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Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports

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If you're tired of reading the same type of takes on sports - the rambles full of pop culture references that pretend to stand for real commentary, the reactionary critiques of the sports villain of the week, read Welcome to the Terrordome. You'll most likely spend half your time laughing and the other half amazed that Mr. Zirin has been reading your mind.

It doesn't take much experience reading sports columnists, or listening to them talk on TV, to come away with a pretty grim view of the sports world. The profession seems to attract a sort of bitter, fatalist heckler who wants to forget that it's not just a game. Well, it isn't just a game - it's an industry, one that sometimes gets to write its own rules but more often has to live in the same world we all do - the one with pain, politics and promise.

Dave Zirin has the perspective and vision to put these pieces together, to see how the sports world meshes and collides with the real world. And when he heckles - which he does often, and with panache - it's cutting but not cruel.

There's a strong current of humanity in Dave's writing. This isn't a lunkhead screaming from the cheap seats, it's someone who wants to see excellence and fairness at all levels of sport - the field, the office, the media. With all the time and money we spend on it, that's the least we can ask.

If you've ever asked the question "what's the point of sports?" aside from gladiatorial competition meant to pacify and distract from the monotonous struggle that occupies the time of most people, Dave Zirin provides the answer.

Zirin does for sports what Howard Zinn does for history by placing it in the real world context in which it belongs, instead of the corporate smoke and mirrors that simultaneously make sports larger than life while divorcing it of social relevancy.

As a political hip hop artist I can appreciate Dave's work, not only because Chuck D of Public Enemy, the original political hip hop group, wrote the intro - which never hurts when you use their album title for your book - but because he stands in that independent socially conscious tradition. He's Public Enemy and Democracy Now! not Young Jeezy and CNN.

Here is nuance and complexity, sophistication and depth captured in magnificent similes and metaphors that will knock your socks off! Dave Zirin writes with a passion and reverence for sport and for athletes brave enough to speak out against political injustice and to incur the wrath of a coliseum culture. He invites the whole world into the sports world. Bravo to his heroes, and bravo to Dave Zirin!

Why are athletes repeatedly told, through radio shows like Mike and Mike and various other venues, to "just shut up!" about issues that directly affect themselves, their community, and country?

Sports, unfortunately, are too often cast as apolitical cultural wallpaper. Latrell Sprewell's 68-game suspension nearly a decade ago was a consequence of his uncontrollable demeanor--period. Barry Bonds (steroids or not) is just an irascible baby--period. The NBA instituted a minimum age because David Stern and company care about their players' education and maturity--period.

You can believe the press conference sound bites if you like, but there is a lot more historical and political weight surrounding these issues than the popular press often admits or cares to discuss. What would happen if the NHL or WTA implemented age minimums? Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it.

Though the media is saturated with discussions on all facets of sports, it is still not totally OK to talk in a pointed or more than passing (and often seemingly obligatory) manner about how sports reflect, reinforce, and have the ability to challenge discourses surrounding race, gender, sexuality, class, age, nationhood, etc. Indeed, doing so publicly is likely to get a "just shut up!" response. It's as if Jackie Robinson solved racism and Billie Jean King conquered gender inequities--their contributions are unyieldingly praised without a commitment to continuing their larger political projects.

For those of us who do not unquestioningly take what information we are given by the mainstream sports media industry, it's nice to know that someone like Dave Zirin is out there providing an alternative--and extremely important--perspective. Zirin's new book, Welcome to the Terrordome, which takes its title from a Public Enemy song (and which includes and introduction by Chuck D), extends and enriches several of the discussions he has been writing about for years on his well-regarded website, [...], through his 2005 book What's My Name Fool?, and in various other venues. Zirin's insightful, clear, and often humorous essays, like Chuck D's brutally honest lyrics, "rope a dope the evil with righteous," welcoming readers to the "terrordome" that is the contemporary American political landscape and clearly showing sports' various roles in these circumstances--covering topics ranging from Barry Bonds to the NBA's anxiety over Hip Hop.

However, it is also important to note Zirin's subtitle: "The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports." Zirin sincerely believes in sports and their ability to challenge political circumstances. For instance, the Superdome, featured on Welcome to the Terrordome's cover and slyly referenced by its title, illustrates this pain, politics, and promise. It's publicly-funded sporting structure that, during Katrina, served as a harbor/tomb for many people who could never afford to enter the building under different circumstances. The Superdome's role in Katrina, along with countless other examples (for instance the controversy surrounding Muhammad Ali's name change discussed in Zirin's What's My Name Fool? and Muhammad Ali Handbook), shows how sports can both entertain and serve as a site from which to intervene and effect change. The great value of Zirin's writing is that it continually makes these layers of meaning, along with their implications and stakes, explicit.

While Zirin certainly loves and enjoys sports, he does not love how they are often used to veil the political and social issues in which they are so intimately embroiled. Welcome to the Terrordome, like all his work, challenges readers to refuse to take their sports at face-value and to "just speak up" about its contemporary uses and misuses. It's an essential read whether you are a student of sports, casually interested in sports history, or just like to check scores periodically.

Amongst sports writers David Zirin is a man among boys. He hasn't just mastered a single aspect of the genre; he has reinvented it with the complete package, which is showcased in Welcome to the Terrordome. Zirin combines acerbic wit, original insights (which is rare in sports journalism), a higher understanding of 20th century social history and an infallible drive to deliver "untouched" goods (partly allowed I suspect by the nature of the non-profit publishing company of the book). It's a breath of fresh air as his motives are only to inform and influence and not to sell anything or apologize for anyone.

The best part of Zirin of course is his ability to recognize and extrapolate on sports as a microcosm for important societal issues such as race, social and economic inequality. While I don't necessarily agree with all of Zirin's opinions, I found myself often putting the book down just to logically think through his positions and how they refute or support my own beliefs. I consider myself well versed in both sports history and social history yet I constantly was introduced to new events, people and history within the varied topics Zirin covers (Bonds, Olympics, Ali, Cycling, Clemente, etc.). To top it off Zirin has a great sense of sarcasm and I laughed out loud numerous times throughout.

This book is important because it has a potential to reach an audience not normally associated with higher-level intellectualism; namely sports fanatics. This is part of Zirin's overall argument in the sense that he criticizes modern sports athletes for not using their leverage to tackle social issues but are instead highly paid slaves of the corporate world.

Bottom Line: Full of energy and insight and should be read by anyone (including non-sports fan) who are interested in how the sports world is interconnected and related to various aspects of social justice. Genre defining.

Dave Zirin is the best sports commentator in the US. Period. And "Welcome to the Terrordome" is another amazing example of why this is so. In this easy and fun to read collection Zirin pulls no punches while he examines the social, political and economic realities of sport.

In probably my favorite chapter, "Barry Bonds Gonna Git Your Mama: When Steroids Attack!" Zirin presents the most nuanced and historically concise explanation of steroids I have ever read. Taking on simplistic and reactionary explanations and solutions emanating from the mass media, opportunistic politicians and fans regarding steroids, Zirin states that to understand the phenomena we should not and cannot use the ever present prototypical explanation of performance enhancing drugs if we want to fully grasp why drugs exist in sports. In order to show this and counteract the singular spoon fed "analysis" of the mass media and others, Zirin gives the reader the tools for understanding the roots of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs, the harsh economic realities of sports facing players, and the drive by the sports industry to increase its bottom line.

But the book is more than just steroids. The chapter on Roberto Clemente is a must read for anyone who wants to understand and continue the legacy of Clemente. The Olympics chapter exposes what happens when the Olympics come to town. And of course, issues of race, sex and class are interwoven throughout with such intense accuracy that any reader, regardless if they love sports or hate them, will see how all of these effect and are effected by not only the world of sports, but of society in general.

This is real sports commentary. Get it now!

Zirin's great writing reads like a good novel. But it's his on-the-ground, reality-based analysis of American sports that makes his book a fast and informative must read. One of the best books on sports that i have ever read.

As someone who has, for almost fifteen years now, wincingly watched the tragic devolution of the craft of sports jounralism into a corporatized, prepackaged (rife with apolitical additives and white supremacist preservatives), four letter word (spelled E-S-P-N), there thankfully lies a voice in the proverbial wilderness---reminding us from the cover photo on, as forwarder Chuck D did, some twenty years ago,that "Armageddon, has been in effect...go and get a late pass!!!"---in Dave Zirin, verbal assassain.

What Noam Chomsky does for politics, Dave Zirin does for sports journalism; with laser like acuity, "Welcome to the Terrodome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports" displays that the whole truth about and in sport in this place called America lies behind, in between, and beyond the box scores, play by play, and drivel passing as color commentary, providing virtually every dimension of details, in search of a higher, more truthful ground. A welcome reprieve from the offal churned out on a daily/nightly/weekly basis, Zirin's latest cris de coeur allows those with the unmitigated temerity to tackle all that is good, bad and ugly in sports an opportunity to read a rich, nuanced, and above all, whole representation of the relationship between sports industry and society.

Whether it is laying bare the white racial hostility and hypocrisy behind the campaign to destroy Barry Bonds as he approaches the inevitable, illustrating the historical relationship between futbol/soccer and anti-imperialism, championing Rutgers' Women's Coach Vivian Stringer's courageous stand against mainstream media and its l'enfant terrible du jour, poignantly revealing the hardcore political activism of Roberto Clemente Major League Baseball would rather nobody know (let alone "celebrate"), or simply allowing athletes the opportunity to be heard, simply in their own words, "Welcome..." should force any true blue, dyed in the wool fan of sports, truth and/or humanity at large take a long hard look at the portrayal and projection of athletes/sports industry and scream, if not from the rooftops at least to Sportscenter with the zeal of (Howard) Beale, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!!!"

In a sports landscape where Pat Tillman was used to distract us from Abu Ghraib, where David Stern targets "hip-hop culture" and institutes a dress code, and where the greatest baseball player in a generation is compared to Satan on a daily basis... here lands the terrordome.

The cover of Welcome to the Terrordome features an ominous photo of the Superdome lit up against a black background and looking vaguely like a spaceship. I don't think it's an accident that author Dave Zirin chose this as the symbol of his book. Hurricane Katrina ripped the lid off of the society we live in and exposed America and all its flaws. With unabashed passion and fury rivaling that tragic storm, Zirin does the same thing to the sports world by casting sports in a light that the mainstream media are too blinded by corporate profits to see.

At the same time, the book is balanced with signs of hope. There's Rutgers Women's Basketball coach Vivien Stringer standing up to racist radio host Don Imus. There's a sharp analysis of both the empowerment and expression of hip-hop as well as some of its pitfalls.

When I saw the title, I had my doubts. But after reading it, count me as convinced. It fits to a T. This is sports at its best and its most human with all its tragedies, compelling characters, and inspirations. Buy this book, read it, and compare it to anything else being written about sports today. This book is the truth. Spread the word.

Zirin was an important discovery for me. As a kid, I followed professional baseball and basketball with a very childlike passion. Later I got disgusted with the general state of the corporate franchises and drifted away from any interest in watching sports in any form. After being assigned as a teaching assistant to a course on the history of sports in the modern world, I picked up Zirin's first book and this one to help me appreciate the political side of professional sports. I'm of the audience Dave Marsh of XM Radio had in mind when he wrote that "the people who need to read Dave Zirin most are people who don't think sports is important at all. Zirin knows it is and he continually shows how it fits into the rest of our world."
I believe Zirin also has much to say to those who already understand the importance of sports. The debates over race, class, business, jingoism, steroids, and so on, that rage within the world of sports bear directly or indirectly on just about every area of politics and public life. In all of these essays -- which explore the political underbelly of major league baseball, the NBA, the Olympics, soccer, and more -- he shows a fine understanding of the precisely these kinds of connections and the ways people with political influence routinely use sports for their own ends.
Zirin has strong opinions, and that in itself is not unique. But he expresses his arguments more cogently and supports them more effectively than any other opinionated sports commentator I've ever heard. This is what enables him to engage and challenge the preconceived beliefs of every one of his readers. Furthermore, he's an outstanding writer. Welcome to the Terrordome frequently had me outraged over a fact or quoted statement and then, sometimes on the same page, I'd be laughing out loud at a particularly funny or audacious turn of phrase. Whether or not we agree with Zirin should not make or break the book's significance. If we really want to challenge our sometimes ossified views of the world, we've got to seek out writers like Zirin, who offer perspectives entirely lacking in the weak analysis, calculated outrage, and narrow political perspective on offer in the overwhelming majority of mainstream political commentary.
My only complaint is that there should have been some endnotes, not just to document the quotes he uses but also to help orient the book in relation to other writings on sports with which Zirin is in dialogue in his essays.