Linsanity moves to Houston

As most of the world who follows the NBA or Asian American athletes or the very fine intersection of the two in the singular figure of Jeremy Lin now knows, Lin is moving to Houston to join the Rockets because the NY Knicks wouldn't match the Rockets' offer.

Lin accepting the 2012 ESPY award for best breakout athlete

 The New York Times has a piece that describes the reasons for the Knicks failure to retain Lin, and Jeff Yang of The Wall Street Journal talks about the impact this will have on Asian American fans.  Yang quotes my friend and colleague, Tim Yu, whose astute observations bear repeating in full:

“I don’t care who he plays for — I’m a Lin fan, not a Knicks fan,” says Timothy Yu, an associate professor of Asian American Studies (and Jeremy Lin Studies pioneer) at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “What I’m mad about is that the Knicks just completely cut him loose — and they’re blaming him for cutting such a hard-nosed deal with the Rockets. The fact of the matter is that even the team that benefited from Linsanity doesn’t believe it’s for real. That really burns me as an Asian American fan. But shed no tears for Jeremy: An Asian American athlete is getting paid like a superstar, because he is one — and that’s cool.”

Like Yu, I am a Lin fan, not a Knicks fan.  In fact, I have been a Lin fan from back when he was playing in the Ivy League and awarded him a T.G.I.F. (The Great Impossible Feat) back in February 2010.  Who knew that just two years later, I'd have caught the fever called Linsanity.

Farewell  Jeremy.  I hope Houston treats you right.  Most importantly, I hope that you have an AMAZING season/career such that the Knicks and all the fans in NYC and around the world will weep at this decision.  I, for one, am just excited to be seeing you play and to know that you are getting what you deserve--a salary and recognition to match your talent!

So long NYC! I'm headed to HOUSTON!!!

[Update: 1:46pm EST:  Just saw an interview that Lin did before the 2012 ESPY awards last week--it's just under 4 minutes and at around the 2 minute mark he gets asked about his impact on the Asian community and talks about what it's like for him as an Asian American breaking stereotypes about Asian American athletes--you just gotta love this guy!]






[Second Update -- July 19, 2012: Just saw this GQ article in which the author, Devin Gordon, talks openly about what no one wants to say was part of the whole Lin-to-Houston kerfuffle: Lin's race and ethnicity played a part in the calculations of Dolan, the Knick's owner, even if subconsciously.  Here's a quote from Gordon that says SO MUCH of what I, and many other Asian Americans, think/feel:

"But here's what I am confident saying about Dolan on the subject of Lin's ethnicity: he has absolutely no grasp of what Jeremy Lin really means as a cultural phenomenon. It does not pierce his bubble. It stirs no emotion in him. He doesn't understand what it means for millions of people in this country, and around the world, to watch the first Asian-American superstar athlete excel on the highest stage, and what it means to have that player wearing the uniform of his team. The pride, the joy, the inspiration, the transformative effect it can have on an entire generation of kids."

Read More http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-q/2012/07/the-jeremy-lin-debate-no-one-wants-to-have.html#ixzz215OGDUTd

The color of sports

I just caught the tail end of a schmaltzy Kevin Costner baseball film, For Love of the Game. I've never seen it before, and while I mainly caught the climactic moment at film's end (is it giving it away to say that he wins both game and girl at the end of the film? I said it was a Kevin Costner baseball movie, right? So this shouldn't come as a surprise) the glance at both dugouts, the field, and the staduim reveals something I've thought about major league baseball for a while: it's largely a white sport.

While I don't actually follow baseball myself, for some reason I really like baseball films--there's something about the narrative arc that coheres around baseball that makes for a good story (and is someone somewhere teaching a film course or American studies course on the baseball films of Kevin Costner, because that's definitely an arc, where you start with the young and cocky Costner in Bull Durham, you have middle-aged Costner in Field of Dreams, cocky but a family man, you have older Costner in For Love of the Game who is cocky but recognizing that he's a 50-something actor playing a 40 year old Major League pitcher, and then you have The Upside of Anger where he is a washed-up former baseball player--but of course still cocky to the end).

Where was I?

Yes, baseball films--they seem to portray mainly white protagonists with white love interests (Mr. Baseball that AWFUL film with Tom Selleck in Japan not-withstanding) and with largely white fans.

Yet baseball has also seen a rise of players from Japan and Latin American countries and Latino players. But still not a huge influx of Asian AMERICAN ball players, and certainly less African American players than in other sports, like basketball or even football.

So why? Why does baseball seem to be a largely white sport? Is it? Is this my own preconception based on Hollywood movies or is this a reality? And either way, why are there so few Asian American ball players--if Japan manages to send over some pretty incredible players, how come we haven't seen a rise of Asian American ball players? And why do certain sports seem to attract people of different "races" more (and less) predominantly than others? Basketball seems to have a higher concentration of black players, hockey looks like a white sport, golf is certainly still a white sport (or a game for those who don't believe having a caddy and chasing a small ball qualifies as a sport) despite Tiger Woods dominance (and Vijay Singh and KJ Choi's presence--which is a good reminder to us that Woods has been in the PGA for over a decade and yet not one other major golfer of color from the U.S. has come up in the ranks).

Perhaps a different way to ask the question is, why, with the exception of basketball (and maybe football), do all other spectator sports (baseball, soccer, NASCAR, hockey, golf) see to be dominated by white players and white fans?