Dave Zirin Elevates the Sports Discourse at Brookline Booksmith

Last night, author Dave Zirin said that when sports radio tries to tackle politics, the results are so ugly that "it's like imagining Mitt Romney wearing cornrows." Something's just not right.

Zirin spoke at Brookline Booksmith last night about his fruitless experiences debating sports-radio chatterboxes. When Zirin tried to delve deeper into why people just love to hate on San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds, the host kept asking Zirin if he'd ever measured Bonds' head - as if the size of Bonds' head had anything to do with why the fans are so virulent when they talk trash against Bonds.

Zirin has carved out a niche in the sports universe. His column, which is at edgeofsports.com, and his latest book, Welcome to the Terrordome, reminds fans that, no matter how current sports media tries to distance itself, it can't hide the undercurrent of race and class tensions produced by the sports machine.

Sometimes what Zirin calls the "athletic industrial complex" can't conceal its ugly side, particularly when the New Orleans Superdome, which was treated as a patriotic symbol during the Super Bowl after 9/11, became essentially the homeless camp for Hurricane Katrina victims "who could never afford a ticket to the arena."

Another example of the "athletic industrial complex" at work is how the NFL and the Pentagon manipulated the story of Pat Tillman in order to sell the public a certain vision of the war. Zirin paints a picture of a Pat Tillman who had far more ambivalent views toward the war than everyone assumed at first.

Last but not least was the incident in which disgraced (and disgraceful) radio shock-jock Don Imus insulted the Rutgers women's basketball team. Zirin told the audience that Welcome to the Terrordome was going to press, and the publisher literally stopped the presses to make sure Zirin could add a section in which he tears Imus a new one. He also expressed disappointment that the Rutgers team and coach C. Vivian Stringer stood up for themselves. It's not about Imus or hip-hop or anything else - it's about the fact that these athletes fought back, and, if they hadn't, Imus might still be peddling his swill on the air today.

But Zirin's talk wasn't all heavy. He's interested in politics, but his true passion is sports. He threw some red meat to his Boston audience when he said, "There's no clown in my opinion like Yankees owner George Steinbrenner." But he brought a reality-check down on the Red Sox management: "There's something wrong with a team that can give JD Drew 70 million dollars and just write it off." Perhaps the Red Sox - and especially the slumping Celtics and Bruins - could bring Zirin in as an advisor.

Photo of Dave Zirin by Caroline Roberts.