Should people boycott the Diamondbacks as immigration law protest?

Dave Zirin is no stranger to controversy, or to mixing sports with politics. A columnist and author who also has his own weekly XM satellite radio show and has appreared on ESPN’s Outside the Lines and MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, among others, Zirin is not amused with Arizona’s new anti-immigration law. In fact, he’s so opposed to the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act”legislation, that he’s calling for a boycott of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

“This will be the last column I write about the Arizona Diamondbacks in the foreseeable future. For me, they do not exist,” Zirin wrote in his weekly column on his blog, Edge of Sports. “They will continue to not exist in my mind as long as the horribly named “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” remains law in Arizona. It’s a law that has brought echoes of apartheid to the state.”

One Democratic lawmaker has said that it has made Arizona a “laughingstock” but it’s difficult to find an ounce of humor in this kind of venal legislation. The law makes it a crime to walk the streets without clutching your passport, green card, visa, or state I.D. It not only empowers but absolutely requires cops to demand paperwork if they so much as suspect a person of being undocumented.

In response, Representative Raul Grijalva, who’s from Arizona itself, has called for a national boycott against the state, saying, “Do not vacation and or retire there.” He got so many hateful threats this week that he had to close his Arizona offices at noon on Friday.

Many of us aren’t in either the imminent vacation or retirement mode. We do, however, live in baseball cities where the Arizona Diamondbacks comes to play.

When they arrive in my hometown in D.C., my back will be turned, and my television will be off. This is not merely because they happen to be the team from Arizona. The D-backs organization is a primary funder of the state Republican Party, which has been driving the measure through the legislature.

Indeed, the Diamondbacks gave $121,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee last year, making them the third-highest contributor in the state. Owner Ken Kendrick and his family have donated $1,023,527 to the Republicans. And as Zirin points out, team founder and former owner Jerry Colangelo helped launch the group Battin’ 1000, which uses baseball memorabilia to raise funds for a Campus for Life, the largest anti-choice student network in the country. Colangelo was also deputy chair of Bush/Cheney 2004 in Arizona.
But the question remains; is boycotting the Diamondbacks the appropriate way to protest state legislation with which you don’t agree? I don’t really have an answer for that; I tend to stay away from Diamondbacks games simply because they’re the Diamondbacks. But, suppose that instead of this, a team had an unwritten policy of not signing black players? Yeah, I could easily see myself boycotting that team. Or what if a team’s owner supported the American Nazi Party? So there are scenarios in which sports and politics would mix.
Is Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law one of those? I think I prefer to wait until a cop pulls over Gerardo Parra and asks to see his papers, and the resulting shitstorm that will test this new law in the Supreme Court and eventually relegate it to the dumpster. Which will then be emptied by a former illegal immigrant because no one else in Arizona wanted the job.
Oh, and Al Sharpton is on his way. He should have a calming effect on all of this.
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No one is illegal: Boycott the Arizona Diamondbacks [Edge of Sports]