Grandstanding Athletes – My Take

You’re on the wrong stage if you think that withholding your appearance at a game / match is going to solve racial injustice. Racial injustice must be resolved through democratic and legal channels. Absence from duty on a sports field for reason other than illness, vacation or bereavement is a breach of an employment contract and subject to termination. Under such circumstances, an athlete will then have full time hours to invest in lobbying for reform and racial justice. Prima Donna athletes should translate their passion for a cause into a voice for reform as opposed to conveniently withholding their services. Spineless sports franchise owners should fire those who are in breach of contract rather than crater to team group think.

My interest in the NFL ceased six years ago when on one occasion, a cast of color commentators took an occasion to obsess more about the personal problems of one player and the player’s wife as opposed to focusing on the game. You remember that player – the one who got caught beating his wife in an elevator. Then a sequence of TV ads came on and I made a decision then and there to cancel my cable TV. This was before the Kaepernick charade.

Baseball was filled with a continuum of delays and the game lost my trust when my Montreal Expos were sent to the sidelines with the best record during the 1994 season because of a work stoppage. The team was my childhood dream team and I had followed them every year. There was no World Series in 1994.

Also during my childhood, there was a hockey announcer by the name of Jim Robson who called the games for the Vancouver Canucks. He put sport in a wider context than most. You see, at every Vancouver home game that he was on the air broadcasting, he would give a “shout out” to all the “shut-ins” who couldn’t make it out to a game. Well back in the ‘70’s and ‘80s most everyone could afford a seat unlike today so it was apropos for him to acknowledge those that were prohibited through poor health.  That gesture of his is something that has always stuck with me. That is….an acknowledgment of a contribution athletes make as entertainers to those keen to digest athletic grace defined by finesse, agility, speed and biomechanical prowess yet whose own bodies have failed them.

In the new world order of naive young athletes thinking they are something they are not….they grandstand. Robson will also be scratching his head I’m sure.