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Book Review: Dave Zirin, Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down. The New Press, 2013, ISBN: 978-1595588159 (Paperback). 240 Pages. $18.95
[Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: [email protected] Website: http://www, transformativestudies, org ©2013 by The 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 game 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 Suns, 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 Sports," 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 Suns, 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 Sports," which attempts to examine gender and sexuality in sport....