Sports Imitates Life, and Life Imitates Sports:

July 2, New York City

I am not very patriotic. I love America well enough and the rights the Constitution (maybe not the Second Amendment) affords us. I like the freedom to write this column and to watch the July 4th Baseball Tripleheader on ESPN.

There is something truly democratic about games. The team with the best strategy and execution usually wins; and the loser returns to fight another day. Some days the Kansas City Royals, a team with a very low payroll, beats the Yankees. Just as some years, Truman actually defeats Dewey.

But I get very suspicious around the "America is No. 1" crowd. In politics, patriotism too often shrouds some people's anger at the lack of opportunity that exists in reality, outside the fervor of the red, white, and blue (see Pat Buchanan).

We look to sports to show us what we want to be, and in turn the world of sports mirrors us as what we are.

At the States' 224th birthday, we are a society separated by class almost as much as we were by race in 1947.

Class distinctions exist in the sports world among players, spectators, and in the standings.

Small-market baseball teams complain that they can't compete, which is true. The rich teams compete for pennants, while the lucky paupers hang around .500. The Yankees struggle now, but everyone expects them to be around in September when the races are really decided. Upstart Montreal, who always has the best young players in baseball but can never afford to keep them, has fallen back to earth.

This offseason, some baseball free agents will sign $20 million a season contracts while others will make in the hundreds of thousands. It's hard to figure out how the union holds together with such huge disparities, and if they will continue to do so. The NBA players union defeated efforts by the superstar players' agents to decertify the union.

In the stands, ticket prices have risen to a point where the average fan is priced out. While the rich fan pays $75 for waitress service at the new park in Detroit, the average fan gets an incomplete view for $12. And they don't mingle.

Class separation is almost as pernicious as racism. In truth, the two are basically the same, and you can't talk about one without the other.

I had a substitute teacher at my high school that claimed to have played for the Jets. He had since changed his name, refusing to divulge his previous one, and railed against sports to us, saying the higher you got the more racist it became.

I am in no position to speak with any knowledge of the racism at the highest level of sports. But I can point out that there are still few minorities in coaching or upper management, and I can't think of any black owners (if I am missing one, let me know at mlm77@columbia.edu). The truth is that minorities in sports make money as employees, not employers.

These distinctions are everywhere. American cities have standings too. Only we call them property values, and they determine who lives where. The cities with the highest property values house mostly white people. These class differences segregate people by class from birth.

When it comes to easing the wealth disparities in their own leagues, the owners seem to fight certain incarnations of it while advocating others. Owners in baseball and hockey resist revenue sharing, the only way leagues can stay competitive. Meanwhile players resist salary caps, though they exist in football and basketball. The owners want the free market when it comes to making profit on their teams, but not when it comes to paying players. It makes sense, but it is wrong.

Leagues, which sell competition, cannot survive with such disparities. Neither can nations I believe. The rich in America, mostly white people, control most of the wealth and let it trickle-down to the rest of us. Be it sports, journalism--where big companies like Gannett buy up smaller papers, or any other profession--those on top obviously want to stay there.

Lest you think this is a communist diatribe, I assure you, I begrudge no one the money they earn. My problem is with the individualistic outlook that money breeds. We avoid taking on these questions in sports because the answers extend to the whole of society. Baseball needs to look at the inequities among cities and rectify them, because if the Yankees have no one to play, there is no league.

When top and bottom are too far apart, society crumbles. That is what America is facing now.