The Best American Sports Writing 2017

by Glenn Stout

  There’s an undeniable nobility in what was an impactful—but ultimately harmless—display, even if one disagrees. Kaepernick didn’t do this in a crowd, surrounded by thousands. He sat alone, wearing a red, white, and blue shield on his jersey. The NFL takes many of its cues from the military and has encouraged the idea that reverence for the military is a citizen’s requirement, not choice. The draft is gone, but we’ve all been conscripted as unquestioning devotees whose gratitude can be demanded by anyone at any time. Kaepernick wasn’t addressing the military, but that was widely and predictably inferred. In spite of this, Kaepernick had the audacity to sit in opposition to what he felt he’d stood for too long.

  This wasn’t what Carmelo Anthony and Friends did at the ESPYS, a moment that was important but took great pains to make a statement that offended no one. It wasn’t what the belated Michael Jordan did on this website when he announced he was donating money to groups representing the interests of black people and the police. To paraphrase Peter Tosh, they asked for peace while Kaepernick cried out for justice. That distinction is both subtle and significant.

  Kaepernick even went beyond the WNBA players who stood in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and asked their league to do the same. He made no plea to both sides, nor did he make a call for unity. He’s not concerned with whether his team or his league has his back. When he could have smoothed over any pending reaction to his actions, he focused squarely on racism, the most consistent and overpowering impediment to black success in America, and the thread that connects every era of its history. While the major party candidates for president spent the week pointing at each other with charges of who is or isn’t the real racist, Kaepernick pointed at the flag and, by extension, every person who takes pride in the American flag. And he did so alone, fully aware that backup might never come.

  This is what a stand looks like. For better or worse, stands that demand people come together rarely have that effect. And contrary to popular belief, stands do not create divisions and fissures. They amplify them. The whole point of a stand is to put them on display, to ask the world to confront and examine their hypocrisies and ask why they’re on one side and not the other. Protests that don’t offend aren’t worth the effort. The ones that do are the ones that can change the world.

  Now let’s be clear: Kaepernick’s stand will not change the world. Neither did Muhammad Ali’s, nor have very few individual actions. The dramatic acts of individuals sound good in history books, but rarely seem so in real time. What Kaepernick did won’t change America or even the NFL.

  That’s not his fault, though, and that’s no excuse for minimizing what he chose to do and say. America’s remarkable stability is the product of a structural resistance to fundamental change and its history is interwoven with racism that was once self-evident but now operates with winks and nods that few in power are willing to fight. To oppose racism is righteous. To deny its existence, no matter the reason, is cowardice. To treat a peaceful protest like an act of war against whiteness or America—notions used interchangeably in this debate, which is problematic—is hypocrisy.

  The easy question to ask is whether one agrees with Kaepernick’s manner of protest—thus allowing respondents to ignore the substance of his thoughtful, measured critiques. The most disingenuous answers tend to come from those who defend his right to ignore the National Anthem while making sure the world knows there were better ways for him to make his point, while, of course, stopping short of addressing the point itself.

  The meat of the issue is his words. Kaepernick declared that this country oppresses black people and its law enforcement officers kill black people with impunity—often receiving pats on the back for doing so. Both history and the newspaper support his belief. We’ve seen Americans give from their own pockets to police officers known only for killing black teenagers. Even George Zimmerman took in hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from strangers, and he wasn’t even an officer of the law.

  To ignore the National Anthem for those reasons is to challenge the very notion of what America is. It’s to ask whether what he’s fighting against is represented by the flag rather than thriving in spite of it.

  It’s the flag that flew when slaves were freed, but that took nearly a century. It’s the flag blacks fought for all over the world, upholding a notion of freedom they wouldn’t experience themselves. And now, in 2016, it’s the one cowards wrap themselves in while promoting the decidedly un-American notion of exclusion.

  That’s why the flag generates conflict in many blacks, while white people have the luxury of saluting it without scrutiny. It’s also the banner, in theory, that affords Kaepernick the right to pay it no mind. In line with essayist James Baldwin’s assertion that his love for the nation is what drove him to critique her mercilessly, Kaepernick’s challenge to America is actually the most American thing he can do.

  So many of those who have demanded our nation earn their respect loved it the most. Jackie Robinson loved America and served in the military, but wrote in his autobiography that he would not stand for the National Anthem. Paul Robeson’s patriotism was questioned by Joseph McCarthy, but it drove his fierce demand to be treated as a true citizen. There’s nothing American about settling for good enough, let alone being satisfied with not-as-bad-as-it-used-to-be.

  And there’s nothing American about muzzling a dissenting voice, especially one whose life is the sort of story people cite as an example of the American dream. A black child adopted by white parents becomes a rich celebrity, praised for his talents and giving credence to the idea that anyone can make it. But nothing in that heartwarming tale has protected him from racism, nor will any of that make him safer when he’s pulled over by the police. His parents may be white, but that didn’t matter a bit when cops pulled a gun on him, a story Kaepernick relayed Sunday.

  What should protect him is American citizenship, and there’s too much evidence to indicate that’s not working for him and millions of others. If a man willing to risk his livelihood to say so can’t get his country to even consider what could bring him to that point, how could anyone honestly dismiss his point?

  There seems to be no objective argument that makes Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the anthem—which will continue, he says—wrong, even if one doesn’t think it was right. Just as one can oppose the war in Afghanistan and respect Pat Tillman’s decision to fight there, one can respect Kaepernick’s much smaller sacrifice. The only way one can’t is if one sees no nobility in his cause. And if someone struggles to see the merit in standing for the black and brown people who have been continually mistreated in this country, perhaps it is that person’s patriotism that should be questioned, not the man willing to stand before his country and take whatever comes next.

  DAVE ZIRIN

  Andrew Cuomo Would Have Blacklisted Muhammad Ali

  from the nation

  Governor Andrew Cuomo is a thuggish, tin-eared politician. Yet there is a near-poetical deafness about his latest decision: a timing so awful it’s beautiful. In a week where the world is mourning the great Muhammad Ali, Governor Cuomo has taken the step to unilaterally criminalize New York State businesses and individuals who exercise their freedom to stand with the people of Palestine. Signing an executive order for a “Boycott Divestment and Sanctions blacklist,” Governor Cuomo said, “If you boycott against Israel, New York will boycott you. If you divert revenues from Israel, New York will divert revenues from you. If you sanction Israel, New York will sanction you.” He was immediately “saluted” by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Senator Chuck Schumer also followed up immediately to say that said he was excited to make this blacklist federal law.

  Muhammad Ali was many things: boxer, humanitarian, draft resister. He was also someone who unapologetically stood for Palestinian liberation. Despite the fact that Ali had already felt the sting of a blacklist, banned by boxing from 1967 to 1970, he did not stop speaking out upon his return to ring. In 1974, Ali v
isited the Palestinian refugee camps of southern Lebanon and, amid the crushing poverty and disease, said, “In my name and the name of all Muslims in America, I declare support for the Palestinian struggle to liberate their homeland and oust the Zionist invaders.”

  Unlike some of Muhammad Ali’s polarizing politics on questions of racism and U.S. empire, which faded over time as the movements of the 1960s dwindled and Parkinson’s disease seized brutal control of his body, the question of Palestinian liberation was something that he did not surrender easily. At a 1988 rally in Chicago amid the First Intifada, a six-year period of mass resistance by Palestinians to Israeli occupation, Ali proudly stood with solidarity activists.

  Few U.S. newspapers have openly wrestled with this part of Ali’s political history. But the Israeli newspaper Haaretz dived right in. The paper ran an ugly obituary of the Champ hours after his passing with the cringe-inducing title “Muhammad Ali’s Complicated Relationship with the Jews.” It attacked Ali for having dear Jewish friends but being a merciless critic of the Israeli state. In an objective analysis, such a dynamic would only speak to the Champ’s beautiful heart. He loved his Jewish friends. He respected the Jewish religion. (Rabbi Michael Lerner, at Ali’s request, will be part of his funeral services this Friday in Louisville.) But he opposed the actions of a colonial state in the Middle East, just as he opposed the actions of the colonial state he called home when it entered Vietnam.

  What Haaretz was doing—conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism—is politically and morally bankrupt. It is also exactly what Andrew Cuomo and Chuck Schumer are doing with this push to criminalize Palestinian-rights activists in the United States. As Senator Schumer said in a speech, “What does it mean that those who are at the core of the BDS movement are so fond of statehood for every other people but not the Jewish people? There’s an old word for it, we always have a word for it. It’s called anti-Semitism. Not simply just—bad enough anti-Israel, they’re anti-Semites.”

  This is a horrific political calculus by Schumer: raise your voice against the death of any child in Gaza, any home that is bulldozed by the IDF, any prisoner dying while on a hunger strike in an Israeli prison, and you are an anti-Semite even if—like myself—you are proudly Jewish. Even if—like Muhammad Ali—you hold your Jewish friends close to your heart. It makes sense now that, when asked his thoughts on the news of Ali’s death, all Schumer could offer was this thin gruel: “What I thought of is, I was playing basketball and our high school coach would tell us, be like Muhammad Ali, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”

  I highly doubt that is all Senator Schumer thought about upon hearing of the Champ’s passing. But such wafer-thin statements are what you say when you don’t want to expose your own bigotry. It is what you say when you want to bask in the glow of the Champ while denying the actuality of who he was, what he believed, and why his courage inspired so many across the world.

  To deny Muhammad Ali’s pro-Palestinian politics is erasure. It’s whitewashing. It’s violence. It’s performing the ugliest possible sin: lying about someone’s life over their dead body. Upon Ali’s passing, Andrew Cuomo tweeted, “RIP Muhammad Ali, you inspired us all and will always be #TheGreatest.” Get the Champ’s name out of your mouth, Governor, and tell the disturbing truth. If Muhammad Ali was in his prime today, he would be your target: someone denied the right to make a living in the state of New York.

  JOHN COLAPINTO

  Some Very Dirty Tricks

  from vanity fair

  On August 22, 2015, seven days after his loss at the Spingold, an annual week-long bridge championship held last year at the Chicago Hilton, Boye Brogeland posted a teasing comment to the website Bridgewinners.com. “Very soon there will come out mind boggling stuff that would even make a Hollywood movie surreal,” wrote Brogeland, a 43-year-old Norwegian bridge player who is ranked 77th in the world. “It will give us a tremendous momentum to clean the game up, from the bottom to the very top.” He followed this, two days later, with another comment advising players what to do if they have cheaters on their team, and announced that he and his teammates Richie Schwartz, Allan Graves, and Espen Lindqvist were relinquishing all the titles they had won in the previous two years. He made no mention of the pair with whom the six-man team had won those titles, Lotan Fisher and Ron Schwartz (no relation to Richie)—a deliberate omission, Brogeland says, to spare Bridge Winners any potential legal liability.

  But two days later, Brogeland launched his own website, Bridgecheaters.com. The welcome page featured a huge photo of Fisher and Schwartz, a young Israeli duo who, since breaking into the international ranks in 2011, while still in their early twenties, had stunned the bridge world by snapping up the game’s top trophies. Grinning, arms around each other’s shoulders, they appeared under the tagline “The Greatest Scam in the History of Bridge!” Brogeland described an altercation he’d had with Fisher at the Spin­gold over a phantom trick (Fisher claimed 11 tricks in one hand when, in fact, he’d held the cards for 10), and posted examples of what he claimed to be suspiciously illogical hands played by the pair. He also included a “Cheating History”—information he had dug up from the Israel Bridge Federation and had translated from the original Hebrew. Brogeland said it laid out a pattern of alleged cheating and bad sportsmanship going back to when Fisher and Schwartz were in their midteens: in 2003, Fisher was suspended for a year for forging results and for unsportsmanlike conduct in the final of the Israeli championships; at the 2004 Tel Aviv International Bridge Festival, he was suspended for a month for calling another player a “faggot”; in July 2004, he and Schwartz were investigated for suspicious hands after winning the three-day Shaufel Cup; a year later, Schwartz was suspended for forging match results.

  The site, in its first 24 hours, received more than 100,000 hits. For the game of contract bridge, the technical name for a 91-year-old pastime that also happens to be a multimillion-dollar business, it was an earthquake equal to the jolt that shook international cycling when Lance Armstrong was banned from competition for doping. Before going public with his accusations, Brogeland, aware that he was taking on powerful interests (at the professional level, the game runs on the sponsorships of CEOs and multimillionaires), consulted the Norwegian police, who, Brogeland says, advised, “When you blow the whistle, do not be at your home address.” Fisher and Schwartz, denying all wrongdoing, hired lawyers, who dispatched a letter to Brogeland threatening a lawsuit and offering to settle if he paid them $1 million. Last fall Brogeland received a text that had originated with a teammate of Fulvio Fantoni and Claudio Nunes, the Italian pair who, for more than a decade, have reigned as the game’s number-one and number-two players. Brogeland had also publicly accused them, along with two other top-ranking bridge pairs, of cheating. The message read, “Tell your friend Boye that whenever he needs a wheelchair we have plenty of those in the south.” Fisher posted to his Facebook page a comment that Brogeland took as a message directed at him: “Jealousy made you sick. Get ready for a meeting with the devil.” (Fisher denies that this message was intended for Brogeland.)

  When I asked Jeff Meckstroth, widely recognized as one of the best bridge players in the world, about Brogeland, he answered me bluntly. “The guy has the biggest balls of anyone I’ve ever known.”

  Brogeland is a boyish, athletically built man whose blond hair, blue eyes, and easygoing smile mask a ferocious competitiveness. The son of a butcher father and teacher mother, he was born and raised in the tiny, isolated town of Moi (population 1,977), in southern Norway. Today he lives in Flekkefjord, a short drive from where he grew up, in a house he shares with his wife, Tonje, and their two young children. “I come from a place where everybody knows everybody,” he says. “Integrity is part of what makes you in such a community.” Early tragedy also had a decisive effect on his character, he says. He was 11 years old when his mother committed suicide. “When those things happen, I think it makes you think a lot about big questions in life,” he says, “fairness and
justice.”

  Having learned bridge at age eight from his grandparents, he fell in love with the game, and turned pro at 28. He has won several international tournaments, runs a successful Norwegian bridge magazine, and in 2013 was recruited by his current sponsor, Richie Schwartz, a Bronx-born bridge addict, mathematician, and program analyst, who made a fortune at the racetrack in the 1970s. When choosing bridge players for his teams, Schwartz often hires undervalued European players who cost less than Americans. “I always fought to get the best deals,” says Schwartz—who nevertheless admits that he will pay up to $200,000 to play in three annual U.S. nationals with a given pair. “Some pay $500,000 or more, though,” he adds. Brogeland says Schwartz pays him travel expenses and a base yearly salary of $50,000—with big bonuses for strong showings in tournaments.

  Not long after Brogeland joined Schwartz’s team, he learned that Schwartz was hiring Lotan Fisher and Ron Schwartz. Brogeland had heard the rumors: in 2012, Fisher and Schwartz won the Cavendish, one of bridge’s most coveted titles, but under circumstances suspicious enough that other top players refused to play in the tournament the following year if Fisher and Schwartz played. (They did not.) But because Brogeland had never played against them and did not know them personally, he reserved judgment. “I try to base my opinion of people on what I experience myself,” he says, adding that he did, however, warn his new teammates. “I told them, ‘I’ve heard the rumors. Whatever you do, play straight.’ ”