Sports and Politics: The Great Divide

Howdy y'all, or whoever actually reads this. Just saw Toy Story 3 so I'm feeling pretty deep atm, and reading this article on FP made me start wondering, albeit in a totally different direction, about the relationship between Americans and Sports. Basically the article (read it first, and correct me if I'm wrong) says that the rest of the world holds up sporting events as a canvas thru which they view the state of their nation. The writer doesn't want to see that (amongst other things) happen here in the U.S., and fair enough, I agree with him.

But at the same time, the U.S. views their sports differently than most of the world. In the worldwide world of sports, most countries have one major sport, sometimes two. This can be soccer/football/futbol, rugby, cricket, whatever. The U.S. has 4, baseball, basketball, (American) football and hockey. That's a lot of passions to keep in check, and a lot of teams over which to spread out all your passion. When's the last time there was a sports riot in the United States? I'm talking actual riots here people, just because theres a mass of people and some numbskull decides to climb a streetlight does not make it a riot. I'm talking cars and buildings torched, people trampled, cops out in full riot gear, shields, maybe water hoses, hardcore RealTV shit. It's been awhile since that's happened, thankfully.

Normal occurrence in the rest of the world, where hooligans have so much invested in their one team that any failure at all is a huge emotional upset.

Tony Kornheiser (really not a huge fan, but this just occurred to me) said it best. He was talking about the fallout of the Tiger Woods scandal on PTI. Or maybe this was on SportsNation (when I actually watched it once or twice before saying "oh wow cool" and moving on), Regardless, someone on ESPN said this:

Americans are good at compartmentalizing. They can separate the man from the sport he plays, and say, for example, that you can respect (insert professional athlete here) as an athlete, but loathe him as a man/human being/female, whatever.

My point being thus: sports are on one side, politics are on the other. True, Obama might go to a Cubs/White Sox game when they play the Nationals, sure W. owned the Rangers at one point, but that's about as close as politics and sports ever get to mixing.

Except in September, 2001. September 17th, 2001, saw the return of baseball to Yankee Stadium, and helped heal a nation. Through sports, a nation began to heal. Here are some pictures from that day.