Part 1
One of the most popular sports movies in the United States is Hoosiers, which is ostensibly the story of tiny Hickory High School’s trip to the finals of the Indiana state basketball tournament – and its escape with the championship trophy. It is also the story, though, of Norman Dale, who coached Hickory to its title. Hired to coach the team by an old friend who was an administrator at the school, Dale has an extremely hoary skeleton in his closet – the fact that he hit one of his own players while coaching in Ithaca, New York, and that he received an indefinite ban from basketball throughout the state. However, the fact that Dale took the time to help out someone else who was also coming back from a difficult past – the alcoholic father of one of his players, who goes into rehab during the season – and the fair but stern discipline he applies to his entire team make him a sympathetic figure not only to the person who discovers his secret but to the entire film audience. As is the story with so many sports hero-celebrities, this team’s journey is “reduced to the ‘story’ behind the starand their relationships to one another” (“National Sport Hero Celebrities”). In real life, the story of Josh Hamilton, a baseball player for the Texas Rangers, echoes many of the core beliefs in the United States. His journey from drug addiction to superstardom with the Rangers mirrors the story of Norman Dale, because of his (so far) successful journey to redemption. His story also reflects the American belief in a second chance, and in the power that religious faith can bring to athletes.
You don’t have to look far online to read much about Josh Hamilton. Indeed, the digital revolution has brought a wealth of new fan consumption opportunities, not just for merchandise, but also for access to information about their sports heroes (“Global Sport Media Spectacles”). The story of Josh’s return to professional baseball, though, is as old as addiction, which means that it is as old as time itself. As a child, Hamilton showed an early promise for baseball, even as a first grader hitting the ball so hard that it amazed his coaches and peers. From the early years of grade school, Hamilton often played with older select teams so that he would have competition that was on his level. To save money, his parents would go to a number of lengths, including doing the laundry late at night, because it was cheaper to use electricity during off-peak hours of consumption (Hamilton and Keown). When he was drafted, at the age of 18, first overall in the 1999 Major League Draft by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, it seemed like all of his dreams had come true. This element of the story, which involves the child prodigy overcoming difficulties, plays a major role in American legend and culture. Whether it is the story of Paul Bunyan, who was a legendary lumberjack who walked as a giant in the frontiers of the West, or the story of Abraham Lincoln, who rose from teaching himself to read as a child to becoming the country’s 16th President, the childhood prodigy has long been part of the things that Americans admire and honor (Gray).
After his signing with the Devil Rays, Hamilton received a signing bonus of $3.96 million, and joined the Princeton Devil Rays in the rookie-level Appalachian League. He began to move up the professional ladder through the lower levels of the minor league baseball system. However, before the beginning of the 2001 season, Hamilton and his parents were involved in a car accident. The pain medications that Hamilton received as part of his convalescence ended up addicting him, and he soon entered rehabilitation. However, it did not work, and he drifted in and out of baseball, playing a partial season in 2001 with various minor league teams in the Devil Rays’ system, but injuries to his neck and toe just would not heal correctly. During spring training before the 2003 season, Hamilton was invited to the major league camp but was late a few times, and so was sent to the minor league camp. He first left camp, but then came back to the team several times; eventually, though, he dropped out for the remainder of the season, citing personal reasons. He failed at least two drug tests during 2003 and was placed on suspension for 30 days at the beginning of 2004. For the next three years, he did not play baseball at all. This low point is something that just about every addict hits at some point (Everitt, et al.), because of the ways that the brain responds to the substances to which the addict has developed the attachment. The way that each addict responds, of course, will differ, and that response will determine what happens going forward. In the film Hoosiers, the character played by Dennis Hopper is still in rehab at the end of the movie, so while it seems hopeful that he and his son will get a home together, it is still unclear (Hoosiers). It also appears that Coach Dale has overcome his penchant for violence, having controlled his temper and given his team the discipline that it needed to win the state championship.
The time between 2004 and 2006 was the lowest point for Hamilton. Because of his drug-related suspension, Hamilton had to serve his time while on a major league roster before coming back into the game. He stopped using drugs in 2005 and returned to the sport late in 2006. The Devil Rays did not add him to their 40-man roster, which meant that he was available for other teams to choose in the Rule 5 draft for the low price of $100,000 – and $50,000 would come back if they decided not to keep them. (Hamilton and Keown). The Cincinnati Reds picked up Hamilton in that draft, and he first appeared in a major league game on April 2, 2007 (Hamilton and Keown), against the Chicago Cubs. When he first came to bat, Michael Barrett, the catcher for the Cubs, told him, “’You deserve it, Josh. Take it all in, brother. I’m happy for you.’”(Hamilton and Keown). After winning the National League Rookie of the Month award for April, though, Hamilton was sidelined with gastroenteritis in May and sprained his wrist in July, ending up on the disabled list. In December, the Reds traded Hamilton to the Rangers.
Since then, Hamilton’s career has followed an upward trajectory. He won the American League Player of the Month award in April and May of 2008, making him the first player in the history of the American League to start a season with back-to-back awards. He was selected a starter by fan voting in the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in July. In 2010, he was named the American League Most Valuable Player, and he also won the Most Valuable Player Award in the American League Championship Series (Hamilton and Keown).
While with the Rangers, Hamilton’s time has not been without incident. He went to a nightclub in Arizona in 2009, and he went drinking at a bar in Dallas in early 2012. However, he has continued to pass test after test for illegal drugs, and in general, his recovery seems to be going well. His two encounters with alcohol have placed conversations about a long-term contract with the Rangers on hold, but so far, he has lived out many of the aspects that Americans look to in their sports heroes. He has appeared on the “I Am Second” campaign, which features celebrities who have decided to make God the first priority in their lives. As such other heroes as Tim Tebow have shown, athletes who are public about their faith have a special place in American culture. As Hamilton’s progress continues, whether he remains one of the premier outfielders in the game or whether he succumbs to injury or addiction, he will remain one of the most intriguing stories in the history of American sport, and in the history of American culture. His cycle from prodigy to addict to recovery is one that many Americans will continue to follow with interest.
Works Cited
Everitt, B., et al.. (2008). Neural mechanisms underlying the vulnerability to develop compulsive drug-seeking habits and addiction. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Vol. 363 (1507): 3125-3135.
“Global Sport Media Spectacles.” Class Lecture.
Gray, R., ed. (2011) A History of American Literature (2nd edition). New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Hamilton, J. and Keown, T. (2008). Beyond belief: Finding the strength to come back. Nashville, TN: FaithWords.
Hoosiers. (1986). Dir. David Anspaugh. Perf. Gene Hackman, Barbara Hershey, and Dennis Hopper. DeHaven Productions. Film.
“National Sport Hero Celebrities.” Class Lecture.
Part 2
If you want to buy a pair of Nike basketball shoes because you want to wear the same shoes as Lebron James, you’ll really be buying shoes made in a foreign country, by people working under sweatshop conditions, for longer hours than are allowed in the United States or other Western countries, and for pennies per hour. It’s likely that you’ll be paying more than $100 for those shoes, and Nike will be raking it in hand over fist when it comes to profit, because the international workers that they use do not cost nearly as much as American workers, or European workers, would cost in terms of wages and benefits. This is good for Nike, because it means that the company can pay athletes like Tiger Woods millions of dollars to use their products on television. It is good for you, because you get to wear Lebron’s sneakers, or Tiger’s golf shirt. It is not good for the people in the factories that Nike owns, though, because they could work for weeks and months on end – and still not have enough saved away to buy the shoes that they made. The same trend is true in soccer. Back in the late 1990’s, more than three out of every four soccer balls in the world were made in Pakistan (“Pakistan”). Most of them were made in the same town – Sialkot, which has been home to soccer ball factories since the 1800’s. While so many jobs have been turned over to robots or computers when it comes to manufacturing, the art of making soccer balls has not. Workers sit and sew ball panels together by hand, and apply glue to the inflatable bladders that go inside the balls. Workers come together in stitching rooms and houses to assemble ball after ball. An investigation by the International Labor Rights Forum found that children as young as 5 were working up to 11 hours a day stitching soccer balls together. Whether those fingers belong to children or adults, that much time spent stitching can cause permanent back and joint damage. The children were at work because their parents owed significant debts (“Pakistan”).
The result was a Code of Labor Practice put in place by the International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA). All signatories to the “Atlanta Agreement” accepted a minimum age of 14 for these sorts of jobs and also agreed to put together a system of programs to keep these sorts of excesses. In 1999, though, the ILRF released another report entitled “Child Labor in the Soccer Ball Industry – A Report on Continued Use of Child Labor in the Soccer Ball Industry in Pakistan.” Even though all of the signatory nations and other entities had to agree to eliminate child labor in order to be permitted to put the FIFA logo on their ball (a requirement for use in competitions), it was unclear whether or not that would be enough to motivate places like Sialkot from using child labor in such a brutal way (“Pakistan”).
In the months leading up to the World Cup in 2010, staged in South Africa, FIFA undertook to clean up its image as a purveyor of child labor by putting together 20 “Football for Hope Centres” throughout Africa to promote the benefits of education, health and soccer in disadvantaged towns across the continent. However, because of the remaining problems involving child labor and the production of soccer balls, it appears that FIFA has a lot of work to do in order to clean up its reputation. Even though machine-driven soccer ball factories in Pakistan have begun to take some of the jobs away from the hand-stitchers in Sialkot, the fact remains that hand-stitched soccer balls are still a major user of child labor throughout South Asia. India also has some soccer ball sweatshops in operation; in the country, more than half of those who work in soccer ball stitching subsist at or below the poverty line. Nine out of ten households that have soccer ball stitchers living in them are in what is considered the “untouchable” social caste, not worthy of contact with members of any other caste in the country. Families at this quality of life must send their children out to find work in order to survive (Chen).
There are those who might object to the characterization of this sort of labor as oppressive. After all, there are other industries, such as the dental tool manufacture industry, that are just as willing to subject children to the same horrid working conditions as the sporting goods industry (“Pakistan”) as the soccer ball sweatshops in Sialkot were. Indeed, all of this is just a sign of the “New Economy,” in which the modern factory disappears, replaced by automation (“Global Sporting Goods Industry”). Of course, the factory in this case has not really disappeared at all. It has shifted overseas, out of the sight (and the oversight) of the governments of the developed countries that would not permit such practices in their territory. These governments have not, though, banned companies who profit in their territory from using those sorts of practices in other countries.
Going back to the example of Nike, which has put factories in Indonesia, it is clear that it is not just the soccer ball industry at work here. It is a fact of the 21st century that the division of labor is not done equally between the hemispheres, and that southern Asia is still a place where lower-level work can take place (“International Division of Sporting Labor”). The jobs that the stitchers and other manufacturing workers perform in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, and other places where these sorts of labor practices exist are ones that people in the United States would not accept, because of the low skill level. As a result, Nike and other manufacturers had to look elsewhere to perform the work that was still not doable by robots or by automation (Wilsey and Lichtig). In 1997, Nike received a considerable amount of criticism for the conditions under which its workers had to live, and it responded in several ways that were praised at the time. One of those responses was the decision to stop using toluene, an adhesive that has fumes that can prove toxic for employees. Also, it agreed to perform air quality testing in all of its indoor footwear factories to ensure that the workers were in safe conditions. Also, the minimum age for workers went to 16 in apparel or equipment factories and 18 in all footwear factories, except in those countries that had a lower minimum age; in those countries, the local minimum was the standard. Finally, the company added educational programs for its workers and agreed to pay the local minimum wage.
As generous as those compromises sound, they did not include the right of the workers to organize and form unions against future injustices from corporate management. They also followed the local minimum wage, which sounds like a helpful concession, but in fact actually depends on the whim of the government at hand. Many governments, particularly in southern Asia and Oceania, will keep their minimum wages artificially low so as to make the country seem more attractive to overseas companies that are looking for manufacturing workers (Wilsey and Lichtig). So “minimum wage” might have nothing to do with the money that one would need to survive, even at a basic level, in the country. By failing to promote unionization and to ask for real improvement in workers’ wages, Nike helped out its own public relations situation, by getting rid of the toxic glue and acting like it was helping the workers make more money, but it also helped out its own bottom line, while only making cosmetic changes to the way its manufacturing operations ran. The public furor died down, people moved on, and Nike has continued to make gargantuan profits.
When it comes to the global sporting goods industry, as in so many manufacturing industries, the major companies have become adept at hiding their manufacturing operations in places that are not easy for media outlets to find. The practices in which they engage would enrage the public if they took place in their country; the fact that those labor practices are taking place on the far side of the globe and are harming people who speak a completely different language and do not even look like most of Nike’s market means that most people will still continue to go play with their new soccer balls, in their new Nike cleats, without giving those workers a second thought.
Works Cited
Atlanta Agreement. (1996) Web. http://www.imacpak.org/atlanta.htm
Chen, M. (2010). South Africa’s World Cup brims with broken promises. In These Times 9 June 2010. Web.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6076/south_africas_world_cup_brims_with_
broken_promises/
Global Sporting Goods Industry. Class Lecture.
International Division of Sporting Labor. Class Lecture.
ILRF. (1999). Child Labor in the Soccer Ball Industry: A Report on Continued Use of Child Labor in the Soccer Ball Industry in Pakistan. Web.
http://www.laborrights.org/sites/default/files/publications-and-resources/ILRF%20Soccer%20Balls%20in%20Pakistan%20report%20Feb99.pdf
ILRF. (2012). Pakistan. Web. http://www.laborrights.org/stop-child-labor/foulball-campaign/Pakistan
Wilsey, M. and Lichtig, S. (2010). The Nike controversy. Web.
http://www.stanford.edu/class/e297c/trade_environment/wheeling/hnike.html
