Customer Reviews

What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States

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I'm not a sports fan. I have sports ADD, but I love this book. Think of it as a People's history of Sports, like Howard Zinn's book, People's history of America.

Dave Zirin, a sports commentator for Air America Radio, takes you through some of the history of how sports and sports stars have helped change America for the better, about the integration of all-white, racist baseball, about how Mohammed Ali helped move the cause of African Americans forward...

I started browsing this book out of curiosity and discovered it was intensely fascinating and moving, that at times, it touched my heart and brought tears to my eyes.

I've become a Dave Zirin fan.

Dave Zirin writes with a piercing wit, a passion for justice, and an encyclopedic knowledge of sports and figures of resistance. He has a great way of imparting information--you learn as you laugh. A zinger that you wish you'd thought of on just about every page! Read the blurbs and you can't not read the book. I hope very much that Jon Stewart books him ASAP.

...so I know that this is one of the finest books of essays I've read in the past few years. One can only wonder why this book has not been written before. Zirin makes it apparent that he had no shortage of material from which to cull these informative, socially conscious, and well-crafted essays. To whom would they not appeal? Sports fans, the politically aware, athletes--young and old, history buffs, teachers, and avid non-fiction readers will all find something in this book to interest and inform. To live in this sports-obsessed society and not be aware of the way resistance, militantism, social awareness, and social activism have played a part in sports is possible, but, with the publication of this book, simply unnecessary now.

Finally! A sportswriter for the rest of us: Ordinary folk angry at Bush, upset over Iraq, disgusted by racism...and always rooting for the home team.

Jackie Robinson! John Carlos! Barry Bonds! Etan Thomas! Toni Smith! They're all here and they're all part of sports and resistance in the United States. Muhammad Ali, too...just don't call him Cassius Clay or you'll make Zirin's baby cry.

The only problem with this book is that more people aren't reading it. Zirin makes politics fun and drags sports back from the brink of corporate oblivion. The laughs alone are worth at least ten bucks.

Zirin tells it like it is. He has an amazing ability to combine love of the game with hard-hitting commentary. Racism, corporate greed, moral hypocrites, and two-bit hustlers (err, politicians), Zirin takes them all on, sparing no punches. And he does it with a wit that will keep you rolling (even his acknowledgements page cracked me up. I hope someday we can see the deleted erotic references to Dick Cheney).

Zirin tells the forgotten history of sports: of Lester Rodney's campaign to desegregate pro sports (in the 1930s!), the history behind John Carlos and Tommy Smith's raised fists at the 1968 Olympic Games (did you know the white athlete standing next to them ran into the stands to grab a Black Solidarity pin when he saw what was happening?), and brings it up to the present with stories of althetes standing up for justice today. Zirin reminds us that athletes should be respected for their heads as much as their hearts.

In the process, he rekindled a love sports I haven't felt since I was a teenager watching the 6th game of the '86 series.

The insight in this book is as electrifying as a two-out, game-winning home run in the "world" series. That we have actually been watching a culture war or culture Olympics taking place on the fields, in the rings, in the rinks and on the courts in this country and in the world that mirrored those in real life is brought out beautifully by Zirin. We have seen the agony of defeat and joy of victory and he recounts and reinterprets those outcomes in new ways. Like Bush's America, today's sports is a mindnumbing downpour of nonsense that despite all efforts by its bosses to control, still erupts with true revelations of the dysfunctional conditions of our society. Great writing, I read it in one sitting. A new voice in sports writing that should be heard more widely.

There is absolutely nothing out there that compares to the analysis in this book. Being a sports fan and being pissed off at what this government is doing to people here and around the world is hard thing. This book makes me proud to both love sports but want to fight to change it, and the rest of the world.

If you're one of those folks who think professional athletes are dumb jocks who care about nothing but raking in cash, you need to open your eyes and expand your mind with Dave Zirin's fantastic book.

From football to baseball to soccer to tennis to boxing to the Olympics, Zirin digs into the history and shines a light into the dark corners that the major leagues would prefer remain unexplored. Zirin discusses racism, classism, sexism and homophobia, and also profiles uplifting examples of athletes fighting the power and speaking the truth.

We've all heard the stories about Ali, Jack Johnson, the Black Power moment at the 1968 Olympics. Those stories (with in-depth interviews and analysis) are in "What's My Name, Fool?" But Zirin goes way beyond the obvious to look at the labor movement in sports; the all-but-invisible retirement of one of the world's greatest soccer players; athletes risking it all by publicly resisting war; and much more.

If you're a sports fan, this book will expand your horizons. If you're not a sports fan, this book will give you someone to root for.

What's My Name, Fool? is a charged collection of brief, straight-talk essays about racism, politics, athletes and sports in American history. From the story Muhammad Ali, who refused participation in the Vietnam War and was stripped of his title for it, to the exploited death of Pat Tillman, who refused to be used as a propaganda symbol for America's wars in life but proved to be far more pliable in death (until the acknowledgment came five weeks later that he was killed by friendly fire), to a biting criticism of how female athletes are subject to sexist media slurs, What's My Name, Fool? balances close scrutiny of the facts with a no-holds-barred denouncement of racism, sexism, and just plain rampant greed. A handful of black-and-white photographs illustrate this fiery revelation to a side of sports that big team owners, corporations, and fat cats don't want ordinary fans to see. More than highly recommended; if you read only one sports book this year, make it What's My Name, Fool?

DAVE ZIRIN has written one of the most groundbreaking sports books ever here in WHAT'S MY NAME FOOL? If you're politically progressive and a sports fan, this is the book you've always wanted. It lays down the argument that sports are not just arena-fillers but potential arenas for change. He says because people put their passion into sports, there is so much invested in it in terms of both love and money and there is so much attention on sports that when athletes speak out and get involved in social movements, it can have real effect on the world. People are saying that they never found a way to talk to their fathers, relatives, friends, etc., about politics until they found this book. Buy it!