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Council of The District of Columbia

Dear Councilmembers:

Major League Baseball has reportedly altered the stadium lease, effectively eliminating the stadium cap on city spending for the “hard and soft costs” of construction. Though the Council unforgivably approved the one-sided lease last month, it did so with the intent of limiting the city’s cost for the project, and with the intent — as I was told by District CFO Natwar Gandhi — that Major League Baseball, Mayor Williams and the DC Sports and Entertainment Commission sign the lease by March 6, 2006, “without any reservation.” Therefore, the DC Council has no choice but to reject the altered stadium lease that again leaves the District ultimately responsible for all cost overruns.

The Washington Post reports that several civil rights and women’s organizations are supporting African American and women tennis umpires in their lawsuit against the U.S. Tennis Association alleging racial, sex and age discrimination:

The Honorable Anthony A. Williams
Mayor, District of Columbia

Dear Mayor Williams:

Your Administration can no longer ignore the significant environmental hazards that exist at the construction site for the proposed new baseball stadium. On June 8, 2006 the Washington Post reported a major discovery of 53 tanks of oil under the soil at the stadium site that has caused $2.9 million extra to be spent on environmental cleanup. This troubling level of contamination is only the beginning and I renew my request, with increased urgency, for you to call for a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) at the stadium site.

In the weekly “Edge of Sports” column, Dave Zirin and John Cox address racism in international soccer and the possibility that it could rear its ugly head in a violent way at the 2006 World Cup now underway in Germany. There has been a disturbing pattern of “football racism” that “has been aggravated by the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe that has of course become de rigueur in the United States as well.” Zirn and Cox add:

Melissa Silverstein of Women’s Media Center gives an intriguing look into a growing issue for women’s sports: What happens when a player gets pregnant? Highlighting a new documentary called “The Heart of the Game,” Silverstein explains that there is no uniform policy at either the school or professional level that protects a pregnant athlete’s rights:

Two recent articles highlight the role international soccer can play in promoting unity and peace. An excellent piece by Neil Stormer, who works in conflict resolution and foreign policy in Washington, DC, outlined numerous examples in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that show how large a role soccer and sports in general have played in mitigating conflict. The most recent example is from the World Cup:

Vahe Gregorian of the St. Louis Dispatch reports on the progressively larger divide between African-Americans and baseball.

With the 2006 FIFA World Cup fast approaching and with global sports brands cranking up their advertising to take advantage, the global poverty aid organization Oxfam International released a worker’s rights report on May 24 explaining:

In his May 26 column, Dave Krieger of the Rocky Mountain News profiles Frank Shorter — a former Olympic marathon gold medalist for the U.S. — whose work focuses on the belief that the fight against performance-enhancing drug use in sports can be won:

In his May 26 “Edge of Sports” column, sportswriter Dave Zirin sacks the NFL for its treatment of players, and wishes Ricky Williams good luck in Canada and the CFL, where there is “the promise of regaining a measure of human dignity”: