Episode 178: Joyous Sports Stories
Because we imagine this will be a hard week for a lot of people for a variety of reasons, we decided to keep the show light (except for the Burn Pile, of course). So, Amira, Jessica, Brenda, and Shireen tell each other some sports stories that should bring a smile to your face. [3:45] And, as always, you’ll hear the Burn Pile [28:03], Torchbearers, starring England women's rugby [39:41], and what is good in our worlds [43:01].
This episode was produced by Martin Kessler. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is a member of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Links
South African grandmothers get a kick out of playing soccer: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/south-african-grandmothers-get-a-kick-out-of-playing-soccer
How the Gimenez administration halted talks for early voting at the Heat’s AA Arena: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election/article246674912
Mitchell Miller: what the NHL bullying uproar shows us about hockey culture https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/oct/30/mitchell-miller-bullying-controversy-arizona-coyotes/
Bibiana Steinhaus – first female referee in Bundesliga – retires from her career: https://www.dutchreferee.com/bibiana-steinhaus-first-female-referee-bundesliga
This Woman Surfed the Biggest Wave of the Year: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/09/maya-gabeira-surfed-biggest-wave-year/616216
Rugby latest battleground for trans women as England breaks ranks: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-lgbt-rugby-trfn-idUSKBN2741HH/
Transcript
Jessica: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. I’m Jessica, and I’m joined today by Brenda, Amira and Shireen. On this week’s show, since this is dropping the week of the US presidential and other elections, and as COVID cases are growing in numbers in too many places, we wanted to focus on some joy. So, we’re going to tell some sports stories today and hope they bring a smile to your face.
Brenda: Once upon a time, in April of 2014, Pelé and I made each other cry.
Jessica: Then we’ll burn things that deserve to be burned, highlight the torchbearers who are giving us hope during this dark time, let you know what's good in our worlds, and tell you what we're watching this week in sports. On Thursday our interview will be with Dr. Courtney Szto about her new book, Changing on the Fly: Hockey through the Voices of South Asian Canadians. But before all of that, we have to get to something important. Tuesday, November 3rd, is National Sandwich Day. So, let’s hear it. What’s your favorite sandwich? No, a hot dog does not count. Do not bring that mess into our world. Shireen, you struggled with this answer – tell me what you came up with.
Shireen: Such a hard question. The best sandwich experience – I wanna be specific – was a crispy baguette stuffed with chicken salad that came with a pastry and a can of Perrier when we were in Paris last year, Jessica, at the local boulangerie. But my fav sandwich in the whole world is the smoked meat on rye from Schwartz’s Deli in Montreal. Can’t beat it. Grainy mustard, 100%.
Jessica: I love that you just created your own category for that answer. Okay, Amira?
Amira: [laughs] Yeah, either a pavo or panela queso sandwich from really any panaderia in Puerto Rico, or here. But not anywhere near me, sadly. My favorite place on the island is España, which is in Isla Verde. It’s literally my favorite sandwiches in the entire world. All of them are pressed and hot and, you know, they’re pressed like Cubans but not necessarily Cubans. I obviously get turkey in them. Anyways, all this did though was this was supposed to be joyous but I really live in a food desert and it really made me want mofongo or a sandwich or Puerto Rican food. I had to look it up, and the closest place is 1 hour and 24 minutes away!
Jessica: I’m sorry.
Amira: Some place in Selinsgrove! So I will be taking a road trip in the near future. Thanks.
Jessica: You’re welcome. Your answer did make me think about an amazing Martinique sandwich I had in Paris last summer that I do think about from time to time. It was pretty spectacular. Brenda?
Brenda: [laughs] Okay, mine is so boring in comparison. Bacon sandwich, mozzarella, avocado, lettuce tomato, a little bit of salt. That’s it. My turn to be a basic bitch this week. [Amira laughs]
Jessica: Sounds amazing. [Brenda laughs] I say lean right into that. Mine…There’s a local shop here called Gourmands that is Aaron’s favorite place, so we actually eat there a fair amount. They have this amazing sandwich called The Last Supper and it is mainly roast beed and queso, and that’s just a really lovely combo. Okay, let’s tell each other some happy stories this week. I think we're gonna go in chronological order so, Amira, you are up first.
Amira: Okay, I’m really excited about this because I get to talk about one of my favorite random facts ever. I’m gonna talk about McDonalds and the 1984 Olympics. It’s a situation I find specifically very hilarious, it brings me great joy thinking about it. I only can hope that it will do the same for you. So, with the 1984 Olympics coming to Los Angeles, McDonalds joined in with the rise in corporate sponsors and came up with a fun marketing plan.
Amira: That’s right. The plan was a scratch-off ticket that came with every order. Each scratch-off ticket had an event on it, and the medals corresponded with that. So, if the US won gold you got a free Big Mac, silver was french fries, bronze was a Coca Cola. So, you see? Exciting. When the US wins, you win. Now, here’s where things went very, very wrong…Or, very, very right, depending on if you were McDonalds or everybody else. Basically, McDonalds based their predictions on the 1976 Olympics when the US had come in 3rd in medal count behind the Soviet Union and the East Germans. So, many of you will see where this is going at this point! After 1980 when the US boycotted the Olympics the communist countries, they didn’t show up to LA. So the US medal count shot all the way up. In ’76 they had 94 medals, like, roughly 34 gold, right? 94 in total. In 1984 they took home 83 gold medals, 61 silver medals, and 30 bronze medals – a total medal count of 174 medals, leading to a complete and utter McDonalds meltdown. Headlines bemoaned the lack of food to fulfill all of the scratch off tickets that won. “Where is the Big Mac?” It was a complete Big Mac shortage, fries were sold out. The tales of folks who were like, “I love the LA Olympics because I’m literally surviving off of McDonalds for a month.” [Jessica laughs] It became a running joke. You might recall this joke even eventually making it to The Simpsons when they parodied this when Krusty offers a similar competition. Here’s the end of the episode where Krusty’s owner has completely lost it because of his shortage:
Amira: [Jessica laughing] That was Homer Simpson taking the odds, and why not? Everything was a winner. So, while McDonalds has moved away from consumer deals like that they remained a sponsor staple in the Olympic Village where athletes talked about how much they love McDonalds food, but if you recall at 2016 they had to limit the number of free Big Macs and McNuggets provided because the athletes were eating them out of house and home in the Olympic Village. McDonalds told the athletes that they could only order up to 20 items for free each day, which gives you a little window of how much McDonalds was being consumed in the Olympic village. In 2018, after a 41 year partnership with the IOC, McDonalds actually has ended their corporate sponsorship of the Olympic Games. So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what they cook up next.
Jessica: Oh, this is working. That made me very happy! Brenda, you remember this?
Brenda: Oh, I do. I remember this and I had many a free thing. I eventually would go on…I love McDonalds so much, I would eventually go on 6 years later to get an early work permit on my 15th birthday and begin to work at McDonalds where I got free food, and within 6 months was a vegetarian. [laughter] This McDonalds game was a highly…1984 was just such a year for me. I was 9, the Detroit Tigers won the World Series, there was the Olympics, and that McDonalds game…I don’t know, but my life span is probably shortened because of it. [Jessica laughs]
Shireen: I remember that even though I wasn’t eligible for any of it because we were inundated with American advertising. So I got all of this and then you had all the Canadians that were so jealous…You guys kept winning! We never got any of that.
Amira: I just love how you guys are like, “I remember this!” and I wasn’t born for another 4 years! [laughing]
Brenda: Only you think that’s funny.
Jessica: Yeah. [laughs]
Brenda: Only you think that’s funny. I’m gonna focus on the story.
Amira: [laughing] I do think it’s funny!
Jessica: Okay, well I also have an Olympic story; mine’s personal. So, my mom Mary and her wife Sue, they used to live in Atlanta in 1996. For anyone from Atlanta, they lived in Candler Park, they were near Little Five Points right by the old…I think Charis Bookstore has now moved but it used to be right there. They were right in it, and so we went to the Olympics in 1996 and it was so much fun. We saw volleyball, we saw some gymnastics, we went and saw track and field in the stadium, and then we saw some basketball. It’s funny because I was 15, 16. I was a teenager and I only remember so much about it, which is kind of strange. I was pretty old for this moment. But I remember specifically there were huge crowds, just the overwhelming feeling of the place. But really I remember the basketball. This was really exciting; 1996, the US women’s team, they had won bronze in ’92 and so for the first time…So, the US decided they needed to be better, and for the first time the team was composed of the best post-collegiate basketball players, selected more than a year before the games. They played 52 international games leading in to the Olympics, they won all 52, so the hype was huge.
The players are people that we know so well, they’re legends, right? Sheryl Swoopes, Dawn Staley, Rebecca Lobo and – my favorite – Ms. Lisa Leslie. I was a teenager, I was so tall, I was probably inching towards my 6 feet. I’m 6 feet tall now, I might have been 6 feet then. I had too much limb, I was like, arm and leg. I wrote about this once and what I said about it was that I was in that awkward body that I didn’t yet know how to wear. But then I got to go to the Olympics and I saw these women play and they looked like me and I looked like them and it’s like I don’t even know how to describe in words how affirming that was for me. I got to go and see this. I talked to my mom, Mary, and her wife, Sue, yesterday, and here's their memory of this bit of it, starting with Sue:
Sue: Part of the most fun was that we were able to bring you, JR, Jessica Ray, just to see the joy on your face, and also to see all the people looking at you because you were so tall and they thought maybe you’re an Olympic player.
Mary: Yeah, because you were 16 years old and you were already really really tall.
Jessica: So, we went to some early round action, and it didn’t even matter to me that we were sitting in the nosebleeds.
Mary: The basketball was played in the Georgia Dome. I think we set up really really high, I think in one of those pictures that I sent to you yesterday, I think that was the women’s basketball game. You can see how far up we were.
Jessica: [laughs] I love their voices so much. This was a huge watershed moment in women’s basketball as well. The American Basketball League, the ABL, and the WNBA started out of the popularity of this winning USA women’s basketball team and their success. It just holds such an important place in my heart. But to maximize the feeling of happiness – I hope this is true for everyone else, because this is my mom – I wanna end this with my mom talking about what it was like for her to experience the Olympics in 1996 in Atlanta where she lived.
Mary: I think the thing that I was so amazed about at the Olympics was that we were actually at the Olympics, you know? That’s where…I couldn’t hardly fathom it, because I never thought I’d go to an Olympics. Then when we found out it was going to Atlanta I thought, oh my gosh, I can’t believe we’re gonna get to go to an Olympics. Then all the people and just all the excitement, it was like just the adrenaline flowed. I loved it. I loved everything about it.
Jessica: I love how she says, [with a southern accent] “luuuved.” Ugh, it’s so good. [laughs] It’s so adorable. So yeah, that is my story that I think of to make myself happy.
Shireen: Jessica Ray. That was lovely.
Brenda: Jay Ray! [Shireen giggles]
Jessica: Now everyone knows, the secret is out. My parents often call me JR.
Amira: I love that. I love that joy. You know, my cousins are in Atlanta and when I think of that…They were quite close to the bombing, but now I have a really positive image of the Atlanta Olympics to replace that and that makes me very happy.
Jessica: Bren, you also have a personal story.
Brenda: I do. Once u upon a time, in April of 2014, Pelé and I made each other cry. So, I had been studying soccer for a long time already by then; my book was out, I had gotten tenure, I thought things were gonna be good in my life. The president of the university decided he wanted to have a major soccer conference, and I wasn’t given a choice, and I didn’t wanna do it, and in the same week I found out that I was pregnant. It was a surprise, and of course I’m happy now but at that time it did not fill me with unmitigated joy and hope. [laughs] I was conflicted and worried, and then this soccer conference came up and there ended up being four days of it, 170 presenters from many many countries. It was very much on me. It was almost the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and I was super critical of it, I was critical of the money that it took to build it, the repression and the increased private security forces, the changing of municipal laws, repression of Afro-Brazilian communities around Rio, São Paulo. I was really conflicted, and I was conflicted about Pelé.
So I was jaded, I was at this jaded moment, you know, where I had to deal with this legend coming. It’s so funny to think about it. I wasn’t excited at all. I had just a complete sense of dread and anxiety. I was so overworked, I just could hardly get it together. So the moment actually comes, and imagine – I’ve written about this person A LOT, and so I am nursing my daughter and I'm trying to tell people like Grant Wahl like, oh, down the hall and to the left…While I’m nursing this baby. [laughs] And 170 other people. I don't know how many people attended. There's a clinic for girls, you know, the whole thing and whole time I’ve got this baby, and every time I have to do something, Julieta…Like, can someone hold my baby?! [laughter] She didn't want to be with anybody, and then there's the other two kids. Luna had an allergic reaction to amoxicillin, had to go to the hospital in between. I’m just like...So, okay, you get it. So it comes to the ceremony, and I had really worked on my speech. I had bad Portuguese but I gave it a shot.
Brenda: I thought I came up with something that was at least somewhat poignant.
The way that Pelé and his generation played the game held a mirror not up to the actual world perhaps but the aspirations that many millions of fans held. The international conference we’ve had here has given us an opportunity to reflect on how football gives us insight about class inequality, social injustice, gender, courage, solidarity, the human condition; and Brazil as all nations has lived with deep divisions and contests over their soccer legacy, but it also gives us pause, I think. What would the world look like if more national identities were founded on creative brilliance, grace, and engagement with the world, win or lose?
So I looked over, and Pelé’s tearing up, right? I get through the Portuguese part, and then he’s full on tearing up. Okay, then the degree is awarded and we go backstage and he just gives me this big hug, and I’m just crying because it’s over, it’s done, I don’t have to do any more. I went on to write just recently a piece where I was super proud because I got to kind of reexamine his legacy, and I feel so lucky and it was so special how every time I write about him I’m just sort of beaming all the time like hey, thanks, buddy.
Jessica: Yeah, Brenda’s beaming right now. You all can’t see it, but I can see across the Zoom, the beaming. That was beautiful, Bren.
Amira: Not many people can say they both kicked Sepp Blatter and nursed in front of Pelé. [laughter] Brenda Elsey, one of a kind!
Shireen: And for everybody else, I met Brenda in 2015 at a conference but for the longest time the entire standard of a soccer conference was this one. I was really sad that I met you after, because the first question anybody asks in this world is, “Did you go to that conference at Hofstra?” is the first thing, because she set the bar so high globally – while nursing a baby. So, hat’s off.
Brenda: I just think it’s like, maybe with this election and these happy stories and stuff, I love thinking about the un-jading, like, how do you lose a little bit of cynicism again? Because it’s really necessary.
Jessica: Alright Shireen, bring us home.
Shireen: Vakhegula Vakhegula! The soccer grannies from South Africa. When Jessica put this in the document I knew exactly what I was gonna talk about, because when I think of football and I think of global football I think of grannies from South Africa. This is my happy story, this is what I want to be. I want to be a granny one day who does this. This is an absolutely beautiful story about women between the ages of 55-84 in South Africa in a specific region, Limpopo. I heard about it by accident, and I heard about it about 10 years ago, 2010, I came across this article. So basically let me give the background. This group was founded by community activist Rebecca Ntsanwisi, AKA “Mama Beka,” from Limpopo. She’s a community organizer, she’s an advocate and philanthropist, and she campaigns for women in South Africa in order to bring attention to their plights for safety, security, and economic independence. Now, Mama Beka was diagnosed with cancer in 2003, and one of the things that made her happy was football. So, she started the group of women in her area to help them and help them engage in a healthy, active lifestyle.
Because we know the first thing to go for women who carry so much on their shoulders all the time – work, family, mental health of everybody – they put themselves last, and sometimes the first thing to go is what people consider extra, is self-care. For her, for Mama Beka, football was self-care. So she got these grandmas started. Now, what I love about this is y’all are like, well, 55-84 is a huge, huge age range. Some of these women did not have any knowledge beyond their normal consumption of football and cheering and supporting and fanning, so it was really flipping the script on what we think footballers can be, and particularly in that region of South Africa, what footballers look like. Because when you think of a footballer from South Africa you don’t think of a Black granny. But guess what, y’all? You should! So, one of the greatest things about this is Mama Beka’s goal and her vision coming out of this which was to start a World Cup for the elderly, or an African grannies’ cup.
I had been following this story and the African grannies actually traveled to the 2018 World Cup in Russia, and they got to be a…I mean, the word is ‘mascot,’ that’s how they refer to the people that walk the players onto the field. So, one of the qualifying matches, they actually did this. So I was like, okay, this is good. I mean, unfortunately some of the core team had passed away by 2018 but generally the squad was there, I think there were 14 of them that went. What I didn’t know, and if I knew this fact about the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France I would have made Jessica go – they actually traveled to France and played against a French women’s team of elderly women, Les Mamies foot, it's called. I did not know this, otherwise I certainly would have gone from Reims in that car that we rented and gone somewhere else to watch these grandmas. So, these Mamies were playing…I tried to find out what happened in the match and I wasn’t able to do so. If any of you have any information at all about the Vakhegulas, the Vakhegulas of South Africa and what happened, please let me know! I can’t find any follow up information.
What I hope to see moving forward is this joy. I love the idea of breaking down ideas of what normalcy is, like, what is normalcy even? If you seek joy you get joy, you get joy from football, you get joy from random things in sport that you are connected to. We can’t help what we fall in love with, and I fell in love with this entire story. A documentary was created about this and it was shown in Doc NYC film festival.
Shireen: So the sounds of joy, the sounds of the women and, you know, they go to the side of the pitch and you see in the clip that they’re taking off their shirts and they’re wearing colorful bras and they’re putting on their kits and lacing up their boots, it’s riveting. So hats off to the grandmas, the soccer grandmas of South Africa. So if you’re out there, you’re going to play in the park – take your grandma with you!
Jessica: Shireen, I have all the faith in the world that you will be a soccer playing granny one day. [Shireen laughing] There’s no doubt in my mind about that, in fact. On Thursday, hear Brenda’s interview with Dr. Courtney Szto about Courtney’s new book, Changing on the Fly: Hockey through the Voices of South Asian Canadians. Make sure you’re subscribed to Burn It All Down so you don't miss out on this great interview.
Courtney: How do you talk about “Canada’s game” when it's built on settler colonialism? It’s inherently racist in the segregation it was formed upon. It forces us to question a lot about what we think we know as a nation and what we are supposed to be as a people, and I think that that’s why we don’t talk about race and hockey in particular. It challenges the notion of Canadian-ness, that we’re supposed to be welcoming and multicultural, but once we start pulling at that thread it comes apart pretty quickly.
Jessica: Now it’s time for everyone’s favorite segment that we like to call the burn pile, when we pile up all the things we’ve hated this week in sports and set them aflame. I’m gonna start, and I’m gonna go with the low-hanging fruit that is the MLB and the LA Dodgers’ third baseman, Justin Turner, not taking COVID seriously. Last week the Dodgers won their first World Series in 32 years when they defeated the Tampa Bay Rays in game 6. Justin Turner, who was a key part of the team’s success, was removed from the game between the 7th and 8th innings. Then Fox announced post-game on air that Turner was pulled because a test came back during the game saying he had COVID. But then there he was, on the field celebrating, not in isolation. No, he was hugging other players, he posed without a mask for photos with the team – sitting next to the team’s manager, Dave Roberts, a cancer survivor.
The MLB tried to put this on Turner, saying in a statement, “When MLB security raised the matter of being on the field with Turner, he emphatically refused to comply.” Turner deserves a lot of scrutiny and judgement here; he knew he had an infectious and potentially fatal virus and chose to break protocol, but also what’s the point of MLB security? The reason Turner was pulled mid-game was because the tests that the players took between game 5 and 6 were delayed, but the MLB didn't postpone game 6. Instead they tested those samples and found out during the 2nd inning of game 6 that Turner’s test was inconclusive. They then rushed that day’s test and found it positive, pulling him before the 8th. The MLB has a lot to answer for in the way that it handled the pandemic in general, and we shouldn’t let our anger no matter how justified it is at Turner detract from the league’s failings too. Sure this was a major moment in Turner’s life, and of course he wanted to be out there celebrating. But lots of people have missed once in a lifetime events, including being able to bury their parents or other family members who have died during this pandemic. Lots of people are sacrificing. Asking an athlete to sacrifice is not anything special, in fact they shouldn’t have to be asked, and their team and their league should demand it of them anyway. I just wanna burn all of that bullshit. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Amira, what do you wanna torch?
Amira: Obviously my lighthearted really annoyed burn is still the Mookie Betts trade. WHY? Anyways, I really want to just tell Jeff Garcia to fuck off because he clearly has been sitting on this criticism of Cam Newton. Obviously Cam is not playing well – he also had COVID two fucking weeks ago! But anyways, after the latest game where he had a particularly poor showing, Jeff Garcia got on the damn television and started to go after not his play but his clothes. He said, “Why are you dressing like that, to bring more attention to yourself? I'd be trying to ask the equipment managers 'Put me in your jock sock cart…” Actually, this is a good place. I’m gonna get the audio for this because you should really listen to Jeff Garcia talk about “jock sock carts.”
Jeff Garcia: “You get yanked in the second half, there's nothing good going your way. Why are you dressing like that, to bring more attention to yourself? I'd be trying to ask the equipment managers, put me in your jock sock cart and sneak me in the back door and I'll show up on the field and do the best that I can.”
Amira: Here’s the thing: the fact that this is the first thing that came to Jeff Garcia’s mind tells you that he’s been ruminating on this for a long time. Forget about dogwhistles, the racial overtones here are very very clear. You can’t impose dress codes on players because they don’t take the games too seriously and then get mad because their dapperness offends you. I literally could only think about the words of Still I Rise by Maya Angelou when she's like, “Does my haughtiness offend you? Don’t take it awful hard.” Right? This is what it is. It reminds me of the way people were offended by Jack Johnson. It wasn’t that he was good, it was that he was good and flashy and he liked white women and furs and fast cars. They want Black athletes to win with “modesty,” right? It’s conditional acceptance, and they knew they couldn’t say shit to Cam about how he dresses when he’s winning, right? So as soon as he has a bad game you get on the TV to talk about what he's wearing, he’s “bringing attention to himself” – he’s wearing clothes. If you’re paying attention to him it's because he’s flashy. If you’re offended by it it speaks more volumes about you and your insecurity and what you cannot deal with, which is just a dapper dude going to fucking work. So please stop, because it's just annoying and unnecessary and I don’t even know why you have space to go after his outfit. Talk about his interceptions, not at all about his drip, because it’s more like a flood honestly for how swaggy Cam is, but anyways. I just wanna burn the unnecessary comments because it’s dumb. Burn it down.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Brenda, what is on your burn pile?
Brenda: On my burn pile is metaphorically the Miami-Dade mayor, Carlos Giménez, and the reason is because basically they ruined and squashed the idea of putting a voting site in the American Airlines arena of the Miami Heat. This made me really angry on many levels. I mean, the athletes’ activism that prompted this and convinced the Heat organization to put this at the center of some of the demands of their Black Lives Matter protests was really inspiring and hard work. I do wanna cite here Douglas Hanks, the journalist who wrote about this for the Miami Herald, because it was a really well laid-out story and his journalism is really valuable. So basically the Heat said, when they found out about this, “To say we are disappointed is an understatement.”
So the Heat organization wasn’t quiet about it, but basically what has resulted is that the deputy mayor and the mayor – who’s running for congress now – decided that the site was “not apolitical” because it had a Black Lives Matter banner on the outside of the stadium. So instead of doing that they’re holding it in a much smaller space where social distancing is impossible – that’s what voters are saying. So I wanna burn the false equivalence first of all, in Black Lives Matter being a political or partisan sign, which it is not. It is about civil rights that we all need to care about, and the equivalency that the mayor said was, “What if we had a ‘blue lives matter’ sign?” So I wanna burn that type of stupidity. We’ve been educated by Black Lives Matter for years. This is purposeful ignorance to call it that, and then to kind of see the players’ hard work go down the drain by an action that actually is partisan, that actually is political. So I’m frustrated, I'm angry that people are now being exposed to COVID when they’re just trying to vote because of these stupid dumb fucks. So I wanna burn it.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Alright Shireen, what are you burning?
Shireen: I’m going to offer a trigger warning, content warning, for violent abuse and racism and ableism. So this week y’all must have heard in hockey news, it was a typically awful garbage pile of gross toxicity. The Arizona Coyotes had announced that their first draft pick would be Mitchell Miller, an 18 year old freshman at the University of North Dakota, and for those of you that know, University of North Dakota is a hockey powerhouse and a lot of their players go on and get drafted to the NHL. So, the Arizona Republic, an independent paper, released a story that when Miller was 14 – and I really want you to remember this name – Isaiah Meyer-Crothers, because that’s who should be centered in this entire thing, was the child he abused. At the time Meyer-Crothers, a Black disabled young man, had the mental understanding of a 10 year old, according to his mother. Now, the Coyotes knew about this, they drafted him anyway.
Meyer-Crothers’ mother Joni wrote a letter which was also released in a piece by The Athletic later in the week about how her letters to the Coyotes went unresponded. They didn’t reply, they didn’t reach out to her, they didn’t talk to her. Isaiah was nowhere centered in this story. Now, when the story was initially released the Yotes really got defensive and said, you know, “We stand by our choice. We are going to help this young man, we think everybody enter whatever about redemption arcs…” that are usually carefully curated and we see them a lot. What ended up happening is they released him because of the pressure, not because they were committed to the cause, not because they felt any accountability for their fucking decisions. There’s no leadership anywhere here. Where the hell is Gary Bettman? Is he in the Mines of Moria? Where is this man? I haven’t seen this man! Where is he?
So, they Coyotes released him, and a few days ago University of North Dakota also let Miller go from their hockey program. So at this point there are two kids, the central one needing assistance and support which he and his family were denied, is Isaiah Meyer-Crothers, and now Mitchell Miller is left on his own. We’ve seen that he was given no guidance, he showed very little remorse, as specified by the judge in this case because this did go before youth courts. This whole thing is a fucking mess. It’s a mess from start to finish. The child that should have been supported and centered was not. Nobody held space for him. Mitchell Miller is now being tossed aside where before because of their own interests the Coyotes decided that they were gonna be the saviors in this story and then pulled away and backed out when it was too difficult. This is a PR process, that’s what this is. I’m furious at all of it.
This just exposes the lack of leadership, foresight and transparency when it comes to hockey, and it hate it. I hate all of it. I wrote a piece about this saying the exact same thing for the Guardian. I needed to parse out my thoughts because I’ve just been so upset about it. It’s been a tough week about this because nobody seems to want to say there is way in this discourse to be able to talk about the lack of centering of Isaiah Meyer-Crothers and his family, and there is a way to talk about how hockey did let down is going to let down Mitchell Miller again, and I don’t even wanna know what the plans are now. The NHL has been silent about this, as usual. I wanna take that…This whole situation, misstep from every conceivable shitty thing to happen happened in this story. I wanna take this whole thing and toss it on the burn pile. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Now to highlight people carrying the torch and lighting the way. Amira, who are our defenders of the week?
Amira: Yeah, that’s gonna go to Chiney Ogwumike and the rest of the Ogwumike sisters and all the Black athletes with LeBron James’s More Than A Vote organization, which is doing the work to stop systemic racist voter suppression. The Ogwumike sisters will be in Houston working as poll workers all day on Tuesday; this is the same Harris County where Texas Republicans have limited 1 mail-in ballot box for a county with 4.7 million people, and then tried to toss out over 100,000 ballots that came through drive-in voting as Harris County is setting records for voter turnout and they’re still trying to disenfranchise them. Nneka Ogwumike, Chiney Ogwumike, Olivia Ogwumike, Erica Ogwumike: thank you for volunteering, being poll workers. As Chiney said, the last time she was at this arena, the Toyota Center, she remembered “watching James Harden and company fight for a victory,” but now, she said, “we are in a fight for our lives.” And I thank them for doing this work.
Jessica: Brenda, the goodbye and thank you of the week?
Brenda: Goodbye and thank you to Bibiana Steinhaus, a referee of women’s soccer and the first woman referee in the Bundesliga, who retired last month. Steinhaus refereed the 2011 Women’s World Cup final where Japan beat the United States – on penalties; the 2012 Olympic women’s gold medal game, in which the US defeated Japan; and Lyon’s 2017 win against PSG in the women’s Champs League final. She was a model of intelligence, expertise and grace under pressure.
Jessica: Shireen, I know you’re particularly excited about this week’s comeback of the week.
Shireen: I’m so excited. Hello, girls in green! Pakistan women’s national soccer team gathered for training camp this week after a seven-year hiatus. Seven years. They’re back on the pitch where they belong, they’re training, they’re getting excited, they’re glowing, they’re distancing, they’re wearing masks when they can. I’m just so happy to see it. I wish them all the best. Allah ke hawale sai jao!
Jessica: Amira, tell is about the record-breaker of the week.
Amira: Yeah, Brazilian big-wave surfer Maya Gabeira set a new world record in surfing earlier this year when she surfed a 73.5-foot wave in Portugal. You might’ve seen the video – it’s terrifying, first of all. They recalculated it so they got the new height which means that it was the largest wave surfed by anyone this year, and to have a woman win that title at the end of the year means a lot. She got the WSL’s 2020 Women’s XXL Biggest Wave Award but also now holds the title of surfing the biggest wave of anybody in tow surfing of the year.
Jessica: Can I get a drumroll please?
[drumroll]
The torchbearer this week is England’s women’s rugby, which won its record-extending 16th Six Nations title last week and which recently announced that it would not be adopting the outright ban on trans women despite World Rugby’s recent ruling. That is a good one to punch from, England’s women’s rugby, and we thank them and we’re excited for them. [Amira cheering] Okay, what is good y’all? I’m gonna go first. I learned this week that Martin, our producer, does not know who Bette Midler is. He’s now covering his eyes in shame. But what is good about this is that I have now listened to the song The Rose over and over and over again. That is just such a good song. I love it so much.
Jessica: I haven’t even texted that one to Martin. I’ve also just had a lot of candy thanks to Halloween and that has been really great. Amira?
Amira: My grandfather passed away last week but I was really happy that I was safely able to make it first to Houston and then to Natchez, Mississippi for his burial. It was a beautiful country-ass home going, but it was really nice to be able to socially distance…Like, we drove by my mom’s family in Natchez so we got to drive by and see my grandmother and wave at her. My great-uncle Huck we got to drive by and wave at. We got to play socially distanced Spades and dominoes. I’m now on 50 million cousin group chats that have been revived in the wake of this. Then of course it was really nice to go get to see my sister’s dance team on Friday night pandemic lights, like nobody could come to the Friday night football games but her dancers are still dancing. It’s just good to be home, even if it was a whirlwind trip for a fairly sad occasion. But still, you know, family is everything.
Then when I was there my brother got me into a new anime show which is good because where my level of self-care needs are, like, I literally can’t watch real human people. It makes me too stressed out. So instead of watching Avatar for the millionth time I’m now watching Hunter x Hunter and having a lot of fun with that. Then I reinstalled Sims 4 – [whispers] on my work computer. I reinstalled Sims 4 and now I'm just playing the Sims and watching Hunter x Hunter and writing, I guess, occasionally. That’s a disclaimer for anybody who’s listening to the podcast who I owe work to. [Jessica laughs] But that’s what I’m doing.
Jessica: Brenda?
Brenda: Well, I love Halloween, even though it was dampened this year. I love seeing everyone’s pictures on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and all their kids and all of them being cute and, you know, I love Halloween even though I’m not really a candy person. I loved watching baseball. I didn’t have a dog in that fight and I loved the Mexi flex of the pitchers on the Dodgers, I loved them being interviewed in Spanish. I found them delightful how, you know, Gonzáles almost retired and then they convinced him not to and it's a whole cutesy story that I just kind of eat up. I voted, which was amazing, and there was free pizza. Someone had sent just dozens of pizzas and so I made the kids wait for an hour and a half. They were super crabby, super pissed off. Then I was like, HEY, PIZZA! And they were like, YES! I’m pretty sure it was Paul Rudd, who lives in Rhinebeck; it might have been Uma Thurman; it might have been Julian Casablancas. I have all these theories…Yeah, they all live in that area. Jessica Luther right now looks very confused about this. Are you okay, Jessica? [laughs] So we all get to gossip about which person had sent us the pizzas, and it was hilarious. I also really love this episode.
Jessica: Well, I mean, I feel like you should introduce us to Paul Rudd, is what I thinking.
Brenda: You can come to his candy shop! He’s there all the time.
Jessica: Yes. [laughs]
Brenda: Yeah, in Rhinebeck.
Amira: Yes!
Jessica: I will do that. That is a thing I will do, on the other side of this. Shireen, what’s been good with you this week?
Shireen: The week was a little stressful, I mean, school’s going really well. I’m quite happy me and my partner Nico in our aesthetics and comms class got a 90 on our presentation on Horkheimer, so I was very excited about that. I was on that fateful call when Martin disclosed he had not known of Bette Midler and I wanna preface this by saying that Martin has also never watched Bend It Like Beckham, and I actually feel like this is a problem. I love you, Martin. I’m here for an intervention. I’ve offered multiple times to FedEx him a movie, a DVD, because I own several in case of emergency – like this one! So this is what I’m gonna focus my attention on now and watch the film again. I wanna shout out my cohort at Ryerson University RTA masters of media production because I love this class. We have threads and Discord about baby photos, pets, and any possible conceivable thing to distract us from all the work we have due. I really am very grateful because I think I have the best cohort ever. I am grinding Cobra Kai with my kids and we love it so much. The amount that we love this Netflix series is weird, but normal. I’m just very grateful for it. I'm spending a lot of time with my kids and they're great.
Just to circle back a little bit to the cohort really quickly – a lot of us have never met in person because my program is exclusively online, but what we decided was we’re gonna have a prom when this is over and we graduate, even if we just have to get a restaurant ourselves because there's only 24 of us in the program, so in some places we can still fit inside. So I bought a prom dress for a prom that’s not yet happening for a program I haven't even graduated from, but I bought a prom dress. Shoutout to David Rudin, my dear dear friend in Montreal, who encourages me and enables me to always buy gowns that I may not ever need. But you need a gown. So, this is my 6th gown and I’m very excited. It’s like a silver-grey with an overlay of lace, like a built-in cape. It's stunning, I love it. Of course I bought a gown in a pandemic, it was a better purchase than the air fryer. So anyways, I have a gown and I’m excited. I’m absolutely thinking about an idea that Martin just had about watching Bend It Like Beckham via Zoom, which is a must, Martin. So that’s what’s good.
Jessica: Before we get out of here we wanna tell you what we’re watching this week in sports. It’s slowing down on this side of the pond, except for football, which you can catch whenever COVID isn’t postponing the games. [Amira laughs] There is some college volleyball that has returned, keep an eye out for that. This includes a big matchup between Baylor and Texas on Thursday, November 5th and Friday, November 6th. You can catch them twice this week at 7pm central time. And there is of course soccer being played around the world. The usual men’s leagues fixtures include the Premier League, Bundesliga, Serie A – is that right?
Shireen: Serie A. It’s just Serie A.
Jessica: I know, but that’s what I said before and Brenda corrected me.
Jessica: Brenda, it’s Serie A!
Brenda: You’re talking about the Italian league?
Shireen: Yeah, it’s Serie A!
Brenda: Serie A.
Jessica: Serie A.
Brenda: Yeah, you did it perfect.
Jessica: Bundesliga, Serie A, La Liga, Ligue 1, Scottish League, and of course the UEFA men’s Champion’s League, women’s FA Cup, plus the women's FA championship.
That’s it for this episode of Burn It All Down. On behalf of us all here: burn on and not out. This episode was produced by the great Martin Kessler, the wind beneath our wings. Shelby Weldon does our website, episode transcripts, and social media. You can find Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. If you want to subscribe to Burn It All Down, you can do so on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and TuneIn – all of the places. Burn It All Down is also now part of the Blue Wire network. For information about the show and links and transcripts for each episode, check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. From there you can email us directly or go shopping at our Teespring store. It’s the perfect time to pick a hoodie or a blanket. Use the code fallflames, one word, and receive 15% off your order. If you’re a patron, make sure to check your email or the Patreon page for an extra special discount code. As always, an evergreen thank you to our patrons for your support, it means the world. You can sign up to be a monthly sustaining donor to Burn It All Down at patreon.com/burnitalldown.