe, some higher ideal of competition or cooperation.

The so-called Olympic ideal is a myth. It's not about a level playing field and the best athletes in the world. Were it about a higher ideal, no country would be awarded the games. We all engage in human rights violations - China (Tibet), the United States (Guantanamo Bay, and, historically, civil rights issues with just about every minority in this country...the most glaring in the last century being the last time we engaged in internment camps for the Japanese, not unlike Gitmo for the Muslims, during World War II), England (over the last 40 years in Northern Ireland), and the list goes on.

It has always been about politics, whether world, national, or individual.

Just a sampling of what the history of the Olympic games has indeed been in the regards to politics...

In 1916 the Olympics, to be held in Berlin, Germany, were canceled due to World War I. Twenty years later Berlin hosted the Olympics again, Adolf Hitler seeing the event as an opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of the Aryan race...to further his political agenda in the world arena.

At Mexico City in 1968 two American sprinters were expelled from the games for, as the IOC stated, "The basic principle of the Olympic Games is that politics plays no part whatsoever in them. U.S. athletes violated this universally accepted principle . . . to advertise domestic political views." The two runners, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, were expelled for demonstrating their support for the Civil Rights movement in the United States by giving the Black Power salute during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner at the time of the awards ceremony.

In 1972 there were the terrorist attacks in Munich, killing members of the Israeli team.

In 1980 the US boycotted the Moscow Olympics in reaction to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. More than 60 other countries followed suit.

In 1984 the Soviets boycotted the Los Angeles games, claiming that the US was politicizing the games, stirring up anti-Soviet propaganda and sentiment, and that the US was being cavalier in their attitudes towards providing adequate security for the Soviet athletes. In the US response to the Soviet accusations, the US spokesman took another opportunity to attack the Soviets for the invasion of Afghanistan. Practically all the Eastern Bloc countries followed suit.

There were other years that the Olympics were marred by some form of political statement, boycott, or other political issue affecting attendance or scheduling. This is just a sample, a notation that the idea that the two are separate or should be expected to be separate is ridiculous.

Should it be? Yes. The athletes who train their whole lives for these games should not have their opportunity destroyed by political issues, but don't expect it to ever be that way.

On a side note...

This is from New York Newsday about Isiah Thomas' new roll with the Kickerbockers...

Isiah no longer full-time. Walsh didn't say the reassigned Isiah Thomas was forbidden to have contact with the players next season, but it certainly sounded as if Thomas' new role involves being completely invisible. "He's not coming in every day like he used to," Walsh said, "but he is there as a resource for me."

Is it just me, or has Donnie Walsh turned Isiah Thomas into Milton Waddams from Office Space? It's just a matter of time before he's sitting at a desk in some broom closet in Madison Square Garden with a can of bug spray and his paychecks cut off.

Remember when...

Welcome to my little nostalgic trip down memory lane in professional sports -

Remember when covering the courts was synonymous with covering basketball, not football?

When you didn't need a degree in chemistry to follow home-run chases?

Or have a degree in law to follow the NFL and NBA?

When hockey was relevant?

When NASCAR wasn't?

When the MLB All-Star Game was a good game because players had pride in the way they played - whether the game mattered or not?

When the Eastern European Olympic squads were vilified for their steroid use while American athletes were supposedly winning cleanly?

When athlete's hat and shoe sizes didn't mysteriously increase due to using "flax-seed oil?"

When basketball was still primarily a team sport?

When Al Davis still knew football?

When Matt Millen still had an untarnished legacy in football?

When Bill Belichick was the head coach that would ever only be a great defensive coordinator?

When 49ers-Giants was the NFL's marquee match-up?

When Pete Rose was a sure-fire, first-ballot Hall of Famer?

When you heard James Earl Jones deliver this line, "America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come," and some naive part of you actually still believed it?

when you could actually turn on ESPN expecting sports, MTV expecting music, and CNN expecting real and relevant news?

When the big scandal in sports usually involved Yankees pitchers swapping families?

When the Orioles were a contender?

When the term doubleheader meant that you were going to get to see two games on one ticket?

When going to the ballpark on the major league level cost less than $15.00 for bleacher seats a dog and a beer?

When it was hard to get into a Redskins game in DC?

When pitchers regularly started 35 to 40 games per season and it wasn't unusual to have between two and three starters with anywhere from 15 to 25 wins each?

When sportscasters didn't feel the need to turn every player's name into a nickname while showing highlights?

When George Michael was the man and The Sports Machine was the show to watch for the week's wrap-up of sports news?

Those little things that get into your head and rattle around...

DE-Bearded...

Olympic swimmer and occasional model Amanda Beard evidently will be appearing sans swimsuit in the July issue of Playboy. There is, from our puritanical countrymen and our militaristic feminists, something of an outcry about this.

Dr. Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota, told the New York Daily News, “It used to be that female athletes were portrayed as wholesome, All-American girls. Now you get female athletes in GQ, Playboy and the Swimsuit issue. The result of it is coverage that is very damaging—that trivializes and marginalizes women athletes because it does not give them the respect they deserve as competent athletes.”

So it's okay for an athlete to be wholesome, but not sexy? I understand that Dr. Kane wants these athletes to be taken seriously based on their merits as athletes, but no one should get bashed because that person is comfortable in his or her own skin.

Also, it's not like this is the first female athlete to do so - Australian WNBA star Lauren Jackson, Olympic high jumper Amy Acuff, Olympic figure skater Katarina Witt, and world cup soccer player Brandi Chastain have all been photographed sans clothes (to paraphrase Chastain - she worked really hard for her body, is proud of it, and wanted it recorded). This phenomenon is not limited to female athletes - Olympic diver Greg Louganis posed for Playgirl in 1987. NBA star Alan Houston and baseball player Carlos Delgado have also posed nude, but I don't believe that anyone thinks that has detracted from their athletic accomplishments.

Let's face it, we're not talking about Tonya Harding and the homemade porn tape here.

Personally, I think Playboy should be commended when they actually portray a woman with a strong, healthy, athletic body achieved through hard work and sweat rather than surgery.

Coming up sevens...

Let's just say that Josh Beckett is not the same pitcher this year as he was last year. Right now he's 7-0 with a 2.51 ERA and has given up two home runs. Last year? Thirty-three starts, 36 homers.

What a difference a year makes.

People who are worried about how the Dice-man adjusts from Japan to the American majors should take a look at Beckett who struggled last year. All of you who are worried about Matsuzaka - remember the following...he is still getting used to new umpires, new batters, a new strike-zone, and a new ball size. He'll come around, just don't expect him to dominate this year - but do expect to see flashes.

Not much of a fan but...

I'm not much of a basketball fan, as I'm sure regular readers have figured. I don't watch much, I'm not particularly enamored of any team and...since the early 1990's, I just find that the game has evolved into something I just don't care about. I haven't watched a minute of even the playoffs this year, and I'll usually catch a game or two...this year it's just not catching my interest.

There has been speculation in recent years that it has to do with the fact that there are more black players (roughly 75%) there than in any other league (football is roughly 65%) and the fact that they are more visible and easier to see the "thug life" connection in the blatantly displayed tattoos. I can't help but think if this were true, than hockey would rein supreme.

I think it's a different issue.

I think Michael Jordan initiated the advent of a new business model in how to build a team - find one or two superstars and surround those guys with JAGs (just another guys). Who did Allen Iverson ever have playing with him in Philadelphia that was a superstar (at the time he was with Iverson)? Paul Pierce in Boston? Even the Utah Jazz really only had Karl Malone and John Stockton for years.

I'm not even a basketball fan and I can tell you that the Lakers and the Celtics of the early to mid 80's went much deeper than that. Sure the Celtics had their big three in Larry Bird, Robert Parrish, and Kevin McHale, but they also had Dennis Cowens, Danny Ainge, ML Carr, Bill Walton, and Dennis Johnson - several of which were Hall-of-Famers themselves. The Lakers themselves had the likes of Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy, Bob McAdoo, Byron Scott, and Kurt Rambis.

Personally I think the problem is that they are trying to sell the game as a team sport and so few of the franchises really play as a team, not to mention the fact that there has been a deterioration in certain important skills such as defense (which is as much a reason why Team America hasn't been able to come home with the gold as anything else).

As for the last point - a lot has been made of the other teams around the world playing day in and day out together. It's interesting how that never affected our dream teams until the most recent generations of players.