9 September 2018 — 2347 mdt

Sports notes, mostly sour

The football season has started, the tennis season is approaching an end, and major league baseball, the only professional sport I enjoy watching, is approaching the playoffs. Today, comments on tennis and football.

Serena Williams disgraces herself and her country

At the U.S. Open, former champion Serena Williams, now 36, was defeated in the championship match in straight sets by 20-year-old Naomi Osaka. The younger player was dominate, and well mannered. Williams was outclassed and ill-mannered, smashing her racquet on the court and calling chair umpire Carlos Ramos, an honest man who calls the game by the book, a thief. She was slapped with three penalties, docked a point and docked a game, and fined $17,000, which was deducted from her second place prize of $1.8 million.

After Williams lost the match, the crowd booed Osaka, bringing her to tears. It was an ugly moment. But it was not a unique moment for Williams, not the first time she got herself crosswise with officials at the U.S. Open.

After the match, she accused Ramos of being sexist, of assessing her penalties for misconduct to which he turns a blind eye when committed by men. She provided no proof to support that allegation, and seemed unaware she was defending herself by arguing that two wrongs make a right. Her selfish, shameful, behavior brought disgrace upon her self and her country, and took the joy out of what should have been an exultant moment for Osaka.

Some people are defending Williams. I can only conclude they approve of boorish behavior and believe that sports officials should not hold sports stars to the rules of the game.

Colin Kaepernick, Nike, and taking a knee

One of the many excesses of football is the overblown patriotic ceremony before the game. Even at high school games there’s a color guard, a marching band, and a stirring rendition of the national anthem. It’s a solemn ritual, designed to ready the crowd for the mayhem on the field. At college and professional games, the pageantry become richer and more flamboyant, with overflights by fighter jets, and seems like the windup to an announcement that “War bonds are on sale in the lobby.” Conformity is prized, nonconformity is noticed, and players who take a knee and train their eyes on the turf instead of the flag while the Star Spangled Banner is performed are noticed, and in some quarters, reviled.

Colin Kaepernick, a former quarterback with the San Francisco 49ers, began taking a knee during the national anthem to call attention to himself, and, in doing so, reports the New York Times, to “…protest against social injustice, especially the deaths of African-Americans at the hands of police.” That act of social conscience probably cost him his career in football.

It hasn’t cost him a decent income, as he recently entered a business arrangement with Nike, the sporting goods manufacturer, that doubtless will be lucrative for both parties.

How effectively his kneeling during the national anthem advances social change is another matter. To a good many people, President Trump among them, taking a knee during the national anthem is disrespectful and unAmerican. Perhaps Kaepernick has a list of demands he’d like met, a list of changes to make the nation better, but I’ve been unable to find them. He has a Twitter account, but Twitter is a headline service, nothing more. It’s as if having drawn the spotlight to himself, he’s been dazzled by it and doesn’t know what to do next.

He’d be wise to announce an organization to work on the issues he deems important, and to end the kneeling.

And football would be wise to retire the hypernationalistic nonesense that turns a sporting contest into a pep rally for war.