Review: Welcome to The Terrordome

September 10, 2007

The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports, by Dave Zirin (Haymarket Books, 2007)

Dave Zirin is an angry young man. But he has his rights and speaks on behalf of the multitude of fans whose attatchment to their games goes beyond the box scores. His Web site, EdgeofSports.com, is a double entendre: the topics for his weekly columns are at the periphery of normal sports discussion and they definitely have an edge to them.

Terrordome is not exclusively a baseball book, but Zirin, a regular writer for the Nation and SLAM magazine, has plenty to say about the problems of the national pastime.

For one thing, he joins in the criticism with those who believe the major leagues takes unfair advantage of players from Latin America. Holding out the “carrot” of a better life in America — similar to many of our parents and grandparents who came to these shores a century ago in search of, as my people say, die goldene medina (the golden door) — only to discard these talented athletes once their usefulness is gone. With no appreciable skills, they return to lives of poverty and disadvantages.

Zirin also questions the amount of attention paid to Barry Bonds and performance enhancing drugs, claiming doubt that a white player player in similar circumstances would be so roundly treated. The issue has made baseball “which is supposed to be the national pastime…instead another stick to divide us.”

I may be naive, but I disagree with the author on this one. If Jeff Kent, a player noted for his less than Dale Carnegie approach to the media, suddenly bulked up and began slugging 60 home runs a year at an advanced age, you can’t convince me that the press wouldn’t hang him out to dry as well. Conversely,  if Ken Griffey, Jr. had stayed healthy and had been the one to break Aaron’s record, I believe he would have been embraced by fans and media alike.

Zirin’s other main baseball essay recounts the life and legacy of Roberto Clemente, the proud Latino who entered the game with the double burden of racial and xenophobic discrimination.

The reader — owing to their own cultural and racial biases — may disagree with many of Zirin’s thought-provoking  ideas, but Terrordome opens the door for discussion

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