Sports Sense

Sammy Sosa, the man who until now has only had to fight steroid rumors, has a completely new look.

And I am startled by what I see. I’m not feeling Sammy Sosa as Michael Jackson’s little brother.

Sammy’s new skin tone is shocking and creepy. And I’m being nice. It’s a lot easier to deal with white people tanning themselves brown than to see a black man bleach himself white.

I feel like there is something really wrong with this. I am a dark-skinned black man. Proudly so, Today. I would like to say I have never wondered what it would be like to be lighter. But that would be a lie. I have lived the contradictions that many of us African-Americans deal with about skin color but often chose not to think about. Still its hard to forget the indignities.

Like –

Getting a whipping because I called my cousin “black”.

Being teased because of my dark skin – by several other black boys in junior high. Most of what I remember about seventh grade is that I hated how dark I was. I had never realized that dark was considered “bad” until that year.

This is a complicated subject for many black people. We have long been hung up on skin color. We used to call it “color-struck”. These days we try to say it is not a problem – until some black man, like Sammy Sosa or Michael Jackson decides to lighten his skin. But the fact is, lightening one’s skin color is something black people used to do all the time. The skin-bleaching companies made a lot of money from Negroes years ago.

Despite everything, particularly the self-hatred, we have learned to just adapt. Somehow, I guess, I got over the fact that Michael Jackson became a white guy who had white kids. I now kind of think of him as two guys. The young black kid and the old white weirdo.

But his dying so suddenly has sort of allowed me to forgive him for all of his weirdness. Because light or dark his talent was phenomenal.

Which brings me back to Sammy Sosa, who now looks virtually unrecognizable in his newly-lightened skin.

For his part Sammy is saying that a rejuvenation process has changed his skin color. I’ll just be watching to see if he gets dark again.

For now this feels a lot worse to me than wondering whether Sammy did steroids.

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Another blow to the pro football ownership hopes of Rush Limbaugh.

Now an NFL owner says he doesn’t want to see the conservative broadcaster in the owners box.

Indianapolis Colts owner, Jim Irsay said Tuesday that there is no way that he would vote to approve the controversial Rush Limbaugh as an owner of an NFL team.

Limbaugh is reportedly a key part of an ownership group seeking to buy the St. Louis Rams.

According to a report from the Associated Press, Jim Irsay said, “I, myself, couldn’t even consider voting for him. When there are comments that have been made that are inappropriate, incendiary and insensitive … our words do damage, and it’s something that we don’t need.”

Irsay has earned the credibility to speak out against Limbaugh. He has proudly hired two African-American head coaches in this decade. And Irsay who won the Super Bowl three years ago with the revered Tony Dungy at the helm, now has a high-powered, undefeated team under new head coach Jim Caldwell this season. Some football insiders believe this could be the Colts best team yet.

But Irsay will need at least another 8 owners to join him in opposition to Limbaugh. NFL bylaws require that at least 24 of the league’s 32 owners must vote in favor of an ownership change.

Several NFL players have spoken out against Rush Limbaugh, and they have been joined by the NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith who indicated the other day that he also strongly opposes Limbaugh’s bid.

Sports have long been the place where America has tested its appetite for tolerance. But changes on the playing fields and on the courts did not come without many disappointments, hurts and shame. But more than 60 years ago several significant racial barriers were hurdled.

Joe Louis won the heavyweight championship of the world in the 1930s. Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin in front of Adolph Hitler. And of course Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball in 1947. Those three athletes transcended their sports and helped change the way America viewed and treated all African-Americans.

Here’s hoping a united front of NFL owners, players and fans speak up strongly against Rush Limbaugh and send an even more powerful message about the kind of progress we’ve made as a nation.

UPDATE

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We learned this week that Rush Limbaugh is part of an ownership group trying to buy the St. Louis Rams. But a couple of NFL players are making clear that they are having none of it. Saying they would never play for a team owned by Limbaugh.

Let’s deal with facts. Limbaugh is a race-baiter. His history for fostering racial division is long and distressing. But he is also an extremely well-paid, highly-skilled, professional broadcaster. Which means Limbaugh knows exactly what he is saying on his number-one rated radio show. That makes him especially dangerous.

While I’m not a conservative, I do not for one minute believe that most conservatives are racists. But where are the decent conservatives to straighten out the Limbaugh’s of the world when their discourse turns ugly? Does their silence make them complicit in Limbaugh’s and others’ demeaning rants? I believe it does.

Rush Limbaugh is famous for criticizing what he calls “the drive-by media” or as they are also known – “the mainstream” media.

But the irony is that some of those very same mainstream media companies own many of the radio stations that carry Limbaugh’s show. And not one of them has repudiated the hateful things that Limbaugh has often said, and why should they? Limbaugh is making millions for them.

So why might it fall on the NFL to decide if Rush is acceptable or not. Sadly, millions of Americans think he’s just fine – the ratings certainly say so – and so too do the broadcast companies that profit from him.

This is a deeply polarized time in this country.

It’s a time when President Obama who is bi-racial can be called a racist with very little in the way of protest from anyone. Glenn Beck, the TV host who stupidly called the president a racist, is still allowed to spew his ignorance on the air. And Beck’s network, Fox News Channel, has done nothing so far to reign Beck in. Fox officials simply point to his ratings, which continue to go up.

So while I applaud the players for speaking out against Limbaugh, I am appalled that too many other Americans and corporations for way, way too long have been willing to sit in silence and do virtually nothing about racial hatred broadcast over the air.

I don’t think this is really about the NFL or Rush Limbaugh at all.
It’s really about us and what we are willing to put up with.

UPDATE

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The NBA handed down suspensions yesterday for Friday night’s brawl at Madison Square Garden. Fifteen games for the Nuggets’ Carmelo Anthony. Ten game suspensions each for J.R. Smith and Nate Robinson. Mardy Collins of the Knicks the instigator, is suspended for six games. Four game and one game suspensions were assessed to others. A total of seven players from both teams will lose significant game checks and court time for their respective roles in the melee.

When NBA commissioner David Stern takes action he comes down hard. Stern is widely considered the most effective commissioner in sports with his near dictatorial powers, 10 million dollar salary and an unmatched ability to keep his players in line when they embarrass polite society.

Stern takes action because he sees clearly the “elephant in the room”. He knows all too well that the “elephant in the room” remains race, whether anyone else wants to honestly deal with that fact or not. The NBA’s African American players simply cannot make a scene, let alone come to blows without incurring the wrath of columnists, psychologists and anthropologists.

The image of black men fighting – outside of a boxing ring – is just too scary for most of America to deal with. These “thugs” as some would call them are supposedly a threat to the youth who look up to them and a disgrace to a society that barely acknowledges them unless they are in a uniform or on stage providing entertainment. This is why the great sports master – Stern – has intervened to insure his young men act right, talk right and play well with others.

While 2007 looms, nearly seven years into a new millenium, the fears presented by race still linger. We are still impacted by a centuries old lack of compassion and true acceptance.

African American young men remain the nation’s least educated, least employed and most jailed group of citizens. They also remain the least understood. Too many of them believe sports and entertainment are the only viable legal options to obtaining the “American Dream”. And for too many fans, uniforms and stage gear are the only things that seem to fit the stereotyped notion of what a successful black man should look like.

Thus, the problem is ours – to get over, once and for all. All of us. From the players who act out, to the authority figures who crack down, to the fans who seem to expect nothing better, we all need to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Because until we do we will never be able to deal with it.

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How the NBA honchos hand down penalties and punishment for the brawl between the New York Knicks and Denver Nuggets at Madison Square Garden the other night will go a long way toward determining what they learned if anything from the infamous Pistons-Pacers brawl of two years ago. Let’s start from the beginning. The Knicks Mardy Collins fouls the Nuggets J.R. Smith hard as he goes in for a layup/dunk. The ensuing confrontation led to a brawl that quickly got out of hand. But the brawl may have actually begun before the first blows were thrown, when Knicks coach Isiah Thomas allegedly “warned” Nuggets star Carmelo Anthony not to drive the paint. At that point the Knicks were being blown out and embarrased yet again at home with time running out in the fourth quarter while Denver’s starters were still in the game.

Athlete fights are always interesting in slow motion review. The replay allows us to opine from on high what really happened and how those angry players should have responded. The replay doesn’t take us into the huddle where perhaps the call for retribution for the embarrassment was demanded. What price should Isiah Thomas pay for allowing his players to mete out punishment? And why should Carmelo Anthony get singled out for increased punishment for sucker-punching Mardy Collins, when clearly, tackling and wrestling were going between several other players on both teams at the same time?

If this were ice hockey or major league baseball our view of this brawl might be totally different. In baseball when one player is hit by a pitch, invariably the “code” demands retribution by the opposing pitcher to hit the offending team’s first batter. This “code” is understood and accepted as being “part of the game.” The code is also sanctioned by the manager. Still bench clearing brawls usually follow despite the code. In hockey an unskilled “goon” is often called upon by his coach to put a “hit” on the opposing star who is scoring too much. Fights and occasional muggings are an accepted part of the NHL culture. Still, when the goon attacks the star usually a melee erupts and benches also clear. In both baseball and hockey though the fights and retribution come to an end and the next day the sun rises and fans return for more.

So what was different at Madison Square Garden? What is the “code” in the NBA? And why do so many people react with apparent shock and horror when basketball players “lose it”? NBA Commissioner David Stern has been tough on the behavior and etiquette of the league’s players. Obviously, Stern is keenly aware of the double standard applied to the players in his league. What makes the violence of basketball players so much worse? Its a retorical question. We really know why. Its still hard to take any sort of misbehavior from this still mostly black league. Black men out of control. Its an outrage. Let hypocrisy reign.

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