Unit 11: Sports in America

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Supplementary Readings

Diamonds for Everybody

When a group of businessmen in New York's genteel Murray Hill area adopted rules for hitting a little ball with a big stick in 1845, they had no idea that their diversion would become the national pastime. Indeed, the nattily dressed Knickerbocker Club tried to monopolize baseball by keeping "outsiders" away from matches and refusing to play with a Brooklyn team of "greasy mechanics." However, as one member of the elite noted, "The great mass who are in a subordinate capacity, can participate in this health-giving and noble sport," requiring only the great outdoors, hat, and ball. Democratization inevitably occurred, and soon urban workers, disadvantaged by long factory hours, were scheduling "morning-glory" games at dawn. Unlike wrestling or cockfighting, baseball was suitable for spectators of every age, class, and sex—though before the days of grandstands a lady might be offended by a frantic player looking for a stray ball under her hoop skirts. After the Civil War, baseball became a mania: professionals toured the country; amateurs neglected their jobs: and rooters either became rabid over victory or mourned.

The Simpson Case

It was a foggy June night in 1994 when Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman were slashed to death outside her Brentwood, Calif., condo. There were no witnesses, but many clues: bloody shoe prints and glove, a knit cap. When police later noticed cuts on the left hand of Nicole's estranged husband, O. J. Simpson, it started a chain of events that's still reverberating.

It turned out that a trail of blood drops leading away from the bodies appeared to match the mighty former football player's blood type. Detective Mark Fuhrman told other cops that he had found the mate to the bloody glove at Simpson's posh Brentwood mansion. DNA experts testified that there was blood from the victims at Simpson's house and in the white Ford Bronco in which he had led police on a surreal televised freeway chase after the murders. And prosecutors showed he had a history of slapping his wife around.

The 1990s have seen terrorism in the United States-at the World Trade Center and at the federal office building in Oklahoma City. It has also been a time when angry, alienated boys opened fire on classmates in Columbine High and other schools. But it was the Simpson case-a tangled tale of money, power, celebrity, race, domestic abuse, media madness-that captured America's perverse fascination with the famous. It started as a macabre parlor game that, thanks to cameras in the courtroom, everyone could play. But as the case evolved, it became a racially tinged referendum on the American justice system.

"What made it unusual was O.J.," says Vincent Bugliosi, the former Los Angeles prosecutor who wrote a book about the case. "The murder was very garden-variety." The football star turned Hertz pitchman hired a colorful cadre of high-priced legal talent dubbed the "Dream Team." The televised 13-month trial, presided over by Superior Court Judge Lance Ito, was the most widely watched criminal proceeding in history. Simpson's lawyers accused the police of bungling the investigation. Forensic experts pointed to sloppiness that could have compromised blood samples; the bloody glove didn't seem to fit; Fuhrman was a disastrous witness.

The jury deliberated for only a few hours before acquitting Simpson. A civil jury later disagreed, finding Simpson liable for both deaths and ordering him to cough up $33.5 million in damages. He sold his mansion, lost his Heisman trophy, and now lives not far from the murder scene with his and Nicole's two children. Did he get away with murder? That's the question of the century. Race factor tilts the scales of public opinion.

The second O.J. Simpson verdict, like the first one, already is being viewed as part of the troubling landscape of the nation's racial divide.

"Race was not a daily headline in the second trial, but it was there," says John Mack of the Los Angeles Urban League, a community service organization. "An overwhelming majority of African-Americans felt it was payback time for white America."

A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll conducted after the Tuesday verdict found stark differences in the views of blacks and whites.

Whites overwhelmingly agreed with the jury's decision that Simpson is responsible for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Only about a fourth of blacks agreed with the verdict. And while most blacks were sympathetic to Simpson, a majority of whites said they were unsympathetic.

"There were a lot of differences between these two trials, but they all pale in comparison to the fact that one jury was predominantly white and the other predominantly black," says Brandeis University professor Jeffrey Abramson, author of a book on the jury system. "Two juries, two societies, two codes of justice."

The jury in the criminal trial comprised nine blacks, two whites and one Hispanic. The jury in the civil trial: nine whites, one Hispanic, one Asian and one person of black and Hispanic ancestry.

The civil trial was different from the criminal trial in several other ways: The civil trial did not require an unanimous verdict, the standard of proof for guilt was lower, and defendant Simpson could be compelled to testify—and was.

But the civil trial jury's sweeping unanimity in its verdict against Simpson erased some of those differences, in the view of some legal experts, and set up a more stark comparison between both trials.

Viewed that way, the sharply opposite racial composition of the juries and Simpson's testimony stand as the major differences between the two trials.

"The combination of the all-white jury and the fact that O.J. Simpson was his own worst enemy on the witness stand made the difference," Mack says.

"Sometimes we need these reality checks to look at the real state of (race) relations," says Darnell Hunt, sociologist at the University of Southern California. He says many blacks will see the verdict as reinforcement of the view that the justice system is biased against them.

Critics of the civil trial also note that Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki did not allow any of the racially charged testimony from the criminal trial that might have helped Simpson. Retired Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman, accused in the criminal trial of using racial epithets and having racist motives in his investigation, did not testify in the civil trial.

Abramson says research still supports the notion that black jurors are more willing than white jurors to acquit defendants, especially when police conduct is an issue.

"The dirty fact is that juries reflect the divisions of society," Abramson says. "It's telling us that the racial divide is getting worse."

But not everyone agrees that race was the dominant factor or that the justice system is flawed.

"So what if this was a predominantly white jury?" says Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy, author of a forthcoming book on race and the legal system. "People want to fold these events into their preordained feelings."

Kennedy says the media should focus on the substantial poll numbers of blacks who feel the verdict was fair and the whites who feel it wasn't.

"I'm not sure this is a story of polarity," Kennedy says. "A bunch of cases go against expectations."

Christopher Darden, a prosecutor in the Simpson criminal trial, agreed.

"This jury focused on the evidence, not race or politics," Darden said. "O.J. lied in front of this jury, he lied to the black community, and he lied to the American public."

And the head of a group of trial lawyers says the Simpson verdict exposes the strengths, not the weaknesses, of the legal system.

"It is the unique beauty of America's system of justice that every citizen has the opportunity to right wrongs and hold wrongdoers accountable before a jury of our fellow citizens," says Howard Twiggs, president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America.

Reagan's Presidency