By Dave Zirin

There are more books about Muhammad Ali than Abe Lincoln: 300 titles in the children's section alone. You can also purchase The Muhammad Ali Reader, the Tao of Muhammad Ali, or the $10,000 G.O.A.T. - a massive coffee table book about all things Ali that is slightly larger than a typical coffee table. His is a history that has been repeatedly regurgitated for popular consumption. Despite - or maybe because of - this crisis of Ali overproduction, I felt compelled to write The Muhammad Ali Handbook.

George M. Steinbrenner III
Owner, New York Yankees

Dear Mr. Steinbrenner:

So you want to be the man who tears down "the House That Ruth Built." And for what? More profit.

Neither you, nor the city government you pressured, nor anyone else should ever do this to a place so rich in history and tradition as Yankee Stadium. Would the city ever tear down Carnegie Hall? Adding wasteful insult to senseless injury, you command hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies and primary neighborhood parkland to support a new impostor stadium.

William Rhoden of the New York Times -- one of our favorite sports columnists for his consistently provocative social commentary on the sports community and for his refusal to cheerlead (contrary to many in the sports pages) for the sports powers-that-be when undeserved -- is out with a new book that's sure to upset the sports establishment: Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete.

Testimony of Ralph Nader
Before the Committees on Finance and Revenue, and Economic Development
District of Columbia City Council
November 28, 2005

Members of the Joint Committees, thank you for giving me the opportunity to present testimony. I would ask that my testimony be made part of the official record of this hearing.

Last year in the District, a mobilized citizenry emerged to challenge a proposal by Mayor Williams and the DC Council that would have subordinated the life necessities of District residents to a private, for-profit, monopoly entertainment corporation. District residents were heavily opposed, by an over two-to-one margin, to a publicly-subsidized stadium for Major League Baseball. Voters ended the representation on the Council of all three incumbent members up for re-election who supported spending tax dollars on a stadium, and replaced them with three who campaigned against it.

Council of the District of Columbia

Dear Councilmembers:

Where is the DC Council oversight on this runaway stadium gravy train? The recent maneuver to introduce as "technical" three amendments to last year’s rush-job stadium bill, and to block all other amendments, is the latest example of a Council which has fallen to its knees. As reported by the Washington Post on October 18, 2005 regarding the utilities tax amendment, "Wall Street wants a guarantee in the legislation that the utilities tax will bring in at least $12 million a year, enough to cover the ballpark debt service." This amendment is a substantive change and anything but technical.

In the Public Interest
By Ralph Nader

Moving into bookstores across the country is a fresh historical account of American progressive resistance and political struggle. Focusing on the United States over the last century, the book connects past struggles with contemporary injustices, and calls on readers to challenge the militarism, homophobia, racism and sexism, the greed, myths, freeloading, cover-ups, censorships, and consumer and taxpayer gouging that continue to tarnish our country. And believe it or not, this is a book about sports.

By Dave Zirin (on why he wrote "What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States")

In High School, I was a 5' 10" inch center for the fearsome Friends Seminary Quakers in New York City. It wasn't pretty, but I lived for it and didn't care if the opposing center could spit on my head. I just loved sports. My walls were shrines to Magic Johnson, Lawrence Taylor, and Keith Hernandez. Every stat, every record, and every rule existed only to be memorized. Weekends were for playing ball until sunset.