With zero African-American managers and only one Latino manager, baseball needs an affirmative-action policy with actual teeth. And now we are all the way back to where we started. It's time for change: a change many thought had already been achieved. Rob Manfred: You're up.
Pro baseball player and coach Dusty Baker was a teenage rock and roller. His new memoir details those years, centered on the legendary Monterey Pop Festival, where Jimi Hendrix played his way to stardom. Charles Bethea profiles Baker in advance of his memoir of those year of hanging out with a host of legendary musicians and learning how rock and roll is like baseball.
After the NYPD broke his leg and charged him with resisting arrest, NBA star Thabo Sefolosha cleared his name in court. Here's what we learned. The NYPD has a racism problem that was just proven in open court. One of the least covered aspects in this trial was the surveillance footage of the initial approach by police. They passed Thabo's white teammate Pero Antic and making a beeline for Thabo. He was in their sights. He was their target. His skin was a bull's-eye.
What happens when corporate America appropriates high school football . . .
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The forthcoming film Concussion, starring Will Smith, is coming for the NFL. If Concussion came out now, it would get less coverage than the Washington quarterback controversy. But tragically, we know that by December, another season of injuries, another season of tragedies will be winding down and the film will amplify all of those renewed concerns.
Years before the thaw and the restoration of relations between the United States and Cuba, Miles Jackson and a college friend had been building a different kind of diplomacy: one on wheels. Their hope is that skateboarding can help pry open a notoriously stiff relationship and encourage a new generation of skateboarders to join an international sporting community.
As a political symbol and an athletic powerhouse, Serena Williams is 'the greatest' in her sport. After her Wimbledon victory, Serena Williams was asked which athlete she admired the most. She said that it was Muhammad Ali. Not for his boxing but for 'what he stood for' outside the ring. For years people have asked who would be "the next Muhammad Ali." If we dare to lift our heads, it will be clear that she is right in front of us.
Criminal investigations are welcome, but they must result in democratic reform at both Fifa and regional and national football associations. It is time for the politics of Fifa to be extended beyond the eternal insiders of the dysfunctional football family, the royal houses of the Gulf, and the stooges of authoritarian regimes and commercial interests that pass for representatives of the world’s football nations.
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