J.D. Drew

Editor's Note : We swear ... this is not a Bill Simmons Watchdog Blog.

Between 2004-2006, J.D. Drew offered up .282/.403/.487/.890 in 600 at-bats with men on base. He hit 24 home-runs, walked 126 times and k'd 126 times in those situations, driving in 187 runs. With the bases empty, Drew was a better hitter (.303/.426/.572/.998), but he remained a productive hitter with runners on. To put that .890 ops in context, last season, only 9 NL and 15 MLB outfielders logged an ops that high; Drew, of course, was one of them. Overall, fewer than 40 MLB players were that productive.

Between 2004-2006, Drew was a harder out with men on and two-out. His numbers ... .297/.437/.518/.955. In those 222 at-bats, he hit 10 home-runs, walked 53 times, and k'd 37. Clearly, the man's good.

Well, unless stats lie. In The *cough* Boston Sports Guy's latest running diary - this time on Matsuzaka's first Sox start - Simmons, who appears to pride himself on the truthiness of his claims, writes this of a two-out, runners-on Drew at-bat,

11:19 -- You're not gonna believe this, but J.D. Drew took a called third strike to end the inning.

(Note: Dodgers, Braves and Cardinals fans everywhere are nodding and saying, "Yup ... been there, done that.")

Go figure.

peace love gap,
Johnny Hatchett

Strange A.M.

This morning, before I even took my morning tea, I discovered the following :

• The third-best shortstop in NY might be building a mansion in my humble hometown.
• CelticsBlog.com linked my previous post on Mr. Bill Simmons, sending me more readers than I've had in the previous four months combined. Quite generous.

As I wrote my previous post on the Sports Guy, I looked up - then left out from that entry - a stat that "proves" that the Celtics are (slightly) more competitive than their record indicates. The Celtics are "only" the 6th worst team in the NBA when ranked by point differential. In other words, though they have the second worst record in the league, day-to-day, they are more competitive than five other teams in the league.

Nope, the Celtics aren't even mediocre, but they're not that historically bad ... & Simmons' plan for Celtic-success - go out screaming or swinging - would have only made some close, tough losses less close.

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett

The soul of some white folk

There are a lot of reasons to hate Bill Simmons.

Maybe you're a NY'er and hate all things Beantown.
Maybe you find his predicitions and analysis a bit light.
Maybe you're jealous that Bill gets an ESPN.com soapbox & you don't, even though you think you could do it better.
Maybe you think you & your merry crew of friends are more lunatic than Bill and his.
Maybe you can't stomach another pop culture metaphor.
Maybe you think he sold his soul to Hollywood.
Maybe you hate that Bill hates bloggers...

Whatever.

... Of course, maybe you just can't stomach Bill's repeated inability to write responsibly, sensitively, & reflexively on race and sports.

& that is what everyone is talking about these days ... Bill hates OJ Mayo ... but, not simply that, what OJ Mayo represents. &, well, even it's not clear to Bill, it's clear to others what the color of that representation is.

Bloggers have taken care of Bill's critique of what OJ Mayo represents ... who that young man is (allegedly). So what I want to spend some time with is Simmons' complaint about the Boston Celtics.

Here's what The *cough* Boston Sports Guy wrote about his Boston Celtics. (I'm including stopmikelupica.com's response to that quote.)

"For instance, the Celtics... during their 18-game losing streak, nobody ever got kicked out of a game, knocked someone into a basket support, threw a frustrated punch ... hell, even the coach didn't get kicked out of a game. There was a passive, pathetic, indifferent response to everything that was happening."

Um, weren't you the same writer that called out Isiah and the Knicks earlier this season when they got into a fight with the Nuggets after a hard foul in which they knocked someone into a basket support? The Sports Hypocrisy Guy?

"Because the final score never really mattered for most of those games..."

We can ignore the fact that The Boston Sports Guy, one of the last NBA fans, according to the man himself, is on record as saying this about his Boston Celtics.

After the Celtics inexplicably rolled off a four-game win streak and fell two games behind Memphis for pole position in the Durant/Oden Sweepstakes, I thought about flying back to Boston to kidnap Al Jefferson and stick Paul Pierce with a mononucleosis-infected needle.

Yes, he has been rooting for the Celtics to lose.

Clearly, Simmons' hypocrisy runs deeper than his critique of fighting Knicks and passive Celts. More than that, though, is, in my (and my brother's) opinion, Simmons' misuse of the Celtics struggles to support an argument against a certain type of NBA player.

Yes, the Celts lost eighteen in a row. This came without Paul Pierce, whose contribution to that team is, to put it mildly, significant. Playing without Pierce, then without Wally, then without Tony Allen, the Celtics, yup, lost eighteen in a row. Twelve of those loses, though, were by less than ten points. And of those twelve, five came by five points or less.

I know that these numbers aren't all that impressive. A franchise-worst losing streak is a franchise worst-losing streak no matter the final score. But I watched a lot of that losing streak. While Celtics fans, including Simmons, actively rooted for the team to lose, keeping losing, & win some better player (Oden or Durant), the players the Celtics put on the floor llooked (at least to me) to play hard, passionate, though frequently ineffective basketball.

During that losing streak, "Big" Al Jefferson came into his own. &, if we can believe a recent FSN New England interview with Big Al, the man is now playing with an Arenas-sized chip on his shoulder. Apparently, too many mediamouths wrote Big Al off & now he's. (See point #15, the Darius Miles All-Star Team, Bill. Notice the mind-boggling inclusion of Bobby J, age 33 at the time... in "a list of young players every year that everyone PROJECTS to be better than they actually are.") Meanwhile, young, streaky, and gifted Gerald Green, put up twenty-points a few times and was on his way to wowing a national audience in the NBA dunk contest.

Yup, the Celtics' season has been disappointing. And maybe I view this team through some green-tinted glasses. But, according to me, Simmons' analysis of his Boston Celtic's losing streak, a losing streak he rooted for, is a bit twisted.

peace love gap
johnny hatchett

Always a day late & a buck short

Yeah, I know that the Cleveland Indians' Larry Doby was the first African-American baseball player in the American League, but is it not just a bit daffy to have Chief Wahoo's team in MLB's Civil Rights Game?

(&, yeah, I know the game was just an exhibition game, won't count in the standings, and was up against the NCAA Final Four, so, for all intents and purposes, didn't count, wasn't watched ... etc, etc, etc, ...)

johnny hatchett

Sometimes, you just have to link

Sports Media review explains why Sports on My Minds' blog on Jason Whitlock is so exemplary. (It has to do with holding sports mediamouths accountable for their inconsistencies & lunacy.) But the entry in itself represents something major : a full-blown attack on the racism of an African-American journalist : complimented by a lengthy "comment" added by one of dwil's readers on the topic of white fear. The blog & that comment are must reads.

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett

Jemele Hill raises & drops issue..

Red Sox spring training - all sorts of non-events, like Julio Lugo being bananas about Boston - keeps the news on Tom Brady's person life on, as they say, the back burner. (It's actually the way-back burner, not making the top headline on the Patriot's page @ Boston.com.)

Discussing the "baby-mama drama" that Brady &, earlier, Matt Leinart have gotten themself into, Jemele Hill wonders, & then proceeds to ignore her wonderment,

So, what's going on here? Does ESPN The Magazine need to do a Where's (White) Daddy cover story? [In 1998, Sports Illustrated had a cover story about athletes having babies out of wedlock and that feature focused predominantly on black athletes.] Do white NFL quarterbacks now represent the new at-risk baby-daddy population?

What I'm wondering about is how Bill Simmons is going to spin the news. One of Simmons' (many) running joke comes at the expense of N.B.A. players. Less than a week ago, Page 2's Alpha Male wrote one of the things we "know" about the N.B.A. All-Star Game's setting is that it will inspire

2. Every ovulating groupie within a 12-hour vicinity will be making the weekend drive to Vegas to hopefully get impregnated by an NBA player -- a list that includes every hooker, stripper and jock-sniffing female between 16 and 40 from Vegas, Reno, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Phoenix and every city and town in the Los Angeles area. To its credit, the NBA is recommending that all players wear two condoms at once, even during the day and when they're sleeping.

(Don't try this at home : medical professionals urge you not to wear two condoms at once.)

There's not much that I want to say about The Sports Guys' comments. Simmons likes to repeat himself &, in this case, I'm not sure why this repetition is amusing or pleasurable. I'll just leave it at that. (To be clear : I'm not requesting that Leinart & Brady get their "images" pan-fried by the media as relentessly as the average N.B.A. player about whom Simmons jokes. I just kind of wish everyone had Brady's access to a teflon-image.)

By the way, on this evening's P.T.I., Michael Wilbon said that the news on Brady wouldn't hurt his "Golden Boy" image, because it's 2007 & this kinda of thing is fine. Apparently, Wilbon doesn't read Simmons' writing on N.B.A. players.

peace love gap,
Johnny Hatchett

The NBA in Vegas?

Forget all the issues of gambling & sin, forget "What happens here stays here," the reason that the NBA shouldn't be in Vegas is because that city is the anti-thesis of professional basketball. The excitement of the N.B.A. comes from (1) player personalities & idiosyncrasies (see: Arenas, Gilbert) & (2) player spontaneity & creativity. Vegas offers neither. Everything is lit-up, pre-fabricated choreography. Turns out that the NBA is living that up : having a poorly-programmed, broke-down cyborg mouth a mash-up of Vegas classics during introductions & having scantily-clad, but static & bored women appear. No doubt the players felt it : their body language expressed indifference & suppressed personality. &, lest you think players just don't care about introductions...see the 2006 All-Star dance-off or the 2005 All-Star introductions.

&, as Mark Stein points out, the absense of some of the guys who create the in-game spontaneity - Kidd, Nash, & A.I. - might hurt the game itself.

Call me old-fashioned, but I hope this is the last we hear about the league in Vegas.

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett

Tim Hardaway, homophobia, & race

Editor's Note : Tim Hardaway, homophobia, & race : aka : Why white is right.

Maybe it's me, but...

It's one thing to offer a thoughtful, weighty discussion of what Tim Hardaway's blackness has to do with his comments about gay men. It's useful, in fact, to point out how homophobia limits the agenda & activism of any organization. (In the above case, the blogger is writing on the N.A.A.C.P.)

It's another thing to bring it up flippantly, in passing, & with no substantive context...to accomplish what? Hell if I know.

One blogger writes,

... the African American community, including the churches, have not been exactly helpful to the gay community over the years. Religious beliefs play a big part in it.

Or, as one blogger points out, there's FoxNews (gulp!)

Hardaway's bigotry, while hardly unique, is particularly sad given that he played college ball at the University of Texas-El Paso, which made history in 1966 as Texas Western by defeating Kentucky in the NCAA final with an all-black starting five. When the Miners beat Kentucky, which was coached by the retrograde Adolph Rupp who refused to recruit black players, it was a landmark on the "glory road" to racial equality in college athletics. Presumably, Hardaway, an African-American, would reject Rupp's racism as immoral. But apparently he would have no problem with discrimination against gays.

Briefly, some thoughts on this :

• When a white person says something homophobic, we should relentlessly bring up white people's legacy of dominance over others as proof that white people just don't get it. That might make some sense.
• Is it surprising that religion might be involved in the production of homophobia amongst black people? Did we expect that all religious black people would be less homophobic than some religious white people?
  
• To suggest that a person who faces one form of discrimination should develop some radical ethos of equality is a bit daffy; in a way, it suggests that white racism might actually benefit black people. It'll help them get enlightened, or something like that.
  
• Sometimes, one's own experience of discrimination generates solidarity with others facing different forms of discrimination. Often, it doesn't. Which is why scholarship on African-American feminism or uneasy amalgamations of Marxism & feminism exists.
• Sometimes, the white gay & lesbian community have not exactly been helpful to the black gay & lesbian community. Again, there's no such thing as automatic & easy solidarity.
  
• Anyone else have thoughts on this? I'm just a little stumped & perplexed, though not surprised.
  

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett

Free Tim Hardaway(?)

Editor's Note : Free Tim Hardaway? What?

If there is such a thing as a definitive take on Tim Hardaway's homophobia | p.r. gaffe : (depending on how you look at it) : it might just be Sports on My Mind's
Tim Hardaway and the Language of Hate; Chris Broussard is LZ’s Good Buddy (as long as LZ Doesn’t Check out his Johnson in the Shower, That Is). (God I love that title.)

Sports on My Mind offers a good summation of Hardaway's comments & apology, & ties it to ESPN's Chris Broussard's equally asinine, yet less publicized, message of born-again, Christian love.

Apparently, SoMM notes, the N.B.A. removed Hardaway from all league-related appearances. To be brief : I'm fine with that. Hardaway has a right to believe what he wants & speak what he wants, but he, of course, has no inherent right to a league position, nor access to the public airwaves that disseminate his hatred & paranoia.

The thing is, I don't think that this (legitimate-form-of-)censoring Hardaway is an adequate response. It seems to me that the solution de jour of an ambiguous mixture of media mouths & the masses for the expression of hate, stereotype, racist, or offensive discourse is ... simply ... fire him/her. See: Michael Irvin, see: John Edwards' bloggers. (Neither Irvin nor the bloggers was fired, though those bloggers may as well have been. Looks to me like they took one for the team.)

I do not condone Hardaway's beliefs, nor do I think that he is a victim of some panoptic, prohibitory p.c. police force. But, by calling for the banishment or actually banishing a single voice, I speculate that the following occurs :

• We mistake the production of silence with the production of an "aware," "tolerant," or, even "gay friendly" league. Of course, a locker room filled with hate speech can't contribute to any of those things. But will a locker room of stifled hatred either? (Perhaps Broussard is over-estimating who's "with him," but he seems to think that most players feel like he does about gay people.) In other words, the homophobia doesn't go away; the environment might simply be hateful-1.
• Confronting homophobia isn't only a p.r. move. Hardaway showed his hand, apologizing for saying that he hates gay people, not for hating them.

  Yes, I regret it. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said I hate gay people or anything like that,” he said. “That was my mistake.”

  It's not at all disingenuous; he's apologizing for exactly what got him in trouble in the first place. &, I think, by engaging in this cycle of speak-(apologize)-&-fire, we tend to diminish non-speech related contributors to homophobia.
  
• This narrative, now common : speaker says something asinine, public & other media mouths call for firing, speaker is fired or resigns : is particularly easy to understand & easy to broadcast. ESPN can run the whole story through its nauseatingly repetitious Sportscenter machine thanks, especially, to the fact that we get a neat ending. There's no wider discussion; the words Hardaway spoke are his problem, we disavow them, & he's been taken care of, in one way or another. I know the job of ESPN isn't that of sociology, nor is it David Stern's work to conjure the ghost of C. Wright Mills, but let's dig a little deeper. For example, let's wonder what Hardaway's remarks have to do with Broussard's & what do both of them have to do with Tony Dungy's public support of an anti-gay organization? The N.B.A. Commish has some remarks credited to him about when the league's "inquiry" about its players end: right about when the players put the ball on the floor (so long as you have played one year in college, & abide by the dress code, & stay away from the clubs). But let's not buy what Stern is selling without investigating the evidence. For example, dig around, ESPN, to find out whether the NBA & its union provide the same benefits to a married, homosexual couple as it does a married, heterosexual couple. (It hasn't happened yet, so I'm talking about a theoretical couple ... & the league's complicity with heterosexism.) But, more importantly, let's strive to generate a real conversation : not only Amaechi's powerful biography & critiques narrating us through other player's soundbites.
  

I hate what Tim Hardaway said. But that's not the end of this story...

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett

Nope.

See last post.

Gosh, I feel bad for this team. They can't buy a thrill.

Boston wins?

This is a premature post. With just under 3:00 left in their game, the Boston Celtics are leading the Minnesota Timberwolves. If Boston hangs on & wins - a huge IF since this team can't seem to succesfully draw up & run a play in the final minute of a game - then the T'Wolves will have done the impossible : ruined a 17 game winning streak (the Suns', on Jan 29th) & a 17 game losing streak (the Celts').

Here's hoping.

David Stern's airball

Sports Media Review has a few days worth of discussion on John Amaechi's revelation that he is a retired NBA player and a gay man.

Meanwhile, Sports on My Mind offers a review of player, coach, & Commish reaction to the news on Amaechi.

Specifically, Commissioner Stern has this to say.

“We have a very diverse league. The question at the N.B.A. is always, ‘Have you got game?’ That’s it, end of inquiry.”

It's goofy how disingenuous this statement is. Stern has presided over some recent rule changes that are decidedly not about the question "Have you got game?" In fact, the implementation of an age-limit runs counter to Stern's logic. Prep-to-pro ballers frequently have game; some of them - LeBron, Amare, Dwight, (Durant?) - have game-in-excess. But, at least in this case, that wasn't the end of the inquiry.

Briefly, two additional critiques of Stern's public statement.

• As proof that "Have you got game?" is not the end of the N.B.A.'s inquiry, I point you to one reality of the N.B.A. - its dance teams - that is (again) decidedly not about the question "Have you got game?" and is (obviously) about other, more messy questions, such as gender in sports, (hetero)sexuality in sports, etc.
  
• While it is important that all players, regardless of race, class, religion, sexuality, get a fair shake in the league, this is only part of the discussion. The excerpts of Amaechi's book indicate that he had a mixed experience in the league. Certain players - namely Greg Ostertag and AK47 made Amaechi's time in the league bearable, others (Amaechi names coach Jerry Sloan as one of those others) did not. The conversations journalists, players, and bloggers are having about Amaechi are generally not about whether gay men should be allowed to play in the league, which, if that was our question, Stern's statement would be an adequate response. Rather, people are wondering about the personal, psychological, & social costs of being gay in the N.B.A., as well as the possible hostilities and acts of generosity that a publicly gay N.B.A. player might experience.
  

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett

I eat Snickers every chance I get.

Editor's Note : A few weeks ago, Sports Media Review insinuated that the reason this blog develops so slowly is because Johnny Hatchett has a life. This is not true.

Yes, this blog develops slowly. I can't seem to keep pace with the mighty, mighty blogosphere. Also, I'm attempting to blog as part of my coursework; the project that I've begun to that end is housed at emptypanopticon.org. It's supposed to be a blog informed by sociological research on technology, surveillance, & social control. But I finds ways to sneak in some sports anyway.

That said, I do hope to (intermittently) keep up with this blog. Maybe I'll be a day or two late on every issue that I write on, but so it goes. Not every thought needs an instant voice, right?

So : with that said :

There are a few ingredients that will keep me away from a product. Right now, I eat vegetarian meals, so any kind of meat is one of those ingredients. The other two are high fructose corn syrup & partially hydrogenated oil. I'm not sure why I avoid those : have little in the way of science to prop my decision : but I generally do.

Why am I exposing my nutritional superstitions? Well, because Snickers® Brand products have one of those two ingredients - the partially hydrogenated (soybean) oil. (To my astonishment, some of the Snickers® Brand products, including the traditional candy bar, do not use that high fructose gunk. Good for them.)

What this means is that I wouldn't likely be eating Snickers® Brand products before their Super Bowl debacle.

But, apparently, Snickers® Brand products are more than gooey amalgamations of caramel, peanut, nougat, etc. They're either a delicious prop in a really funny advertisement or, as super-blogger Americablog.com tells us, they're a nefarious prop in a homophobic advertisement. (Americablog.com tells you just about everything that you could ever possibly need to know about this advertisement, the marketing campaign built around it, the N.F.L.'s explicit support of it, etc.)

Personally, I agree with Americablog.com. The advertisement wreaks of homophobia, not because it incites Snickers® Brand consumers to hate people who are gay, but because it contributes to the enforcement of a social taboo against (certain forms) of homosexual desire & intimacy. If the advertisement is "about" anything, it's as much "about" what I (as a male viewer) should feel about my own desires & intimacy as it is about what I should do about other male viewers' desires & intimacies.

But isn't the advertisement hi-bloody-larious?

Well, as Mars, Inc. acknowledged, humor is subjective. What that acknowledgement ignores is that humor & homophobia (or any form of hate &/or inequality) are not mutually exclusive. This logic seems to imply that good, effective humor excuses - or even decreases - the significance of the stereotype the humor depicts.

Yes, the ways that humor undermines or exploits stereotypes & inequalities is complex. Spike Lee speaks to this in Bamboozled, closing the movie with a montage of the ways that whites used/continue to use humor to reinforce racist beliefs. (Or was that montage in The Confederate States of America?) More recently, we've struggled with this when watching Chappelle's Show. Or Borat.

&, anyway, even if we could forget about homophobia & heterosexism for a minute, what's so funny about a visual punchline that everyone in the room knew was coming?

peace love gap,
Johnny Hatchett

PS : Let's talk a little more about the straight men who were disgusted, not by the homophobia, but by the kiss. Let's talk a little more about what I think was the sensuousness : the close up : : the open mouths : hungry lips : the closed eyes : of the approach : even if a joke & accidental, even if around a goddamn Snickers® Brand candy bar. That sensuousness made a lot of people uncomfortable... & gosh, imagine if the commercial had ended here : with "I think we just accidentally kissed" returned by a look of acknowledgment from the long-haired mechanic. This country would buzz, would still be buzzing.

"No more water, the fire next time!"

Sports Media Review's latest blog entry is a searing critique of comments ESPN's Mike & Mike made about New York Knick Stephon Marbury. (This is the NBA point guard who you might know better by his two nicknames "Starbury" and "Bad Teammate.")

Essentially, Marbury responded to an inquiry made by NY Times journalist Harvey Araton by responding, matter-of-factly, that “I don’t answer to nobody." Needless to say, the Mike & Mike boys got a bit daffy about this comment.

Amongst other things, "Greeny" offered that, "These guys have been stars on some level from the time they were little kids. They’ve been told, you can do whatever you want, and there will be no consequences." This, apparently, explains why Marbury responded to the NY Times journalist as he did.

Sports Media Review's sane take on this lunatic statement

Then there's the notion, expressed most forcefully by Greenie, that this generation of athletes has been spoiled and pampered from an early age, which leads in a straight line to their catastrophic refusal to explain themselves to reporters. Is Greenie suggesting, therefore, that he wishes he could have had Stephon Marbury's childhood? A child hood in which Marbury was one of seven kids growing up in an urban hell, as depicted in Darcy Frey's The Last Shot? Greenie himself grew up in New York City, the son of a lawyer. Did he really not hear himself suggest this morning that Stephon Marbury had had everything handed to him since he was eleven years old by contrast with, we are to assume, guys like Greenie, who had to scratch and claw his way through a brutal middle class child hood.

(SMR's also discusses the crazy tendency of (generally coddled) sports reporters to idealize the spoiled youth of "problem" athletes in his take on Bobby Knight's motivational techniques.)

I want to add to SMR's critique (which I whole-heartedly endorse.)

I'm going to begin with an assumption. (Yes, as a student of sociology I know I shouldn't make assumptions, but I'll begin with one anyway.) The assumption is simple & this : growing up, many children are told & come to believe that they can achieve whatever they want - if they develop their talents & work hard, America will take care of the rest.

Now, Greeny isn't complaining that Starbury was taught this. What he is complaining about is that the point guard was taught a derivative of this : Marbury, given his talents, deserves the money and fame that he received (& receives) & has a right to demand to be allowed to do whatever he wants with it & there will be no consequences. In this case, what Marbury wants is to start a talk show, which other, more prominant athletes & coaches on superior teams already have. Apparently, such an act ought to have considerable consequences, at least for Marbury.

(Speaking of no consequences : the sports mediamouths are judge & jury for athletes. Who, besides a few critical bloggers, is judge & jury for the mediamouths? Mike & Mike get away with making all sorts of unsubstantiated remarks & they're always back on the radio / tv the next day.)

The reason I'm writing is this : I can't speak for Mike Greenberg, nor for Stephon Marbury. I have no clue how intensely each was socialized into the "American dream." I don't know if Greenberg's father, mother, teacher, etc., ever actually told him that he could accomplish anything he wanted. I don't know if anyone ever told him what his white skin did for him. I don't know if Marbury was ever told similar things, or if he ever sensed that there was some role the color of his skin played in what people thought he could achieve.

Speaking as a person with white skin, I was ignorant of any link between that color, my ability to achieve, & social expectations of my achievement.

Contrast that with the devastating look that James Baldwin's father showed him :

"The fear that I heard in my father's voice, for example, when he realized I believed I could do anything a white boy could do, and had every intention of proving it, was not at all like the fear I heard when once of us was ill..." (The Fire Next Time)

Greeny might not intend for his comments to say this, but a message they speak, in addition to what SMR pointed out, is this : "you, Stephon Marbury, don't deserve what you have / (you never did). In fact, you should never have been taught to expect what you've got / (it shouldn't have come to you in the first place). " Those comments, in a way, sound a bit like Baldwin's father's voice, just in reserve...

Maybe I'm going too far. If I am, maybe I'm just a little disturbed. If I'm not, I'm very disturbed.

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett

mic check

Editor's Note : An unretirement is just that. Also, Johnny Hatchet's so-called other blog is stalling for bureaucratic reasons.

I've been reading blogs. Daily, I check The Wages of Win, an NBA alt-stat blog. Terrific. But even better is Sports Media Review, which is something like a one-man wrecking ball of sports media critique.

Given my readings, I'm worried that I'm going to become more, cough, extreme. That is, by filtering my readings to these blogs, especially the latter, I'm going to have the opinion that I began with - notably, sports mediamouths just don't get it, don't know how to properly evaluate athletes, and engage in discourse that reproduce racism. In fact, I've been feeling this extremism lately & I become increasingly upset by sports mediamouth talk.

Why am I worried about becoming more extreme? Well, I'm also reading articles on blogging. Last night, I read :

A 2004 article, by Cass R. Sunstein, a Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago, in which the good Professor worries that the filtering blogs allow for would do what I just described, & threaten democracy

But to the extent [emerging Internet technologies] weaken the power of general-interest intermediaries and increase our ability to wall ourselves off from topics and opinions we would prefer to avoid, they create serious dangers to democracy. (2004:59)

General-interest intermediaries - call them newspapers, old-media, whatever - benefit a democractic society because they impose content - &, thus, "diverse others" - that the audience might not have encountered otherwise. The ability to choose content & develop a personal "echo-chamber" through elobrate internet technologies - search engines, "my favorites" type online-lists, etc - will, ultimately, demolish this potential encounter with "diverse others."

Hmm. I accept that unexpected encounters with content & others are valuable. Very valuable. What I don't accept are two of Sunstein's premises :

(1) Filtering will eliminate unexpected encounters.
(2) Encounters with the "diverse others" of "general-interest intermediaries" serve a democractic function.

(1) Filtering will eliminate unexpected encounters.

"Watchdog"-type blogs & blogs dedicated to cultural criticism, such as the aforementioned Sports Media Review blog, point readers to incredibly diverse sources and articles. Granted, these sources are discussed through the writer's political & cultural lens, but (a) because of links, the reader has quick & immediate access to the "other" source & can evaluate it on his own & (b) many of us already believe that all discussions, narratives, articles, etc. come pre-packaged by the writer's or speaker's social position. Publishing "neutral" articles that "just report the facts" in "general-interest intermediaries" involve decisions about which facts to include & which to emphasize; moreover, given finite human & publishing resources, the decision to run any one article - say a "neutral" article about a certain crime committed by a particular person - requires that any number of "other" articles - say five, ten, fifteen other articles about certain criminal cases reported by all sorts of other people - go un-or-under-reported.

Which leads me to

(2) Encounters with the "diverse others" of "general-interest intermediaries" serve a democratic function.

In "Democracy and Filtering," Professor Sunstein pays lip-service to the "limitations and biases" of the media, writing

For all their problems, and their unmistakable limitations and baises, these intermediaries have performed some important functions.
People who rely on such intermediaries experience a range of chance encounters with diverse others, as well as exposure to material they did not specifically choose.

So what are these limitations and biases doing to the "diverse other" : well, more than one savvy reader of media & culture conclude that diverse others are deflated into stereotype & these stereotypes serve un-democratic ends.

Check : Woe is Us, Part 3,764 (more on that in the next blog entry).
Check : bell hooks' Black Looks, in which, amongst other, equally intense critiques of white culture, hooks describes the effects of encounters with "diverse others" on the selfhood of a young black girl

I was painfully reminded of this fact recently when visiting friends on a once colonized black island. Their little girl is just reaching that stage of preadolescent life where we become obsessed with our image, with how we look and how others see us. Her skin is dark. Her hair chemically straightened. Not only is she fundamentally convinced that straightened hair is more beautiful than curly, kinky, natural hair, she believes that lighter skin makes one more worthy, more valuable in the eyes of others. Despite her parents' efforts to raise their children in an affirming black context, she has internalized white supremacist values and aesthetics, a way of looking and seeing the world that negates her value.

Check : Ask white Americans about crime.

inConclusion, I can only hope that those readers uncomfortable and/or angry, upset, hurt by racism, by representations of race in the "general-interest media," get a little polarized by blogging, become a little more extreme, & develop communities dedicated to combatting these problems...

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett

the unretirement of Johnny Hatchett

Editor's Note: The semester has started & Johnny Hatchett will be working on a new, unrelated blog. He just has to. Also, he found out that there are already several smartly written & well researched blogs on the topics of sports, sports media, and race. Johnny wants to share those blogs with you.

Sports Media Review
Sports Law Blog
Edge of Sports

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett

Johnny Hatchett makes up for lost time, part II

Editor's Note: Johnny Hatchett has been playing "Name that Stink" most of today - trying to figure out why his apartment smells like oil. So, in the place of a proper blog, here's an update on a few old ones.

(1) Somewhere, some baseball purist thinks that Albert Pujols is still an asshole.

Yup, Albert Pujols occasionally says things that make him seem like a sore-loser. &, yup, the sports mediasses spend considerably more time yapping about a few stray, spontaneous sentences than ... well, yapping about the following:

Pujols is off to the Dominican Republic on a humanitarian mission & he's staying clear of the celebration that the White House is throwing for the 2006 World Series Champions. Now, Pujols' snubbing of the President is not intentional, but I'm for it nonetheless.

(2) Johnny Hatchett is three weeks behind the times.

Yup, those Nash goggles are real. I hadn't read this article comparing Nash and Brees before writing my entry, but now I offer it as evidence of our loopy, cultural infatuation with these two men.

(3) Marijuana makes the world go round.

Thanks to an anonymous tip, we can now all enjoy the two hilarious abovetheinfluence.com print ads.

Spend some time at the site & witness the zaniness that your tax money pays for!

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett

Why blog, part II

About a week ago, I read a compelling NYT article on the San Diego Charger L.T.'s familial history. I eagerly took to some blog search engines hoping to find some discussion of the it. Instead, all I got were links back to the original article.

At the time, I wondered what the point of blogging is if, when confronting America's legacy of slavery & the familial traces of it for the current N.F.L. MVP, the best bloggers can do is to redirect traffic back to the New York Times.

Well...

Today, the NYT have an article about a controversial Title IX decision that impacts New York state cheerleaders. Essentially, the decision requires that girl sports be supported by school resources - including cheerleaders - as much as boy sports are.

I did a search for discussion on the article & turned up two terrific blog entries.

For those of you who can't stand a two-page NYT article, Ann Bartow, Associate Professor of Law at U of South Carolina, offers a summation of & some commentary on it.

Zach, of Molten Boron, speculates about some of the motives & inequalities that underlie the reaction of schools, athletes, & cheerleaders to the decision and its subsequent implementation.

Brilliant work, people.

peace love gap,
Johnny Hatchett

The President believes NFL players don't smoke pot. His wife just thinks they're damn sexy.

I love abovetheinfluence.com's print advertisements, which have been running in ESPN The Magazine. I wish they appeared somewhere online, but, alas, I can't find them. Perhaps someone out there in blogland has a scanner...& is willing to do the dirty-work.

Anyway, the advertisements have a goofy, sketched style; they kind of look like a single frame from a crappy Cartoon Network show.

Last week, the print ad showed a bummed out, pothead sprawled across the floor. His dog, wearing a leash & obviously in want of a good, old fashioned, American dog-walking says to the pothead, "You disappoint me." Maybe you just have to be there, with the stoner & his judgemental, talking dog, but that ad cracked me up.

This week, a not-so-cool dude gestures at a little, level-headed boy. Perhaps the boy is the pothead from the last issue's advertisement; now recovered, he's walking his dog. The not-so-cool dude says, "i smoke pot to impress the ladies." The little, level-headed, recovered pothead says, "try football."

The timing of the humor of these ads, even though they're static, print advertisements, is killer. So killer that I now reject Allen Ginsberg's poetry, especially when he writes, "I smoke pot every chance I get."

This issue's advertisment is particularly convincing, since:

- No football player smokes pot.
- No football player uses illegal drugs.
- There are is no correlation between playing football & physical injury.
- According to this blogger, you are considerably more likely to be seriously injured while smoking pot than you are while playing sports, such as basketball or football.
- Organized football is a lifetime sport in which, no matter your age or physical ability, you can participate.
- All young men have an equal chance of earning social prestige by playing football.
- Most young women are impressed by football players.
- According to abovetheinfluence.com, students who smoke pot are more likely to have done poorly in school.
- Many football players are eligible to receive scholar-athlete awards.

stay above the influence, &, as always, remember
peace love gap,
Johnny Hatchett

Take off your Nash goggles & witness our infatuation with Drew Brees.

Editor's Note: Johnny Hatchett should be writing his MA thesis. Instead, he is mumbling to you about Saint Drew Brees. Also, he is drinking tea. Yup, Johnny Hatchett drinks tea.

Sure, Steve Nash is a great point guard. Yup, he dropped 21 dizzying assists on LBJ's Caveliers. & yes, Drew Brees has had a couple of nice seasons as an NFL quarterback. Far be it from me, a novice bloggers with no readers, to trash the abilities & successes of either of these men.

What concerns me is not that these two men - for all the right reasons - are media darlings. By all accounts, Mr. Brees has his priorities straight. He's winning in/for/with & living in & loving the city that wants him.

What does concern me is the level of hyperbole expressed during the love fests held for these two men's performances; both, it seems to me, have been overvalued by pundits, while the contributions of their teammates remain overlooked. This overvalued star / undervalued team is especially troubling considering that both Nash & Brees play "pure" positions.

What I mean is a bit obvious. Yes, both Nash & Brees play important positions for their respective team. Both control the movement of the team's offense; both "manage" the game-play on their respective playing surfaces. At the same time, these are positions for which teams (supposedly) and media mouths (frequently) look to fill with "pure" players. Nash, by all accounts, is a "pure" point guard; he plays that position how it has historically been played - by passing the ball first, shooting second. While we rarely hear the term "pure quarterback" used by media mouths, it exists, of course, in the eternal "pocket passer," who differs from hybrid quarterbacks or running quarterbacks.

Skin color might play a roll in all of this. In case you haven't noticed, Steve Nash is a quite-white basketball player; born in South Africa, raised in Canada, schooled at a public, west coast university, this white man succeeds at playing pure point while equally famous, African-American counterparts - A.I. & Stephon Marbury, being the least "pure" & most notable examples - fail. Brees is also a white man & he just so happens to be one of the few, high profile white men who ran towards New Orleans over the last few years.

SO: both are white men who (purely) play positions that have recently come under media & cultural scrutiny because of the "impurity" of alternative ways of playing them.

(Please keep in mind, dear non-reader, that I'm not claiming that race is a determining factor in these men's successes. They are great athletes. Nor am I even claiming that race is the determining factor in the consensus about their performances. I'm just saying it's there & it's worth thinking about.)

Like Nash, Brees is largely credited with "turning around" a wayward franchise. For example, my non-reader can witness John Levin, of Slate.com, giving all the credit for the Saints' good fortunes to Brees & Coach Payton.

Yes, it's true that Nash & Brees both joined franchises that were going through, to put it mildly, "growing pains." But, by overemphasizing these men's values, we've largely ignored the following:

- Both Nash's & Brees' former teams improved the season after they left. The Mavericks' won six more games in '05 without Nash than they won in '04 with him. The Chargers', of course, are now the finest team in all the land. (To their credit, the Suns' improvement with Nash & the Saints' with Brees was greater than the improvements of their former teams.)

- Both teams added & developed new talent into addition to these players. In '04, the Suns had an NBA-quality point-guard (Starbury) for only 34 games of the season. Amare, after winning R.O.Y. the previous season, played in only 55 games. The team's 5th best scorer was Casey "Who?" Jacobsen. Even Tom Gugliotta logged hundreds of minutes for the '04 version of the Suns. In '05, the team's new point guard (Nash, of course) played 75 games for them, Amare played in 81 (& turned into a scoring monster), &, with the addition of Quentin Richardson & Nash, the Suns cut 1,100 minutes from Jacobsen's playing time. Also, it's worth noting that the Suns' won 44 games in '03. (So, yes, they still won plenty of more games with Nash, but they probably weren't as bad of a team without him as their '04 win total suggests.)

In addition to adding Savior Brees, the Saints' added Coach of the Year Sean Payton & super-rookies Reggie Bush (10th in the NFL in receptions, 2nd in yards after catch) & Marques Colston (11th in the NFC in receptions, 15th in yards after catch). &, thanks to the health of RB Deuce McCallister & Bush's presence, the Saints' scored 19 rushing touchdowns compared to 8 the previous season. On the defensive side of the ball, the Saints' logged 13 more sacks than in 2005, with 6 more forced fumbles, & 1 additional interception.

What this all means : The Suns are a fantastic NBA team with Nash. The Saints are a good NFC team with Brees. BUT, these men have not single-handedly saved their franchises. It is convienent & easy for sports media mouths to heap the credit on these two; by signing with their respective franchises, they were major additions to their teams' rosters. Moreover, both put up monster numbers at glamour positions. But, as usually is the case, the convienent & easy narrative of an individual player's role in a team's successes is partial & largely ignores the important additional additions, developments, & contributions of other players on that team.

Moreover, by speaking so frequently, consistently, & hyperbolically about white athletes who play positions that carry a lot of racial baggage, the sports media mouths do, I think, open themselves to critiques of their intentions. While it is not inherently racist to award Steve Nash the Most Valuable Player award, nor is it to stick Brees' name in the running for NFL MVP, it is also not absurd that some would wonder about the motivations & underlying messages of the praises these men receive.

peace love gap,
Johnny Hatchett

Ron Artest not sorry? Fine by me.

THE network's magazine celebrates Ron Artest's 20 January 2007 return to The Palace by featuring the defensive specialist in its January 15th edition.

Apparently, we're told, as if we should be really, really concerned, Artest isn't sorry for attacking a Pistons' fan.

Apparently, Artest thinks that Big Ben Wallace and Dumbass John Green, the dude who threw the beer at him, should receive a greater share of the blame for inciting the brawl in Detroit than they have & than Ron has.

To this ... I say ... fine by me.

I'm not overly worried about Artest, apologies, & blame. Maybe our little NBA world & Ron himself would be better off if he went through the motions, as one blogger suggests, & fesses up & apologizes.

(Closure, huh? A well-oiled PR machine. So sincere, so genuine. What noisy cats are we to actually & actively desire - need! - that simulation of regret.)

I'm avoiding the illusion that Artest needs to "earn" my respect in order to overcome the sordid Palace affair. As if my respect is worth giving; as if he needs, wants, or can use it.

What does concern me is that we don't call out Ron-Ron, as well as a few of his predictable defenders (Sir Charles, I'm looking at you), for justifying Artest's attack on the fan who he thought had thrown a beer at him.

You're nuts to think you wouldn't retaliate if somebody threw a cup of beer in your face. He shouldn't have to tell you that that's an invite to a fight if ever there was one.

I wish we could spend some time with this explanation, deconstructing it. Artest, et al. essentially claim that the beer-toss was an attack & an invitation for retaliation, even though Artest's safety was only put at risk once he entered the stands & even though the Tru Warrior had no clue who threw the beer at him.

This explanation also only works for those of us for whom the paternal dictum of "hit 'em back" makes sense. Artest claims that for him it does.

Artest says fans, media, everyone would all get it if they could experience what it's like to live in the ghetto "for, like, four years."

I haven't lived in the ghetto & can't evaluate Artest's logic. This explanation does, though, need some fleshing out. Is Artest claiming that he was conditioned to the ghetto to respond to all personal threats & insults with violence? Is he claiming that he reacts in any situation, regardless of place, as if he's in the ghetto?

But I do want to resist the insistance that everyone would react just as Artest reacted. Spill a beer on me at an NBA game, a party, or on the street & I'm likely to ignore you & continue doing my thing. Why? (1) Because fighting you makes no sense; I'm small, have never fought, &, thus, am not likely to win; (2) I don't want to escalate your dumb shit into something dumber & shittier; (3) I don't believe that beating the crap out of someone (who poses no risk to my safety) actually proves a superiority worth having. Perhaps my logic breaks some unwritten man law. In the justification offered by Artest, et al. I sensed a simultaneous defense of some masculine rule, some need for masculine proof & respect.

So ...
I don't care if you're sorry.
Instead, the question that remains :
Was whatever you proved worth it, Mr. Artest?

Johnny Hatchett

Why blog?

I woke up this morning & had a delicious breakfast-in-bed with a beautiful woman. Later, I read the news @ The New York Times. There, I found out that the San Diego Charger's LaDainian Tomlinson's ancestors were owned by James K. Tomlinson, a mid-19th century Texas property & slave owner.

I hit up Google's & Technorati's blog search to see if anyone out there in blogland thought anything about the Times' article. All I found were a few blogs that link to the NYT's article.

Is this it? To parrot mainsteam media & redirect those of us looking for a more-free intellectual ride to a site that already swallows bandwidth?

Gosh, I hope not. I think I need to dive deeper into blogland.
Johnny Hatchett

Racism in sports.

Christopher Bracey - of blackprof.com - wonders "what has changed (recently) within our culture to encourage a rise" in racist confrontations between athletes and fans.

My contribution : are the events that Bracey cites problems or symptoms? Is their racism within sports culture or is sports culture racist? (Wow. Profound question. ... But, really, Bracey doesn't consider that.)

Mike Golic on European basketball players

Editor's Note: Johnny Hatchett fusses over a few words.

Frequently, comments informed by "common sense" & anecdotal data say a lot more than their speaker intends for them to say. Take Mike Golic's claim in THE network's January 1 edition of their magazine.

"... the fact that kids coming out of high school here are not as prepared as the Europeans. They're more polished over there. They can shoot and are extremely fundamental."

Let's ignore that Golic describes European players as fundamental and focus on his claim that European players are "more polished over there" and are more prepared than are high school players to play in the NBA. Golic offers little in the way of data to back his claim, just that European players "can shoot." This, I suspect, Golic has learned from watching a few NBA players - say, Dallas' Dirk or OK City's Peja - and believing that the perimeter games of these two are pretty standard for European ballers.

But, as of today, of the NBA's top-twenty three point shooters (by percentage) only Mehmet Okur was born abroad. Several high school to NBA players make this list : Boston's Gerald Green, the Pacer's Al Harrington, and Portland's Martell Webster.

So much for that.

Are European players "more prepared" than high school players to make an immediate impact in the NBA? While I don't have the statistical data - say, the numbers put up over the first three years by both group of players - my hunch is that Dwight Howard's, LBJ's, and Amare's immediate achievements give the high school players the statistical edge over Euro ballers.

Golic's claim is convincing because it appeals to what many of us believe about European basketball - it emphasizes fundamentals, passing, and shooting - while American-born players are schooled to play recklessly & with more stylistic skill than "fundamental" skill. This is why, we're told, the American teams sent to compete abroad consistently underachieve.

But Golic's claim also speaks a second language. It is a language that Tommy Craggs hears in sport culture's worship of John Wooden.

"He is their reminder of a time that never really was, a Hummel figurine of the hardwood. "[S]ometimes," Rick Reilly wrote in Sports Illustrated, "when the Madness of March gets to be too much—too many players trying to make SportsCenter, too few players trying to make assists, too many coaches trying to be homeys, too few coaches willing to be mentors, too many freshmen with out-of-wedlock kids, too few freshmen who will stay in school long enough to become men—I like to go see Coach Wooden." You don't exactly need a decoder pin to get his drift."

It is the language that convinces Michael Wilbon that the NBA ought punish African-American players in order to ameliorate white America's anxieties.

It's a langauge that blends paternalism with moralism and stereotypes and allows the NBA to enact dress code and age limits on some of America's most well-paid and highly-visible employees.

& It's a language that has William C. Rhoden worrying that the NBA is phasing out its black athletes.

In other words, it's a language that uses common-sense stereotypes to justify critiques of African-American athlete's performances and cultures & to support league policies & actions that restrict their rights.

peace love gap,
Johnny Hatchett

Johnny Hatchett makes up for lost time.

Editor's Note: Johnny Hatchett is making up for lost time. He'll be back soon.

The inspiration for this blog came from myriad writers employed by THE network (ESPN). I visit THE network's site compulsively; frequently, I read articles in which I have no interest & check NBA & NFL boxscores before any significant statistics accumulate. Tuning into the site keeps me from tuning into my life, it's true. Keeps me from being mindful of my situation - &, though I've liked that, I'm trying to return myself to something resembling mindfulness. Part of that mindfulness involves me slowing my web use, checking it for motivations & all that.

As I've become aware of THE network's role in / effect on my living brain, I've simultaneously become aware of the nasty dialogues & sub-texts circulating in our sports KINGDOM. This catching-up is a blunted, power-reflexive blotter of the assumptions, stereotypes, & code-words in my mindful attention. These are why I'm writing now, in our recent past, and why I'll write again.

Editor's note: Sometimes Johnny Hatchett gets upset @ writers & bloggers who don't work for ESPN.com. He strives to be an equal opportunity critic.

1) Page 2's alpha-male reads The Bell Curve every night before falling asleep in his Sports Guy Mansion.

Bill Simmons might not be a racist, but he sure says things that sound racist. In his NFL Preview, The Sports Guy questions the intellectual capabilities of four men - Art Shell, Herm Edwards, Aaron Brooks, & Offensive Rookie of the Year, Vince Young. All four men are African-American. One of these men is coaching an AFC playoff team. Another made a miracle playoff run. The other two are Raiders &, white or black, that ain't good.

I'm not familiar enough with any of these men - nor their NFL coaching & playing capabilities - to evaluate their performances. Apparently, Bill Simmons is &, according to this Boston-educated writer, these men are dumb, possibly / probably too dumb to be coaching & playing professional football. Hmm.

Simmons concludes his NFL Preview entirely unaware of his critiques of NFL intelligence & four African-American men's lack of it ... entirely oblivious to the history of African-American athletes, African-Americans in general, and claims about intelligence. "Intelligence" - and it deserves those quotations, because it's never really clear what anyone means by that word - has served as a social gate-keeper, restricting African-American's access to jobs, both in & out of professional sports. Simmons' mindless discussion of these men's intelligence is regrettable; he speaks glibly of them & their minds ... with no critical discussion of what "mathematical skills" an NFL coach actually needs or why an NFL quarterback needs to score high on a pre-draft standardized test.


2) T.O. tried to kill a little piece of me too

I have no link because the link is gone, but on 9.27.2006, THE network.COM called Terrell Owen's suicide attempt a "bizzare twist" and provided a link to the "lowpoints" of the man's career. (At the time, T.O. had not told us that no suicide attempt occured.) Yes, the man says some stupid things &, in so much as THE network & others like it allow him to be a distraction, he's a distraction. &, yes, he started dropping passes after his overdose. But what's so funny about peace, love, and deceny? With its distasteful (disgusting!) choice of words, THE network showed its hand.
...
...
(Wait.)
(Wait.)
(Prepare for some kind of obvious statement.)
T.O. the bad teammate, T.O. the bad, bad human is as much a production of THE network's need for spectacle as he is a production of his on-the-field antics & off-the-field-miscues. On a day when he mingled with real mortality, showed some serious softness in that six-pack armor, we had nothing but spectacular cynicism.

&, after the suicide chatter settled, T.O. met us with spectacular cynicism of his own.

:: more proof that THE network does not get it ::

::Chucky K's reasonable take on T.O. ::

3) I know what Albert Pujols should do with his mouth

In September & October, Albert Pujols said some things that didn't sound so nice. He called out the scout who urged the Cardinals to draft him. Then he dissed two winners - Tom Glavine & Ryan Howard. So what did we say back to Albert?

Albert Pujols should keep his mouth shut.

Pujols should shut the hell up.

Take your championship ring and shut up.

Bad enough that, in one case, the man was taken out of context. Worse that a bunch of moralists who have jobs & hobbies & audiences because many of us value exposure to opinions, even when those opinions wreak havoc on the neurons that constitute our better judgement, want only silence & quality at-bats from the man who should be the National League's reigning, two-time Most Valuable Player.

I'll disagree with a professional athlete when I want to. Chances are, these guys views and my personal ones don't align. But to tell one of these men to just "shut up" is to reduce him to the spectacle of his bodily performance & to deny him the capacities of his mind. It is, I believe, to commit (symbolic) violence against another human.

So ... ahem ... fuck off.

4) Michael Irvin on the latent benefits of American slavery.

You know what the man said.

I figured that Irvin would be fired. So did pretty much everyone else. But he wasn't. Double standard? Maybe. But what I wish THE network would have done, instead of admonishing Irvin & doing...well, nothing really, is given us an hour long (or more!) television seminar on how & how being African-American & being white biologically does or doesn't produce athletes. A lot of important people - Joe Paterno & Fisher DeBerry among them - believe in the biological superiority of the African-American athlete. This generalization - which is often coupled with a generalization about African-American intelligence - has a significant history & it's one worth telling & exposing. Let's open ourselves up to an intelligent and informed debate, rather than allowing it to remain an unspeakable theory in the back of so many coaches, athletes, analysts, and fans minds.

5)The Brawl.

Everything's been said. Read Michael Wilbon's article & try to forget that he suggests that the NBA Commish should run the sport to satisfy white people who avoid public areas where African-American men gather.

Sincerely,
Johnny Hatchett

an unconfession to Jemele Hill (ESPN)

Editor's Note: Jemele Hill is a Page 2 columnist at ESPN.com. Her first article appeared on that site on 14 November 2006.

Dear Jemele Hill,

My brother jumped the gun. Immediately after reading your first article @ ESPN.com's Page 2, he emailed you, practically bubbling over with his suspicions - though he took that bubbly feeling to be something more certain - that THE sports network had hired you to fill Jason Whitlock's massive, African-American void.

You wrote my brother back, saying, he tells me, that you were hired to write. And you are no network's tool.

He stills maintains that you are.

Less than two months have passed since Page 2 published your first article. Since then, I've argued with my brother about your role at ESPN.com, been underwhelmed by your followup piece, and, more recently, provoked by your brief manifesto on sports, race, and violence.

Now, I write to you about something else. Not the sports you cover & I follow, but to express my sadness that you - in your debut article for ESPN.com - had to account for your views because of the color of your skin. In that article, you wrote,

"You want to know what kind of black person am I? Am I one of those? Yes, I discuss race openly, honestly and, hopefully, intelligently. Do I play the race card? Depends on what else is on the card table.">

Make no mistake, my sadness is not because you do not believe enough in my "colorblindness" to avoid having to, wanting to, & needing to write about your black skin. Rather, it is that you, an African-American woman, and never your white colleagues, have to communicate the relationship between personal views and race.

Now & then, I try to fill that white void, by imagining the article Bill Simmons, the Page 2 alpha-male, might have written if white people, &, especially, white men, had to confess, like you did, to the role of our white skin in our white lives, the role of our white lives in the reproduction of our white racism, & the effect of our white eyes (leading to white brains) in our sport fandom.

But I don't know what the man would say, because we - white people, white men, white writers - are rarely asked to ante up and show our hand
when someone plays the race card.

So that's what I intend to do in this here blog, write on white, write on men, write on white men & the things they say & the things I think.

Sincerely,
my first unconfession, undone,
Johnny Hatchett