>btw, roger, soccer here is not a white sport. cricket and tennis are. and
>soccer is the only sport globally where a world series really means world
>series, unlike that odd thing over there called 'the world series' which only
>US guys in bulky costumes play.
world series=baseball superbowl=football [bulky costumes]
when i was a kid, if your school had a soccer team it was because your school was too poor to afford football.
basketball is city sport roger, but that's no accident. it's the result of conscious decisions on the part of social workers and the like to direct the energies of young men in urban areas to the game. [all you need is a slab of conrete or black top, a hoop and a ball] football, less so, because it requires far more money amounts of money to maintain.
in other words, it's important to remember that the rise of sports and the professionalization of sports was part and parcel of social reform programs directed at "youth," particularly poor rural and urban kids. [the rise of mandatory schooling, the 'family' wage, the marginalization of child/teen workers from the workplace at a particular point in capitalist development in the states, etc]. well-intentioned, of course, but i imagine the folks who designed the boot camp for latinos in l.a. thing they're doing good too. [don't get me wrong, i love to play and love to watch, on occassion, and i love to brag about students i've had who've gone pro...]
black/white/brown -- in the u.s. the majority of men* who go pro are from poor, working, and lower middle class backgrounds. middle and upper middle class men who play in high school and, occasionally, college do so for many reasons, it is rarely because that is one of the few choices they have in life.
women who go pro are different becuse the pro leagues for women were established well-after the 'culture' of women's sports had become fairly well- defined in the US. that is, women played team sports for different reasons, but for the most part, in the past, women didn't play team sports because that was an avenue toward a career. that's changing, of course, mostly because the logic of televised sports is the same logic proctor & gambell uses: take up shelf space and create different sub-brands for target marketing. the structure of sports for men, however, is different because the rise of highschool and college teams was bound up with the professionalization of sports. the pressures are quite a bit different for men, so far.
rah rah rah siss boom bah.
kelley, proud little league mom whose son's team went to the state rounds of the little league world series two years ago and who notes that her son could kick anyone's ass pitching. nike here we come.