Political Foul Ball

It appears that the Arizona Diamondbacks are going to be the traveling lightning rod in the ongoing debate regarding Arizona's State Bill 1070.

The team is hitting the road this weekend to take on the Chicago Cubs, and 1060 West Addison will be the temporary epicenter of the nation's immigration debate. Protests against SB1070 are aimed at the D-backs, who are being tagged "ambassadors of Arizona." They are going to be staged outside of Wrigley Field.

A group called Boycott Arizona 2010 is targeting the team in its efforts to put heat on the state government for signing SB1070 into law. The team is the group's "first target," according to its Facebook page:

As a business, the Arizona Diamondbacks must be held accountable for giving to a machine that has targeted immigrants in Arizona. The Arizona Diamondbacks Managing General Partner Ken Kendrick…and his family members…have made significant and considerable contributions to further the Republican agenda totaling $1,023,527.

The team is fighting the measure, telling the Phoenix Business Journal that the team does not take political stances and that Ken Kendrick "personally opposes the law."

Should the protest and debate over SB1070 drag on, the bigger hit to the Diamondbacks, as well as the Phoenix area could come next year, as the group is calling for Major League Baseball to step in and yank the 2011 All-Star Game from Chase Field. This move is being seconded by political activist sites such as Daily Kos and Change.org. Kos puts it bluntly:

Hit them in the pocketbook and make them feel it. MLB is scheduled to host the 2011 All-Star Game in Phoenix. Spring training is big business in AZ.

Both websites cite the NFL's decision to move Super Bowl XXVII from Tempe, Arizona, to Pasadena, California, over the state's lack of a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, as precedent for pulling the game.

Kos referred to the MLK protest as "[O]nne [sic] of the most successful boycotts in recent memories." Salon estimates that Arizona lost some $340 million in tourism revenue.

However, Salon suggests that the involvement of sport in the political realm might have actually hindered the passage of a MLK holiday in the state:

The state was one of the nation's final MLK Day holdouts, and the initiative seemed on its way to passage. In the final pre-election poll, it was favored by 52 to 38 percent.

With the 1993 Super Bowl scheduled to be held in Tempe, the league's commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, decreed that it would be moved out of the state if the referendum failed. This was a noble stand, of course, but it also allowed MLK foes to reframe the debate and to stir popular resentment of interference from "outsiders." On Election Day, voters rejected the MLK holiday by a narrow 15,000-vote margin. Proponents pointed their fingers at the NFL.

"Out here, it was viewed as Big Brother saying, 'You do it or it's gone,'" an executive with the then-Phoenix (now Arizona) Cardinals explained at the time.

For what it's worth, foreign-born players make up just under 28 percent of the slate of Major League Baseball players.