what's my name, fool!
Reviewed by Richard Arlin (Dick) Stull, Professor, Department of Health and Physical Education, Humboldt State University, Arcata, California
AUGUST 9, 2006 archive
Hard Serve and Volley in your Face
Unless you listen to Amy Goodman or are an inveterate Noam Chomsky reader, Dave Zirin's What's My Name, Fool! Sports and Resistance in the United States will be uncomfortable reading for those who get their sports commentary from local stations or conventional media. Zirin serves a hard look at “class” as the fundamental prism through which to view sport. He also charges the net, and volleys the themes of sport as mass entertainment for profit, the "success myth," the myth of meritocracy and the historical and still-present racism, sexism and homophobia in American sport in your face.
Zirin details the struggles of those “rebel” athletes like Jackie Robinson, Billie Jean King, Muhammad Ali, Dave Meggysey and others who spoke out about economic and political injustices and were discriminated against by wealthy corporate interests on the basis of race, sex, or objectionable political views. He also writes critically on the history and significance of unions be it in interviews with Marvin Miller, Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Association from 1966 to 1982, Dave Meggysey, recently retired Director of the West Coast chapter of the NFL Players Association, or ex-boxer Eddie Mustafa Muhammad who founded JAB, the Joint Association of Boxers, a union for professional boxers, who have been historically exploited arguably more than any other class of professionals. “You guys would have the most imposing picket line,” Zirin quips. “No doubt,” replied Muhammad. If this sounds like Marxist 60's radical rhetoric rehashed, Zirin also writes about contemporary “rebel” athletes like Eton Thomas, Carlos Delgado, and Adonal Foyle, all of whom are rarities in that they have taken open political stances in society that wraps sport in the American flag as if all athletes should support the current Administration's foreign and national policies or, in the words of ESPN's radio sport feature, "just shut up." Zirin also writes about the government’s and media’s shameless promotion of ex-professional football star turned army ranger Pat Tillman as well as the even more shameful circumstances behind the cover-up of the circumstances behind his untimely death. There are also prickly features on logo issues, Tile IX, women in sport, and athletes as diverse as Barry Bonds, Allen Iverson and Rasheed Wallace, Green Bay’s Reggie White, Mia Hamm, Martina Navratilova, Lacey O’Neal, and many, many more. Zirin doesn't hide the fact that he likes Barry Bonds’ defiance toward what Zirin believes to be a self-righteous, hypocritical and partially closet-racist media and public despite Bonds’ general unlikeability and accusations of his steroid use. Indeed, the latter half of Zirin’s book deals with the state of contemporary sport in America, and anyone who wants a wholly different take from the conventional media treatment of sport issues could get a primer starting on page 100. And yet, the most valuable insights come from Zirin’s discussions and synopses of sport before the 1990’s. Zirin’s mining of the history of groundbreaking notables in the crusade for economic and social justice gives even the lover of sport history fresh new insights. His opening chapter on Lester “Red” Rodney, the editor for the Daily Worker’s sport section from 1934 to 1958, is a workers/class perspective on sport history rarely highlighted. Jackie Robinson's audacity in stealing home as “an emblem of possibility for social change” in chapter two also yields interesting insights about the man who broke the color barrier in professional baseball in 1947. Though much has been written about Robinson, Zirin's focus on Robinson’s relationship to other black athletes and leaders like Joe Louis, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Paul Robeson give thoughtful insights into the argument that Robinson, though a courageous figure, was not militant enough later in his life.
The title of the book "What's My Name, Fool!" is taken up in chapter three, and was Muhammad Ali's taunt to Floyd Patterson during their heavyweight title fight. Patterson, who dubbed himself a “patriotic Catholic,” challenged not only Ali's title but also called into question his conversion to the Nation of Islam. Zirin uses the boxing ring as an effective vehicle for rope-a-doping the reader into understanding the history of racism in American sport. He discusses America’s first black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, and his open defiance of racial “convention” in the first part of the twentieth century, the carefully conceived comportment of Joe Louis in the 1930’s and 1940’s as a reaction to Johnson, and Ali's reassertion of defiance and dissent in the 1960’s where he was stripped of his heavyweight championship title in 1967 for refusing induction into the military on religious grounds. Ali was eventually vindicated, winning an unanimous Supreme Court decision in his favor in 1970. Zirin writes of Ali's later co-option by the establishment that had formerly reviled him and quotes Hall of Fame football superstar and social activist Jim Brown's lament that what he (Brown) admired most about Ali was his “warrior spirit,” clearly preferring the Ali of the 60's to the new acceptable, safe and “harmless” Ali.
Zirin’s volume is an excellent addition to older works such as James Michener’s “Sports in America” and Christopher Lasch's “The Culture of Narcissism,” which had interesting analyses of the role of sport in American society. Stanley Eitzen and Jay Coakley, George Sage and Dick Crepeau have also done excellent work in the economics of sport, the stadium rip-offs, the astronomical odds against "making it" in the pros versus the wildly unrealistic expectation by high school and college athletes of achieving this, abetted of course, by peers, parents, owners, coaches, campus administrators, and fans. All of the above parties are wont to perpetuate this success myth in the face of a reality that simply has never nor presently supports this belief. Zirin touches on all of these themes, though with a more anecdotal approach as opposed to bringing sociological methodologies or writing as a cultural historian. Finally, Zirin's book deals with the power of symbol. A scene in the movie Remember the Titans shows one of the black football players putting up a picture of the infamous 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games black-gloved salute of Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the wall in his dorm room. The white player says something to the effect of, "Take that down, I ain't lookin' at that.” The symbolism behind the famous picture is explained in fascinating interviews by Zirin with John Carlos himself and teammate Lee Evans in chapter four. The actions of Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the medal stand earned them the opprobrium of many in the United States. The two were banned from the Olympic Village and their medals removed. And yet each gesture (the raised fist in the black glove, beads, bare feet, head downcast) was a specifically thought out symbol indicating solidarity with one of the principles of The Olympic Program for Human Rights which they believed in. Standing shoeless, for example, represented the athlete’s identification with poverty and economic injustice, the beads were worn in memory of those who were lynched or who died in the Middle Passage, and the raised fist in the black glove was a protest against shaking the hand of the “notorious white-supremacist” and then head of the US Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage. Paid little attention to by most was silver medalist Chris Norman, white and from Australia, who sprinted in to the stands to grab a ribbon to show solidarity with Smith and Carlos, though he zipped up his sweatshirt. The fascinating and poignant interviews with Evans and Carlos are by themselves worth the price of the book.
Zirin is clearly contemptuous of those who wrap sport in patriotic rhetoric to serve their agendas but who then cast stones at those individual athletes whose thoughts and actions take issue with economic and social injustice – in other words those who truly believe and act in accordance with the principles of democracy and who reflect the most sacred principle of all – the right to dissent. What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States is a thought-provoking read for any sports fan, American history buff, or even newshound, not to mention a resource for history, sociology, cultural or American Studies courses. These are not simply “feel good” sports stories. They are stories of athletes whose moral courage invariably took great tolls on their careers and livelihoods, but made it better for the rest of us, athletes and fans alike who stood on their shoulders. Zirin serves hard. Try returning his serve if you can, but he'll be at the net waiting to volley right back in your face.
Zirin, Dave. What's My Name, Fool! Sports and Resistance in the United
States. Haymarket Books, 2005. 304 pp. Photographs,
bibliographic references, index. $15.00 (paperback) ISBN 1931859205
Copyright © 2006 by Richard Arlin Stull.