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SB 1070 Protestors Take a Swing at Major League Baseball
Since SB 1070 became law in Arizona, dozens of cities and musicians have joined a boycott against the state. The Arizona Diamondback baseball team has also become a target since the team’s owner, Ken Kilpatrick, is a well-known donor to the state’s Republican party, which has backed some of SB 1070’s most fervent supporters. Protestors are boycotting the team until MLB commissioner Bud Selig moves the 2011 All Star game out of Phoenix.
The boycott’s brought to a life an interesting question: Are sports a legitimate site of political struggle?
Valeria Fernandez reports for New America Media that while the MLB boycott has struck out with some fans, the message is becoming clear to others.
“I think it makes no sense. Sports have nothing to do with political discussions,” said Simon, a Latino who lives in Tucson. “It’s fun and it’s supposed to be fun. There shouldn’t be any type of political involvement.”
Many of his friends agree with that assessment, including his father-in-law, who is Mexican and often travels from the city of Hermosillo in the Mexican state of Sonora to watch baseball games with him.
[snip]
Some fans who are in favor of repealing the law frankly just don’t see the benefits of boycotts:
Fred Michaels and his wife, Sherry, said they were in favor of repealing the law, calling it “a dry fascism” and “redundant” in trying to take on the job of the federal government. Yet, Michaels believes the effort to boycott the team is “foolish, because there are so many companies that supported SB 1070” that it’s difficult to know which ones were more involved.
But as chairman of the Somos America boycott committee explains in the article, boycotts can force companies to reevaluate who they chose to do business with, and see the connection between how profits affect people and policy:
“The intent of the business boycott is not to punish companies by asking our supporters to not purchase their products. It is to get Arizona business to realize that their support of these individuals for even ‘strictly business’ purposes is creating conditions of hate, fear, and violence against Latinos and immigrants in Arizona,” said former Arizona Senator Alfredo Gutierrez, chairman of the Somos America boycott committee.
In a clever video posted on Presente.org, there are clips spliced together that show Selig saying, “baseball is a social institution.” As reported in ColorLines last month, the commissioner’s also said that the major league baseball would only “do things when baseball can influence decisions.”
Though Selig refuses to move the game, there is already a long list of Latino players who have said they will boycott the All Star game if it stays in Arizona. And history may be on the protestor’s side. When Arizona rejected adding Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to its calendar, the move cost the state the 1993 Super Bowl along with a ton of revenue when the game was moved from Tempe to Pasadena.
13 Comments so far
Show AllDo some research on A. H. "Bud" Selig, the George Wanker Bush of MLB, and you'll know why next year's All-Star Game won't be moved elsewhere.
from the article:
~ In a clever video posted on Presente.org, there are clips spliced together that show Selig saying, “baseball is a social institution.” ~
a social institution in which citizens are coerced into allowing themselves to be taxed to provide the arena for the private owner's profit...
in Seattle, of course, even riding the ecstasy of the Griffey juggernaut, we voted against Safeco Field...
typically, then-Senator Slade Gorton, of the frozen-fish family, pushed it through, anyway...
baseball should be boycotted, but not because of this law...
just because it's an obnoxious form of robbery...
Safeco Field? That was enough for me...
Come on, guys. Baseball's not a sport anymore. It's a business. You wouldn't be boycotting a sport, you'd be boycotting a business. Baseball's all about money, all the way down to the Little League and its bogus World Series. How can it be a 'World Series' when the United States is always guaranteed a spot in the championship game? It can't, but a real World Series wouldn't draw the television viewer numbers and the advertisers, so the operators of Little League rig the LLWS. Business is business, but it's not sport, not any more.
- “I think it makes no sense. Sports have nothing to do with political discussions,” said Simon, a Latino who lives in Tucson.
So Politics and Sports don't mix hugh? Tommie Smith and John Carlos might disagree among thousands of others that have used the forum of Sport to express Political ideals.
And Jackie Robinson's introduction into the major leagues wasn't politically profound?
I was going to bring this up. Thanks Non placet. Yes, sports is as political as spending money on war or education or what kind of toilet paper you wipe your ass with (Proctor & Gamble which makes Charmin tests their chemical products on animals when today it is totally unnecessary...I don't buy ANY P&G products). Dave Zirin just wrote a book about the politics of sports "Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games We Love" and uses a term Nader once used and gives it a twist..."If you don't turn onto sports, sports will turn on you." Just look at how taxpayers are being used to pay for stadiums (instead of public schools) for the benefit of rich team owners...and the BS that stadiums create jobs is just that...BS. Check out Zirin's new book.
The Arizona rookie league has several players fresh to this country, as young as 18, non-English speaking Hispanics. It is true that sports is separate from politcs; for that reason the typical 18 year old athlete is pretty politically unaware; exactly the recipe for someone to be hanging around in public with a beer or two but without his "papers". I am waiting for baseball to recognize that they are built on the cheap labor of Hispanics as much as any other business in this country, when their not-yet-stars become the victims of the predictable profiling.
Politics and sports DO mix. The National Football League operates itself on a complete right wing conservative footprint. Same as NASCAR too. It may not be made real obvious to the typical belching 6-pack beer-gut fan. But it's there nonetheless. Look at all the militainment at the games. MLB needs to be hit where it really counts - its pocketbook. Boycotting the sport is a good place to start.
Money and toys rule
players and owners drool
taxpayers and fans played the fool. Tony
Anyone who does not realize that baseball is a very serious thing that transcends fun and games is an idiot. Too bad it's not just fun and games as it should be, but it isn't.
"The boycott’s brought to a life an interesting question: Are sports a legitimate site of political struggle?"
Same question was brought up in 1980. President Carter felt it was legitimate.
Sports should be exempted from political protest? Or any protest for that matter? Even dishonest protest? Horsefeathers.
If Abraham Lincoln showed up on July 4th. to read the Gettysburg address on the steps of the Washington monument, someone would show up to protest it. And they should.
Remember Jesse Owens? Remember a couple of fellows on a platform in Mexico city?
If enough ethical people boycott the game in Arizona, perhaps Selig will be forced to organize an emergency airlift to bring enough racists and bigots to fill the seats of the stadium and thus demonstrate that all is well with baseball and all is well in America. God Bless Selig and God Bless America.