A-Infos (en) US, NortWest anarchist Common Action Newsletter INTERSECTIONS, Vol. 1, Issue 2 - Page 4 - Big Money, Bad Baseball by Andrew Hedden

In 2008, the Seattle Mariners set a new record for losing, becoming the first 
team in baseball history to lose 100 games with a $100 million-plus player 
payroll. Meanwhile, the Tampa Bay Rays, one of the lowest paid teams in 
baseball, went on to the World Series. In the same year that also saw the 
departure of the Sonics to Oklahoma City, Seattle sports fans are once again 
left dealing with the cold, hard reality that big money makes for bad, bad 
sports. ---- CLR James would have made the perfect Seattle sports fan ­ he loved 
sports and hated big money. James was an unorthodox communist who rallied 
against both the United States and the Soviet Union in his passion for direct
democracy ­ once authoring an essay called "Every Cook Can Govern."

He also wrote Beyond a Boundary, a book
about his life as a professional cricket
player in Trinidad. In it, James
demanded that sports be considered an
art form, akin to writing or painting.
Anyone who ever saw the young Ken
Griffey Jr.'s sweet home-run swing
would have a hard time disagreeing with
James that sports are an art form. But
there's a case for James the communist
as well. The history of Seattle baseball is
rife with examples of the gaping
contradiction between the beauty of
baseball and the ugliness of capitalism
and the State.
In 1972, Seattle officials broke ground on
the Kingdome ­ home to the Mariners
until 1999 ­ and a crowd of Asian
American activists were there to protest
them. The stadium threatened to displace
Seattle's International District, long home
to Asian immigrant communities. The
dome was built, but activists succeeded in
directing city resources to maintain the
neighborhood's livelihood.
The Kingdome housed local sports, but
was good for little else. Capitalism only
knows short-cuts, so shoddy construction
and garish aesthetics ensured the dome
lasted only as long as it took the Mariners
to win their first dramatic division title in
1995 ­ perhaps the most memorable
sports season Seattle has ever seen.
Owners, emboldened by fans' new found
love for baseball, threatened to move the
team. Despite a public vote against
subsidy of a new stadium, politicians led
by Slade Gorton ­ not coincidentally,
Washington's longtime Native American-
hating Republican senator ­ built it
anyway, at a cost of $380 million in
public dollars.
For all that money, the Mariners are
back to losing and low attendance. Of
course, if Seattle sports fans truly craved
top performance, more would attend
Stor m game s, but generations of
institutionalized sexism prevents
women's professional basketball from
being valued equally to men's. While the
New York Mets once proved a team can
be major losers and still sustain a rabid
fan base, Mets fans were part of an urban
community, whereas Seattle baseball
remains at the whim of an economy
hewn to suburbanites, tourists and
international investors ­ not city
dwellers, suggesting that baseball will
never be truly appreciated as the art it is
until fans truly feel ownership over their
local team, until every fan can govern.

I N T E R S E C T I O N S
A publication of Common Action www.nwcommonaction.org December/January 2008-2009
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