Zirin, Dave
What's My Name, Fool?: Sports And Resistance In The United States
$15.00

In the America of today sports and sports reporting has become the narcotic of the masses, the barbiturate of middle class America that keeps most of us from thinking about, well, much of anything. Under the pen of Dave Zirin sports becomes something quite different. He writes regularly in places such as Alexander Cockburn’s Counterpunch website, about sports from a decidedly radical point of view. In this new collection of essays, Zirin finds the great moments in the history of 20th century sport, moments when someone stood up and mattered, most picturesquely when Tommie Smith and John Carlos lowered their eyes and raised their black gloved fists during the national anthem at the 1968 summer Olympics in Mexico City. As a nine year old I remember two things when this event made the newspapers the next day. I remember my Republican parents saying it was shameful and un-American and worse. And I remember thinking how very cool that picture looked. I cared nothing for Olympic sports. I knew nothing of the civil rights movement or the anti-war protests then sweeping the country and the globe, but I recognized something important and exciting in that image, something that stuck. Zirin looks for such moments, and finds them in such places and people as Jackie Robinson breaking the color line in baseball and Muhammad Ali doing just about anything when he was young and exciting and "the greatest", not the readily acceptable and pitiable figure he has become. This is the sports book everyone should read if they only read one sports book or if they’ve read hundreds.