I turn to the politics page of the CNN website and who do I read about? Lebron James, or “King James”, as he has been annointed. The mayor of NYC, Mike Bloomberg, along with mayors, governors, and senators from other states with NBA teams, are shamelessly trying to court Lebron James now that he has become a free agent. The governor and senator from Ohio even bowed so low as to beg Lebron in a music video to stay with the Cavaliers.
Why is this happening? There are two main reasons. First, and foremost, it has to do with money. Whichever team lands Lebron is guaranteed sold out arena seats for years to come. Second, there is a great deal of prestige for the city that Lebron decides to call home. If he helps that city to a championship, all the better. So when money and civic pride are at stake, you know that politicians have to get involved. They are standing in line like Louis XIV’s courtiers hoping to get a chance to tie Lebron’s sneakers.
Not that anyone of importance cares, but I personally have a problem with this obsequious behavior on the part of the men we’ve elected to represent us. After all, Lebron James is not really a king. He’s simply a very large, strong, and agile guy who can toss a ball very effectively through a hoop. But for some reason, in our society, a man who possesses those attributes becomes like a king. If Lebron James had discovered how gravity is united with the electromagnetic forces of the universe, most people wouldn’t know who he was and music videos would certainly not be produced by politicians to woo him on behalf of their constituents. In other words, this free agency circus with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake simply reflects the sad state of our values as a society.
I have to admit, before I go on, that I don’t like basketball. I also don’t like soccer and hockey. I think that has to do with the fact that I hardly ever played those sports when I was young. Today, I follow baseball and football avidly, which are the two sports I loved to play as a boy. Soccer and hockey were rarely played in the projects in which I grew up, but basketball was a very popular sport. Why didn’t I play it much?
The answer is simple. I was too short. We always had to line up in size places in grade school, and I was first in line for many years. Not until I reached junior high was there a boy in my school shorter than me. His name was Dennis and he would pick fights with me all the time to prove that though he was half an inch shorter, he was still tougher.
You can’t really be an asset on a basketball team when all anyone has to do to defend against your outside shot is lift his arm. Even if I managed to sneak under the boards unnoticed, which I could easily do since the opposing players hardly paid attention to me, the basket seemed impossibly high over my head. I would often miss shots that taller guys could effortlessly tap in. You get tired of team captains always picking you last and sensing their exasperation at being burdened with a useless player. So I stopped playing basketball.
Yes, I admit having a bias against basketball due to deep-seated childhood inferiorities. Maybe I wouldn’t be accusing NYC politicians of groveling if they were petitioning Albert Pujols to sign with the Mets. But let’s take an example of a sport towards which I have no resentment, but only apathy: soccer.
When the French soccer team finished without a single victory and last in their division in the first round of the World Cup, the coach was ignominiously summoned to a close-door parliamentary session to be grilled about the team’s terrible performance. French President Sarkozy summoned an emergency meeting on French soccer and announced a national symposium this coming October to rethink how soccer is run in his country. One French lawmaker said, “This isn’t just about football, it’s about France: It’s our honor that’s at stake.”
Maybe I don’t really appreciate the importance that Europeans place on soccer, the most popular sport in the world outside of the United States. But isn’t it going over the top to summon the coach to Parliament as if he was general who had lost a war. Roman Polanski, who had allegedly committed a much more heinous crime than going winless in the World Cup, was never summoned before Parliament and, in fact, is still being supported by Sarkozy’s administration. Not only is the French government’s involvement in soccer a misplacement of priorities, but it’s also a misuse of authority. It has led FIFA President Sepp Blatter to warn that the French team risks suspension from global tournaments if authorities intervene in the running of the national football federation. It would be equivalent to the U.S. Congress deciding to investigate the Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints if they lost a game to a Canadian football team.
When the U.S. Congress did get involved in America’s national pastime by holding hearings on the steroids issue, there were many who questioned this intervention of government into sports. In that case, as in past baseball antitrust legislation, I believe that government intervention was justified. The Federally Controlled Substances Act regulates the use of performance enhancing drugs, including steroids, and, therefore, falls under the jurisdiction of Congress to at least hold hearings, if not to prosecute. Unfortunately, when lists emerged and individual players were asked to testify, the hearings took on a prosecutorial and even inquisitional tone. It turned into a witch-hunt instead of an inquiry.
I don’t think politics and sports make a good marriage. Elected officials should be focusing on more pressing issues instead of trying to gain popularity by feeding into the populace’s fixation on sports and sport’s figures. Our president has to deal with a stagnating economy, a horrific environmental disaster, and an increasingly deadly war. Why is he wasting his time lobbying for Lebron James to sign with the Chicago Bulls?
