High school athletes compete for love of game

Who’s watching NFL games? Anyone?

With all of the political drama becoming a part of sports – National Football League bowing to advocates of kneeling for the national anthem, National Basketball Association knuckling under to the likes of Colin Kapaernick and LaBron James (whose net worth is around a half billion dollars), and others who claim they are the target of racism and to a lesser degree Major League Baseball is finding similar claims among its players. Most players in both leagues are people of color.

It seems that only the National Hockey League is not participating in the outcry.

As a lifelong Vikings fan, it was hard to stop watching their games a few years ago, but I took the stand that if our nation and its national anthem are going to be disrespected by players who are making millions to play a game that kids from Kasson-Mantorville, Triton, Byron and Hayfield play for the fun of the game, then I’m not watching the pros.

Has my stand, and the stand of others, like Pro Football Hall of Fame player and coach Mike Ditka made any difference? Well, if viewership of last weekend’s NFL season opening games is an indicator, viewership was down 30 percent. No big deal, right?

Well, if a business as large as the multi-billion dollar professional football league has a drop of one-third of its audience, one would expect sponsors to ask for a 30 percent less for advertising.

What happens when the owners of the NBA wake up and realize its fan base is not in the USA, but China? Do they move the Minnesota Timberwolves, Dallas Mavericks, and the Los Angeles Lakers to Beijing or Wuhan?

And then there is my favorite sport – baseball. I’ve been a fan since the team moved from Washington, D.C. At one time I had all of the baseball cards of all of the players who played for the Twin from the first year through the ’91 World Series.

When the teams of Major League Baseball decided to place signs up in stadiums around the National and American Leagues, I lost interest.

So, what’s the big deal?

Unlike many who have accepted the premise that we are a systemically racist nation, I cannot go along with that. Are there racists? Yes. But failing to show respect for our national anthem and the American flag is a step too far. Most professional athletes are multi-millionaires, certainly earn more than the fans in the stands who pay to watch them play.

I would like to hold up every man, woman and child as a creation of God. I believe that was the premise on which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lived out his life. I cannot go along with the notion that unless I bow to social pressure and admit that I am, along with this great nation, systemically racist I’m not socially acceptable.

Recently, my boyhood baseball hero (long before the Minnesota Twins arrived in the Gopher state) was recognized for having hit his 500^th home run. The man? Willy Mays, the San Francisco Giants’ great centerfielder.

Mays was an incredible centerfielder (closest to his abilities today is the Twins’ Byron Buxton), capable of making circus-like over the shoulder catches that seemed super human.

As a kid, I didn’t think about Willy Mays as a black man, but rather, my baseball hero.

I saw my boyhood hero’s memorabilia when I visited the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, MO, a museum dedicated to preserving the history of Negro League Baseball in America. 

Until we get through the idea that in order to be socially acceptable one has to disrespect our flag and the national anthem I’ll watch the KoMets, Bears, Cobras and Vikings – Hayfield, not Minnesota Vikings. These athletes perform for the love of the game.