Kevin B. Blackistone

2 weeks ago | phillytrib.com | Kevin B. Blackistone

The Dodgers are not the greatest sports franchise in U.S. history. But maybe more important, as Glenn Stout reminded in the introduction to his 2004 book, “The Dodgers: 120 Years of Dodgers Baseball,” they are the most consequential. “Theirs is an inherently American story that follows a familiar path,” Stout wrote, “a story of immigration, assimilation, migration and change.

2 weeks ago | washingtonpost.com | Kevin B. Blackistone

Jackie Robinson’s Dodgers visiting Trump’s White House? For shame. (washingtonpost.com) Jackie Robinson’s Dodgers visiting Trump’s White House? For shame. By Kevin B. Blackistone 2025040710052200 The Dodgers are not the greatest sports franchise in U.S. history. But maybe more important, as Glenn Stout reminded in the introduction to his 2004 book, "The Dodgers: 120 Years of Dodgers Baseball," they are the most consequential.

1 month ago | washingtonpost.com | Kevin B. Blackistone

Last week, my daughter’s school put on the play “Girls in the Boat” by Alice Austen. Austen ran track at Oregon before studying law at Harvard, where she co-founded the Harvard Human Rights Journal. Correlatedly, this play is about sports and equality — specifically, the American women who persevered against sexism to compete in the first women’s Olympic rowing competition at the 1976 Montreal Summer Games. They went on to become the most dominant Olympic sports team in U.S. history.

1 month ago | washingtonpost.com | Kevin B. Blackistone

I don’t imagine that human rights activists in the United Kingdom purposely chose International Women’s Day this month to vandalize President Donald Trump’s golf course in Scotland’s Turnberry village in protest of his rapacious speculation about turning war-ravaged Gaza into another gaudy resort. But it conjured for me a similar assault upon a sports facility for a political statement, also in the U.K. And it reminded me how long sports have been used as a stage for protest.

2 months ago | washingtonpost.com | Kevin B. Blackistone

On the weekend before Donald Trump was inaugurated as president again, the Haskell Indian Nations University women’s basketball team opened Continental Athletic Conference play with back-to-back victories in a tournament at Washington Adventist University in Takoma Park, Maryland. But just three weeks later, after leading the team to four more consecutive wins before getting tripped up at Northern New Mexico, Haskell Coach Adam Strom was fired. Cut. Summarily laid off. Why?