You Want to Keep Politics Out of Sports? You Can't.

You want to keep politics out of sports? Dream on.

You don't want people kneeling as the National Anthem is being played before a game?

In case you haven't noticed, playing the National Anthem before the game is a political act. So maybe we should just stop playing it before games.

Hell, just having a City's or State's name as part of a team's name could be considered a political act.

Would you rather do it the way Japan does it, and have corporate names in place of city names? The 2 teams in Tokyo in Japan's baseball league are the Yomiuri Giants, named for a newspaper; and the Yakult Swallows, named for a dairy.

We could have the JPMorganChase Yankees, the CitiGroup Mets, the Blue Cross Red Sox (that sounds dumb, but Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts is already one of their sponsors), the Wrigley Cubs, the Budweiser Cardinals, the Coca-Cola Braves, and...

The Dodge Dodgers. And, with a supermarket chain, the Giant Giants. There is no longer a 1st Mariner Bank, so the 1st Mariner Mariners is out. One name that could work out is if Kraft bought the naming rights to the Phillies, and named them after their brand of cream cheese: They would still be the Philadelphia Phillies.

But, "Keep politics out of sports"? As if.

Nobody says, "Stick to sports (or whatever it is that you do professionally), leave politics out of it" when they agree with your politics. None of these "patriots" (in New England or otherwise) is telling Mike Ditka to shut the hell up about the kneeling and stick to football.

And as for the people telling entertainers to stop talking about politics: Fool, you voted for Donald Trump, because you saw him on television and you thought he was rich and competent -- and he is neither.

You want to keep politics out of sports? No, you can't. Don't even try.

So put the sweatiest of socks in it.