I have long been an admirer of New York Daily News baseball writer Bill Madden, regarding him as one of the Big Apple's least parochial sports reporters, as well as one who has written frequently and thoughtfully about the intersection of sports and various social issues. That's why I was shocked to see, in one of his recent columns, an endorsement of MLB Commissioner Bud Selig's refusal to withdraw the 2011 All-Star Game from Arizona, and thereby put pressure on the state to repeal its obnoxious new immigration law. His reasoning? "There are, after all, two sides to this issue, and why should Selig bow to political pressure over a law that 51% of Americans (to 39%) support."
Not to put too fine a point on it, Bill (and Bud), but there are ALWAYS two sides to an issue. Sometimes, there are more than two. The real question is whether MLB and you have the guts to land on the right side of the issue. And who says the popular thing always equates to being the right thing? If Branch Rickey had followed Madden's reasoning, Jackie Robinson would never have played for the Brooklyn Dodgers (and all of us, including the ones who hated Robinson at first, would have been the poorer for it).
Madden spends a lot of time in baseball clubhouses, clubhouses that in our time are filled with immigrants (and not just from Latin America, either). He's covered the sport long enough to first-hand how broken the immigration system is even for people who try to play by the rules; just ask any player who has been late for spring training due to visa problems. He should know better than to spew this kind of idiocy in a paper published in the most nationally and ethnically diverse metropolitan area in the world. I can only wonder how he's being greeted in clubhouses now.
"Sports journalism." If there's a bigger oxymoron in the English language, I don't know what it is.
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