Sports, Politics, and Partisanship

It was about a year ago that fans of the Boston Bruins were up in arms about a hit placed by Matt Cooke of the Pittsburgh Penguins upon their forward, Marc Savard, which lead to a serious concussion for Savard. The outrage and venom from Bruins fans and their media was off the charts. Even though an almost carbon copy identical hit had felled David Booth of the Florida Panthers and no action was taken to punish the perpertrator, Mike Richards of the Philadelphia Flyers, you would have thought that Cooke playing for the rest of the season was the grossiest miscarrage of justice for decades in the league to hear a Bruins fan tell it.

Now the Bruins are on the opposite side of a controversial hit. Mamouth Defenseman and Captain Zdeno Chara was thrown out of a game last night against the rival Montreal Canadiens after shoving Max Pacioretty face first into the divder between the Bruins bench and the score keepers booth. Like Savard, Pacioretty had to be taken off the ice on a stretcher and right to a local hospital. I want a Bruins fan to come forward and really explain to me how the Chara hit on Pacioretty was different from Cooke’s hit on Savard. Neither was done with an intent to possibly end a guys career, but both were dangerous hits in the “gray area” between establishing a physical game and gladiatorial chaos on ice. I’m not saying this to condemn Chara, I’m saying it because I’m sure the self-righteous and pious Bruin fans will see no problem with the hit last night, while they continue to push for public flogging, Abu Ghraib styled tortures, and ultimate crucifixion of M. Cooke.

In this way sports is alot like politics. If a guy (or girl) on your team, party, or side of the aisle or spectrum, is embroiled in a scandal its always viewed as a rightous public servant being harrased or persecuted by the other side, media, corporations, unions, or whatever boogeyman is a plausible explanation. While if it is someone that you don't like, they are a dirty, rotten, corrupt politician who oozes slime as they slither down the hallways of power making shady backroom deals by the dozen as they go. Like so many things in life, perspective plays a larger role in our judgements then any sort of objective evidence. Some days it seems like the worlds of both sports and politics can be boiled down to a giant rorschach test in which we view exactly what we always want to see.