Sports

Taking a break from the self-help circuit, former President George W. Bush traveled to Japan to throw out the first pitch at the Japan Series. The one-time Texas Rangers owner also took the time to talk to university students about running a successful sports franchise. While Bush steered well clear of politics, it's not to read his advice in the context of his presidency (my emphasis):

During his brief speech, Bush outlined key points for developing a successful franchise.

Make sure the stadium has a pleasant environment. Hire "good baseball people" to make key decisions about which players to select. Treat the media "as an ally, not an antagonist."

But the best marketing is winning, he said.

"Problem is, it's not that easy," the former two-term president said. Plenty of fans yelled at him when the Rangers were doing poorly, he said. "That's part of sports. I never took it personally."

Bush also said it was important to take responsibility for decisions, including bad ones - and referred to what he has acknowledged was one of his biggest mistakes with the Rangers: approving the 1989 trade that sent future home-run slugger Sammy Sosa to the Chicago White Sox for designated hitter Harold Baines.

I get the feeling that Bush is going to go to his grave regretting the Sosa trade more than any other mistake he's ever made.

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 Mikhail Prokhorov is the chairman of Russia's largest gold producer, and now he will team up with hip-hop's largest gold-record producer.

Prokhorov, Russia's richest man (even after a $7 billion loss last year), bought the New Jersey Nets yesterday for $200 million, making him the first Russian owner of a U.S. sports team.  This also makes him business partners with Jay-Z. (Who seems to be getting a lot of play in foreign policy circles these days)

The first order of business will be to move the Nets to Jay-Z's native Brooklyn, and begin building the new stadium.  The deal seems to be as much about business as it is about pleasure for the 6ft. 7in. Prokhorov, who said in a statement, "I have a long-standing passion for basketball and pursuing interests that forward the development of the sport in Russia."

He also claims he will be, "the only NBA owner who can dunk."

The stadium will be fewer than 10 miles from Brighton Beach, an area of Brooklyn rich with Russian influence, Bloomberg reports.

The move to Brooklyn has been a goal of Jay-Z's (basketball discussion starts at 5:30); however it remains unclear if Jay-Z will get what he really wants. (Hint: he made a controversial song about him)

Although the deal still needs to be approved by the NBA board of governors, it is a break from the emerging trend of Russians buying London soccer teams.

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Amidst the continued debate and controversy surrounding South African world champion runner, Caster Semenya, South African officials have gone a bit overboard in their outrage about gender testing procedures used by IAAF. In regard to revoking Semenya's title, South African Sports Minister Makhenkesi Stofile stated earlier today:

"I think it would be the third world war. We will go to the highest levels in contesting such a decision. I think it would be totally unfair and totally unjust."

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In the Financial Times on Wednesday, Chris Cook argues that British immigration laws are giving an unfair edge to soccer clubs with more money.

Clubs with deep pockets hire the small number of local and foreign gifted players available, while poorer clubs must make do with the remaining, potentially much weaker, local journeymen.

Not only that, he says, but the protectionist measures of allowing non-European workers only if the fit certain high-skill benchmarks also inflate wages for less-skilled Europeans, raising ticket prices.

Cook contends tougher competition would boost the English national team:

The impact of more foreign players on the elite band of players who might conceivably play for the national team is that they need to play better to keep their places in their club teams. So, they improve. The English team has markedly improved since foreign footballers started pouring into the country’s top league.

Would some British and European soccer players be pushed out of work if rules were liberalized? Probably, but a more competitive league would be worth it Cook says.

Consumers of an increasing range of products will soon feel the pain in their wallets already endured by so many fans on a Saturday afternoon, who routinely complain that they pay ever-greater sums to watch a football league dominated by just four clubs. What English football needs is fewer English footballers. 

Not knowing that much about the economics of the Premiere Leage, here's a question: If teams in the lower half of the standings became much more competitive, would it increase their revenues? Higher ticket sales? More advertising?  

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The New York Times's Simon Romero reports that Hugo Chávez really doesn't like golf, which means no one else in Venezuela is allowed to:

After a brief tirade against the sport by the president on national television last month, pro-Chávez officials have moved in recent weeks to shut down two of the country’s best-known golf courses, in Maracay, a city of military garrisons near here, and in the coastal city of Caraballeda.

“Let’s leave this clear,” Mr. Chávez said during a live broadcast of his Sunday television program. “Golf is a bourgeois sport,” he said, repeating the word “bourgeois” as if he were swallowing castor oil. Then he went on, mocking the use of golf carts as a practice illustrating the sport’s laziness.[...]

A housing shortage has also pushed the government’s hand, Mr. Chávez said last month, when he questioned why Maracay had so many slums while the golf course and the grounds of the state-owned Hotel Maracay, a decaying modernist gem built in the 1950s, stretch over about 74 acres of coveted real estate.

“Just so some little group of the bourgeois and the petit-bourgeois can go and play golf,” he said during his television program.[...]

“I respect all sports,” he said. “But there are sports and there are sports. Do you mean to tell me this is a people’s sport?”

He then answered the question: “It is not.”

I'm generally not a big fan of Chávez's politics or economic policies, but I'm with him on this one. Golfers require entirely too much space to play their maddeningly boring sport. On the other hand, as Times blogger Robert Mackey points out, some of Chávez's heroes might not like his principled anti-golf stance.

Flickr user:  R'eyes

In June, I wrote about how many of the world's biggest soccer clubs are facing crippling debt. Over the summer, several individual clubs have faced disbandment over their debts, and now an entire league is facing a season being postponed, as Argentina's Football Association has been forced to suspend the beginning of its fall season. Many of the top division's clubs are have very large debts, including its most famous clubs, Buenos Aires-based River Plate and Boca Juniors.

Latin American football is a tenuous financial affair at the best of times; club directors are hired and fired by a club's members (anyone can pay a membership fee), encouraging lavish promises to the membership, and there is little regulation of financial practices. Furthermore, the die-hard fan clubs known as "Barra Bravas" have become more assertive and violent in recent years, leading to falling attendances (the AFA president's office was attacked within two hours of the postponement, with about 100 people throwing stones and breaking windows). With the global recession pushing down revenues even further, all that the AFA can do is try negotiating a larger TV rights payment, and it's unclear at this point how long that will take.

If the season is delayed for too long, the damage to the league's talent level could be critical: while the Argentine league is no longer among the world's best, like many South American leagues it remains a key breeding ground for top talent (big stars who got their start in Argentina include Diego Milito, Carlos Tevez, Javier Mascherano, Diego Forlan and Sergio Agüero). But a long delay could lead to many top prospects moving to leagues in Mexico, Brazil, and the United States, where they could continue developing while actually getting paid. Still, those angry supporters shouldn't worry too much - as a new book points out, 97 percent of the 88 clubs that started England's football league in 1923 still exist today, whereas less than the world's biggest companies then have survived that long. 

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Last Friday's Jakarta bombings, which killed nine people, were the first attacks in almost four years in the Indonesian capital, and this time, the targets were not just foreign businessmen, but also the famous Manchester United football club. A blog post purportedly from terrorist leader Noordin Mohammed Top, who is wanted for both last week's attacks and several attacks from 2002-04 (including the Bali nightclub bombing that killed over 200) reads, "“The [Manchester United] club consists of players who are Crusaders and therefore they did not deserve to play in a Muslim country.”

Given the recent behavior of their top stars, the equating of the "Red Devils" with religious warriors amuses football fans everywhere outside of the Greater Manchester area (and plenty of people inside of it as well). Even so, the actual danger to the team was small; the bombings took place several days before Manchester United was supposed to arrive in Jakarta, and even if the message is authentic, it's impossible to tell whether Top is merely trying to claim more headlines after the fact. But in the long-term, the threat is likely to have significant implications for international sports, as top teams will have to step up security, particularly while traveling to other countries, and events like the Olympics, which already require massive security budgets, will likely have to spend even more.

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At the opening session of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue yesterday, President Obama made a point of referring to one of China's most impressive exports:

“President Hu [Jintao] and I both felt that it was important to get our relationship off to a good start,” Obama said. “Of course, as a new president and also as a basketball fan, I have learned from the words of Yao Ming, who said, ‘No matter whether you are new or an old team member, you need time to adjust to one another.’”

The ties among our people have deepened, as well, and more and more Americans of Turkish origin live and work and succeed within our borders. And as a basketball fan, I've even noticed that Hedo Turkoglu and Mehmet Okur have got some pretty good basketball games.

And as a resident of Washington, D.C., I continue to benefit from the contributions of Russians -- specifically, from Alexander Ovechkin. We're very pleased to have him in Washington, D.C.

Maybe it's just a rhetorical pleasantry, but what if this indicates a new foreign policy doctrine for the Obama era, namely: No matter a country's regime type, economic system, or foreign policy goals, as long as they are represented (well) in U.S. professional sports leagues, there is at least the basis of a productive bilateral relationship with the United States.

This augurs well for a rapproachement with Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, which has made substantial contributions to Major League Baseball -- including the manager of Obama's White Sox. Cuba could be a bit problematic, since Cuban baseball players tend to be defectors, but the country's potential baseball contribution is vast, so diplomatic progress will likely be slow but deliberate.

The U.S.-China relationship will remain at least as strong as Yao's knee, but Taiwan can at least count on Chien-Ming Wang in their bid for U.S. support.

Zaza Pachulia's new contract with the Atlanta Hawks should reassure Georgians worried about being abandoned in the Obama administration's Russian reset. Israelis worried about Obama's hard line on settlements should take heart in the recent signing of Omri Casspi by the Sacramento Kings. They may want to keep an eye on the Iranian Hamed Haddadi of the Memphis Grizzlies though, not to mention the NFL's half-Iranian T.J. Houshmanzadeh.

Kim Jong Il as well as his son and probably successor Kim Jong Un are both known to be big basketball fans. If they really want to get the U.S. to the negotiating table, perhaps what they need is not their own nuke, but their own Yao Ming. 

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