Book Review: Dave Zirin, Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down

Abstract

Book Review: Dave Zirin, Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down. New Press, 2013, ISBN: 978-1595588159 (Paperback). 240 Pages. $18.95[Article copies available for a fee from Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www, transformativestudies, org ©2013 by Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]Dave Zirin's newest book, Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down, may be mistitled. Zirin does a terrific job of showing exactly how politics has turned the sports world upside down, but is the over? In fact, reviewing his litany of examples, it seems this game has been going on for decades and with no end in sight. This troubling, complicated relationship between sport and politics isn't new at all, and Zirin reminds the reader of this long term relationship that many continue to deny even exits. Over nine chapters, along with a short pre-game and post-game, Zirin covers the expected broad topics in a book like this - gender, race, and sexuality, along with more specific political issues, such as the Arab Spring, team owners, Joe Paterno and Penn State, Los and Zirin's current enemy number one (he's not alone; for example, see columns written by Joe Nocera of the New York Times), the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Many of the chapters are lengthier versions of Zirin's weekly columns at The Edge of and most are timely with layers of examples and connections. His writing style is engaging, provocative, and simply fresh, especially when read against the writings of sport reporters on websites and newspapers who toe the line to please their readers.Chapter 7, Here Comes Los Suns, stands out in this collection. Zirin uses the recent immigration legislation in Arizona and SB 1070, officially known as the Arizona Senate Bill 1070 Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, along with the responses from Major League Baseball, who hosted the All-Star Game in Phoenix the next year, and the Phoenix to illustrate the insidious ways politics influence sports and, importantly, sport fans and voters.The chapter that seems most out of place is Chapter 8, 'Is Your Underwear Flame Retardant?' Sexuality and which attempts to examine gender and sexuality in sport. Zirin is simply too ambitious in this chapter, providing some historical background (which is absent in the other chapters), and without a clear focus that is evident in the other chapters. He borrows material from his film Not Just a Game: Power, Politics & American Sports, including a list from 1878 detailing the downfall of women who play croquet, which doesn't help explicate the relationship between politics and sports, or help pinpoint current issues related to sexism (and there are plenty out there). Certainly there are current events that do show the politics-sport relationship, and Zirin briefly identifies a few, such as South African runner Caster Semenya, and, however briefly, Danica Patrick. By including a chapter on sexuality, Zirin signals his desire to be an advocate for women and homosexuals in sport, and he should be commended for not just focusing on men's sports. But by making the chapter so unlike the others, and without a clear focus, Chapter 8 appears to have been included for the purpose of not excluding women, when there are so many current examples of politics-sports that involve female athletes. His section on LGBT issues is worth including here as well, although it is interesting that the focus is on men's sports and homophobia.The final chapter, 'I'm Not Your Child': Racism Today in is also less focused, but because Zirin stays in the present, and provides a variety of examples of racism within sport, including David Stern and NBA policies, Michael Vick, and, Jeremy Lin, it works better as an overview of racism in sport than the chapter on gender. …