Loudly and clearly.That means NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell should make his opinion known. So should MLB Commissioner Bud Selig.The same goes for the heads of the NBA, the NHL and any other sports league that does business in Arizona.
Their collective message to Arizona should leave no room for interpretation:
If Senate Bill 1070, which requires police to question people about their immigration status and demand to see their documents if they suspect the person is in the U.S. illegally, goes into effect July 29, then you can say goodbye to a plethora of sporting events.
That means no MLB All-Star Game in 2011. No more Super Bowls. No more BCS Championship games. And it should mean heavy economic sanctions until the law gets repealed.
End of story. No discussion. No compromise.
There's precedent.
Following the failure of a 1990 proposition to recognize Martin Luther King's birthday as a holiday in Arizona, the NFL moved Super Bowl XXVII from Arizona to California. Arizona finally added MLK Day, and Super Bowl XXX was played in Tempe.
In 2001, the NCAA announced a two-year moratorium – the ban continues – on awarding predetermined postseason events to South Carolina. And the Atlantic Coast Conference moved its basketball tournaments in 2011, 2012 and 2013 from South Carolina to North Carolina because the Confederate battle flag, a symbol of slavery and oppression, remains on display at the state capitol.
Sometimes, financial penalties are the only way to effect change.
Some of you will fire off angry e-mails because you believe columns about politics have no business on the sports pages.
You're wrong.
Big business is synonymous with politics. Why do you think Cowboys Stadium is in Arlington instead of Dallas?
Pro sports, a billion-dollar industry, is one of the biggest revenue-producing ventures in our country. Besides, whether you play professional sports or write about them for a living, we're all Americans, and injustice should never be overlooked.
No good can come from a law that essentially legalizes racial profiling. That's why it was good to see MLBPA executive director Michael Weiner take an official stand against Senate Bill 1070.
"All of these players, as well as their families, could be adversely affected, even though their presence in the United States is legal," Weiner's statement read. "Each of them must be ready to prove, at any time, his identity and the legality of his being in Arizona to any state or local official with suspicion of his immigration status.
"The Major League Baseball Players Association opposes this law as written. We hope that the law is repealed or modified promptly. If the current law goes into effect, the MLBPA will consider additional steps necessary to protect the rights and interests of our members."
Maybe those of you who think this law is no big deal will change your mind the first time one of the Rangers' top-rated prospects gets hauled to jail because he didn't have his passport with him on the way from the ballpark. Or when it happens to a prospect on your favorite team.
While most police officers respect and protect us, a small percentage will use this law to harass folks. It's naïve to think otherwise.
More than ever our sports leagues encompass the best athletes in the world, not just the U.S.
It's not just baseball, which has hundreds of Spanish-speaking players from the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela, Nicaragua and other locales. They're a huge part of the community in Arizona during the six weeks of spring training as well as the Arizona Fall League, where some of the best prospects traditionally compete.
How many Europeans play in the NHL and NBA? How many compete on the PGA Tour?
There's no way our major sports leagues can sit idly by while Arizona puts a law such as this into effect. They must make their displeasure known.
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I saw Jay Leno at Correspondent Dinner his best line was; “That was my favorite story (this year) Republicans and a Lesbian bondage club. It’s ironic, Republicans don’t want lesbian getting married but they do like watching them “tie the knot”. So I thought that was interesting.”
You can say the same about Tea Party (they are haters not debaters or as others have dubbed them screamers not dreamers), they say they respect the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence but they do not mind passing laws, through weak Governors (no one voted for this crazy) who only care about getting reelected on the backs of undocumented workers, that will not pass Constitution muster, just like Arizona’s House Bill 2779 from two years ago and your MLK Day ban, keep passing them Arizona and the rest of us will continue to challenged them in a court of law and you will fail again (and yes we will Boycott Arizona). Their phony patriotism is sickening; they are just racists going by another name. We all know you are just itching to put a sheet on their head? Let’s face it the Republicans had eight years to deal with health care, immigration, climate change and financial oversight and governance and they failed. It appears that the Republican Party is only good at starting wars (two in eight years, with fat contracts to friends of Cheney/Bush) but not at winning wars as seen by the continuing line of body bags that keep coming home. The Republicans party will continue turned inward to their old fashion obstructionist party (and their Confederacy appreciation roots) because they continue to allow a small portions (but very loud portion) of their party of “birthers, baggers and blowhards” to rule their party. I will admit that this fringe is very good at playing “Follow the Leader” by listening to their dullard leaders, Beck, Hedgecock, Hannity, O’Reilly, Rush, Savage, Sarah Bailin, Orly Taitz, Victoria Jackson, Michele Bachmann and the rest of the Blowhards and acting as ill programmed robots (they have already acted against doctors that perform abortions). The Birthers and the Tea party crowd think they can scare, intimidate and force others to go along with them by comments like “This time we came unarmed”, let me tell you something not all ex-military join the fringe militia crazies who don’t pay taxes and run around with face paint in the parks playing commando, the majority are mature and understand that the world is more complicated and grey than the black and white that these simpleton make it out to be and that my friend is the point. The world is complicated and people like Hamilton, Lincoln, and Roosevelt believed that we should use government a little to increase social mobility, now it’s about dancing around the claim of government is the problem. The sainted Reagan passed the biggest tax increase in American history and as a result federal employment increased, but facts are lost when mired in mysticism and superstition. For a party that gave us Abraham Lincoln, it is tragic that the ranks are filled with too many empty suits and the crazy Birthers who have not learned that the way our courts work is that you get a competent lawyer, verifiable facts and present them to a judge, if the facts are real and not half baked internet lies, then, and only then, do you proceed to trial. The Birthers seem to be having a problem with their so called “facts”. Let’s face it no one will take the Birthers seriously until they win a case, but until then, you will continue to appear dumb, crazy or racist, or maybe all three. I heard that Orly Taitz now wants to investigate the “Republican 2009 Summer of Love” list: Assemblyman, Michael D. Duvall (CA), Senator John Ensign (NV), Senator Paul Stanley (TN), Governor Mark Stanford (SC), Board of Ed Chair, and Kristin Maguire AKA Bridget Keeney (SC), she wants to re-establish a family values party, that’s like saying that the Catholic Church cares about the welling being of children in their care, too late for that. Yee Haw!
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