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Dave Zirin commentates on varied sports-related matters from a left-wing point-of-view. Zirin champions athletes and issues which might be overlooked by corporate sports media and addresses the tendency of the media to objectify and employ athletes as pawns in money-making efforts. He once wrote forThe Nation. He also writes a weekly column (which is also distributed through his website) and also frequently for the Nation magazine. His first book, What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States (Haymarket Books) has entered its second printing.
Zirin has taken his blend of sports and politics to the television program CNBC’s The Big Idea with Donny Deutch where he discussed steroid use in baseball with John Rocker and José Canseco; C-SPAN’s Book TV, and the WNBC Morning News in New York City. He is also a monthly commentator for Canadian sports channel The Score.
He has also been on numerous radio programs including Air America Radio's On the Real with Chuck D and Gia’na Garel, The Laura Flanders Show, Radio Nation, ESPN Radio, Stars and Stripes Radio, WOL’s The Joe Madison Show, Pacifica Radio’s Hard Knock Radio and Democracy Now, among others. He is also the Thursday morning sports host on WBAI’s “Wake Up Call with Deepa Fernandes”.
Zirin's new book is Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports, published by Haymarket Books in June 2007. He is working on “A People’s History of Sports,” a sports-related volume in the manner of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States series for The New Press. In addition to “What’s My Name, Fool?” for Haymarket Books, he has also published “The Muhammad Ali Handbook” for MQ Publications. Zirin is also the published children’s book author of “My Name is Erica Montoya de la Cruz” (RC Owen). In addition, he is working on a sports documentary with Barbara Kopple’s Cabin Creek films on sports and social movements in the United States.
Zirin’s writing has been printed by The Los Angeles Times, CBSNEWS.com, Pittsburgh Courier, The Source, Latinosports.com, Common Dreams, The College Sporting News, basketball.com, Alternet, The Black Sports Network, Counterpunch, Dodgers Dugout, San Francisco Bay View, Z net, International Socialist Review, War-Times, and The Afro-American.
Barry Bonds Steroids Controversy
Zirin maintains the opinion that the aggressive hatred toward the use of steroids by Barry Bonds is in large degree due to racism. In 2004 Zirin wrote “The greatest case for reasonable doubt lies in Bonds' very late career success. His unparalleled middle-aged majesty screams his innocence.”1 However, in an undated interview, Zirin claims “I never wrote that I "believe Bonds has never done steroids."”2 He continues: “unlike oh so many others, the man never actually failed a steroids test. Is there a ton of circumstantial evidence that the man juiced? Absolutely. But he is still the best player I've ever seen. The best player of what will go down as the anabolic era.”3 Zirin claims that, rather than steroid use, “much of the reaction to Bonds is simply bad old-fashioned racism” 4
Articles and Interviews where Zirin defends Bonds against accusations of steroids:
- Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds in Not on Steroids (March 27/28, 2004)
- The Juice and the Noose (November/December 2006)
- The Unforgiven: Jack Johnson and Barry Bonds (June 19, 2007)
- Barry Bonds: Steroids, Scapegoats and Sweet Satisfaction (August 9, 2007)
- Indicted!: Barry Bonds Busted by a Broken System (November 15, 2007)
- Bosses’ Boycott: The Bonds Vanishes (May 12, 2008)
- No Softballs: Dave Zirin (undated interview)