Fighting For The Soul Of Sport

• Date: 07.12.2007
• Book: What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States
• Author: TCRH

Review

The bloated, reactionary world of American sports is dissected with humour, style and passion in Dave Zirin’s searing assault on the megabucks that diminish the beauty of sport.

How can Muhammad Ali be turned from the firebrand youth that scared not only boxing but the American establishment in the 1960’s to the flame lighting symbol of the most corrupt Olympics of our time or the star of a government advert promoting war in Afghanistan?

How can a city like Washington DC close hospitals and have one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world yet find the public money to build a new stadium for the millionaire owners of a sports franchise?

How can a girl at college cause a national controversy by turning her back on the Stars and Stripes before a basketball game?

And should British people care? Probably, as the same bloated, millionaire owners make their way to the Premiership and we’re expected not to question the captain of a failed England team earning £23000 a day. And where are the black managers in football? How many of our football or rugby or cricket stars could comfortably come “out” and face the storm of a homophobic media?

Yet there is hope: when a young basketball player like Adonal Foyle can launch a campaign for finance reform to return democracy to the people then something of the spirit of Ali, Tommy Smith and John Carlos remains.

And, in the end, that allows Zirin to retain his, and the readers, optimism in the face of a depressing onslaught of right wing, cod patriotism that pervades the sports he loves.