Sports, Environmentalism, Land Use, and Urban Development

What happens when sport meets nature? Sports Illustrated (SI) answered this question in March 2007 with an issue devoted to global warming. As its cover makes clear, SI's forecast is one of imminent danger: Dontrelle Willis, the Florida Marlins' pitcher, stands knee-deep in water in Miami Gardens' emptied Dolphin Stadium. Holding his baseball glove, Willis grimly meets the reader's gaze. The copy reads: "As the planet changes, so do the games we play." In smaller print, a message is added: "Time to pay attention." We, like SI, suggest that sports are not immune to global environmental change. But more important, we show that sports cannot be understood apart from the changes in social relations & political processes that accompany large-scale environmental transformations. Just like the tragic events in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina that drew thousands of the most underprivileged citizens in the United States to search for shelter in the Louisiana Superdome, the use of sporting facilities-whether indoors or outdoors -- is deeply implicated in issues of social justice, exclusion, development, & power. Sports, as actual places & practices, embody governments, political careers, media infrastructures, capital investments, & modalities of ethics in late modernist societies. These relationships are tested, managed, exploited, & reinvented in contexts of environmental devastation. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2009.]