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Reclaiming 42: Public Memory and the Reframing of Jackie Robinson's Radical Legacy
by David NazeReclaiming 42 centers on one of America’s most respected cultural icons, Jackie Robinson, and the forgotten aspects of his cultural legacy. Since his retirement in 1956, and more strongly in the last twenty years, America has primarily remembered Robinson’s legacy in an oversimplified way, as the pioneering first black baseball player to integrate the Major Leagues. The mainstream commemorative discourse regarding Robinson’s career has been created and directed largely by Major League Baseball (MLB), which sanitized and oversimplified his legacy into narratives of racial reconciliation that celebrate his integrity, character, and courage while excluding other aspects of his life, such as his controversial political activity, his public clashes with other prominent members of the black community, and his criticism of MLB. MLB’s commemoration of Robinson reflects a professional sport that is inclusive, racially and culturally tolerant, and largely postracial. Yet Robinson’s identity—and therefore his memory—has been relegated to the boundaries of a baseball diamond and to the context of a sport, and it is within this oversimplified legacy that history has failed him. The dominant version of Robinson’s legacy ignores his political voice during and after his baseball career and pays little attention to the repercussions that his integration had on many factions within the black community.Reclaiming 42 illuminates how public memory of Robinson has undergone changes over the last sixty-plus years and moves his story beyond Robinson the baseball player, opening a new, broader interpretation of an otherwise seemingly convenient narrative to show how Robinson’s legacy ultimately should both challenge and inspire public memory.
Red Barber: The Life and Legacy of a Broadcasting Legend
by Judith R. Hiltner James R. WalkerBorn and raised in rural Mississippi and the even balmier climes of central Florida, Red Barber, at the age of thirty-two, became one of New York City&’s most influential citizens as the play-by-play announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers. When he arrived in 1939, Barber brought the down-home drawl and idioms of his southern roots to the borough, where residents said they could walk down any street and never miss a pitch because his voice wafted out of every window and every passing car. From his colorful expressions like &“rhubarb&” and &“sitting in the catbird seat&” to his vivid use of similes—a close game was &“tighter than a new pair of shoes on a rainy day&”—Barber&’s influence on his contemporaries and the many generations of broadcasters who followed him cannot be overstated. But behind all the base hits, balls, and strikes lies a compelling story that dramatizes the shifting expectations and roles of a public figure—the sports broadcaster—as he adapted to complex cultural changes throughout the course of twentieth-century American life.Red Barber follows the trajectory of Barber's long career from radio and television play-by-play man for the Cincinnati Reds, Brooklyn Dodgers, and New York Yankees to his work calling college and professional football games, his nine-year tenure as director of sports for CBS Radio, and his second acts as an Episcopal lay reader, sportswriter, and weekly guest with Bob Edwards on NPR&’s Morning Edition. This talented public figure was also a private man committed to rigorous self-examination and willing to evolve and grow under the influence of changing times. When the Dodgers first signed Jackie Robinson and smashed the color barrier in Major League Baseball, Barber struggled to overcome the racism he had absorbed from his culture as a child. But after observing the vicious abuse Robinson endured from opposing fans, Barber became an ardent supporter of him and the many Black players who followed. Barber was also bothered deeply by the strains that his single-minded careerism imposed on his family. He was challenged to navigate longtime family tensions after his only child, Sarah, came out as a lesbian. And his primary role during the later years of his life was caretaking for his wife, Lylah, during her decline from Alzheimer&’s disease, at a time when the ailment was something many families concealed. Ultimately Red Barber traces the career of a true radio and television pioneer who was committed to the civic responsibility of mass media. Barber firmly believed the most important role of a broadcaster was telling the truth and promoting public well-being.
Red Letters: Two Fervent Liverpool FC Supporters Correspond through the Epic Season That Wouldn't End
by Michael MacCambridge Neil AtkinsonFor those obsessed with Premier League soccer, following your favorite team is a true collective experience, where it is easy to feel as one with thousands of others. It is also an individual one, in which the emotions you feel are your emotions, the experiences you feel are your experiences, and nobody else can perfectly understand. Over the course of the 2019–20 season, two longtime Liverpool FC followers wrote to each other about those emotions and experiences. American writer Michael MacCambridge, living in Austin, Texas, is a devoted Liverpool follower. Five thousand miles away, his friend Neil Atkinson, Liverpool resident and a longtime season ticket holder, is the host of the popular podcast The Anfield Wrap. Each week throughout the historic season, Atkinson and MacCambridge exchanged letters, contemplating Liverpool&’s progress, comparing and contrasting their different perspectives on the club and the sport, meditating on the manner in which their shared obsession for Liverpool works its way into nearly every corner of their personal lives, and discussing the differences between how the game is consumed in the United States and the United Kingdom and the role modern media plays in shaping our views of sport. Their collaboration was both timely and serendipitous, as Liverpool marched toward its first ever Premier League title and its first league title in thirty years, with a charismatic manager and the most entertaining team in the sport. In March, of course, the soccer story was overtaken by the larger story of the COVID-19 pandemic wreaking havoc throughout the world, including sports events. In the course of their correspondence, Red Letters provides a real-time account of the pandemic that threatened the very existence of the season that Liverpool followers had been waiting more than a generation to experience.Red Letters provides a different way to examine the culture of a worldwide sport and development of a soccer season—game by game, in real time, with hopes and expectations tested and altered as the season progresses to Liverpool&’s Premier League championship, with insight from two avid supporters.
Redskins: Insult and Brand
by C. Richard KingThe Washington Redskins franchise remains one of the most valuable in professional sports, in part because of its easily recognizable, popular, and profitable brand. And yet “redskins” is a derogatory name for American Indians. The number of grassroots campaigns to change the name has risen in recent years despite the current team owner’s assertion that the team will never do so. Franchise owners counter criticism by arguing that the team name is positive and a term of respect and honor that many American Indians embrace. The NFL, for its part, actively defends the name and supports it in court. Prominent journalists, politicians, and former players have publicly spoken out against the use of “Redskins” as the name of the team. Sportscaster Bob Costas denounced the name as a racial slur during a halftime show in 2013. U.S. Representative Betty McCollum marched outside the stadium with other protesters––among them former Minnesota Vikings player Joey Browner––urging that the name be changed.Redskins: Insult and Brand examines how the ongoing struggle over the team name raises important questions about how white Americans perceive American Indians, about the cultural power of consumer brands, and about continuing obstacles to inclusion and equality. C. Richard King examines the history of the team’s name, the evolution of the term “redskin,” and the various ways in which people both support and oppose its use today. King’s hard-hitting approach to the team’s logo and mascot exposes the disturbing history of a moniker’s association with the NFL—a multibillion-dollar entity that accepts public funds—as well as popular attitudes toward Native Americans today.
Road to Nowhere: The Early 1990s Collapse and Rebuild of New York City Baseball
by Chris DonnellyRoad to Nowhere is the story of New York City baseball from 1990 to 1996, describing in intimate detail the collapse of both the Mets and the Yankees in the early nineties, the Yankees&’ then reclaiming of the city and the Mets attempts to rebuild from the ashes. After the chaos of the 1980s, the New York Yankees finally bottomed out in 1990. The team finished in last place, enduring one of their worst seasons ever. Their best player, Don Mattingly, was suffering from a debilitating back injury. Manager after manager had been fired. The clubhouse was a miserable place to be, with moody, egocentric players making life difficult for up-and-coming talent. It looked like New York would remain a Mets town well into the twenty-first century. Then Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was banished from baseball. Without their manic, meddling owner, the Yankees fell into the hands of Gene Michael. Setting out to rebuild the franchise, Michael made shrewd trades and free agent signings, and he allowed the team&’s prospects to develop in the Minor Leagues before getting to the Bronx. Meanwhile, the Mets, beloved for their intensity and hard-partying ways in the 1980s, became everything that had driven fans away from the Yankees. They made bad trades and questionable signings, fired managers seemingly every year, and were a powder keg of never-ending controversy. The Mets bottomed out in 1993, perhaps their worst season ever, when they not only lost 103 games but officially lost the heart of the city to the Yankees. But by 1996, despite their record, the Mets were already making moves that would return them to relevance and set them on a path to the ultimate showdown with the Yankees.Road to Nowhere tells the story of how two teams that had swapped roles in the 1980s swapped them right back in the early 1990s. While playing through several difficult seasons, both teams were making moves that would return them to prominence in just a few years.
The Roger Kahn Reader: Six Decades of Sportswriting
by Roger Kahn Bill DwyreMost famous for his classic work The Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn is widely regarded as one of the greatest sportswriters of our time. The Roger Kahn Reader is a rich collection of his stories and articles that originally appeared in publications such as Sports Illustrated, theNew York Times, Esquire, and the Nation. Kahn’s pieces, published between 1952 and today, present a vivid, turbulent, and intimate picture of more than half a century in American sport. His standout writings bring us close to entrepreneurs and hustlers (Walter O'Malley and Don King), athletes of Olympian gifts (Ted Williams, Stan Musial, “Le Demon Blond” Guy Lefleur), and sundry compelling issues of money, muscle, and myth. We witness Roger Maris’s ordeal by fame; Bob Gibson’s blazing competitive fire; and Red Smith, now white-haired and renowned, contemplating his beginnings and his future. Also included is a new and original chapter, “Clem,” about the author’s compelling lifelong friendship with former Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Clem Labine. Written across six decades, this volume shows Kahn’s ability to describe the athletes he profiled as they truly were in a manner neither compromised nor cruel but always authentic and up close.
Rozelle: A Biography
by Jerry Izenberg David J. SternRozelle chronicles the life and times of the architect of the modern National Football League, Pete Rozelle, who transformed football into arguably the most successful sports league in the world. While he was never considered a serious candidate for the job of NFL commissioner early on, the position ultimately catapulted Rozelle into the role through which he transformed the NFL and became a trailblazer for all sports in the second half of the twentieth century. When he became commissioner in 1960, the league had twelve teams playing to half-empty stadiums and was mired in an outdated business model. Rozelle introduced revenue and television profit sharing to guarantee the success of small-market teams and brought every NFL game to national television. Rozelle’s monumental achievements include the introduction of the Super Bowl in the ’60s followed by the NFL’s most rapid expansion and the establishment of Monday Night Football. The ’80s saw Rozelle presiding over drug scandals, labor struggles, and the league’s legal battles with team owners such as Oakland’s Al Davis, who famously won a lawsuit to move his Raiders to Los Angeles. Jerry Izenberg chronicles the iconic life of Rozelle, who revolutionized the culture of sports in America and is responsible for turning the NFL into the preeminent sports league in the world.
Run to Glory and Profits: The Economic Rise of the NFL during the 1950s
by David George SurdamThe National Football League has long reigned as America&’s favorite professional sports league. In its early days, however, it was anything but a dominant sports industry, barely surviving World War II. Its rise began after the war, and the 1950s was a pivotal decade for the league. Run to Glory and Profits tells the economic story of how in one decade the NFL transformed from having a modest following in the Northeast to surpassing baseball as this country&’s most popular sport.To break from the margins of the sports landscape, pro football brought innovation, action, skill, and episodic suspense on &“any given Sunday.&” These factors in turn drove attendance and rising revenues. Team owners were quick to embrace television as a new medium to put the league in front of a national audience. Based on primary documents, David George Surdam provides an economic analysis in telling the business story behind the NFL&’s rise to popularity. Did the league&’s vaunted competitive balance in the decade result from its more generous revenue sharing and its reverse-order draft? How did the league combat rival leagues, such as the All-America Football Conference and the American Football League? Although strife between owners and players developed quickly, pro-football fans stayed loyal because the product itself remained so good.
Schoolboy: The Untold Journey of a Yankees Hero
by Waite Hoyt Tim MannersWaite &“Schoolboy&” Hoyt&’s improbable baseball journey began when the 1915 New York Giants signed him as a high school junior, for no pay and a five-dollar bonus. After nearly having both his hands amputated and cavorting with men twice his age in the hardscrabble Minor Leagues, he somehow ended up the best pitcher for the New York Yankees in the 1920s. Based on a trove of Hoyt&’s writings and interview transcripts, Tim Manners has reanimated the baseball legend&’s untold story, entirely in Hoyt&’s own words. Schoolboy dives straight into early twentieth-century America and the birth of modern-day baseball, as well as Hoyt&’s defining conflict: Should he have pursued something more respectable than being the best pitcher on the 1927 New York Yankees, arguably the greatest baseball team of all time? Over his twenty-three-year professional baseball career, Hoyt won 237 big league games across 3,845 ⅔ innings—and one locker room brawl with Babe Ruth. He also became a vaudeville star who swapped dirty jokes with Mae West and drank champagne with Al Capone, a philosophizer who bonded with Lou Gehrig over the meaning of life, and a funeral director who left a body chilling in his trunk while pitching an afternoon game at Yankee Stadium. Hoyt shares his thoughts on famous moments in the golden age of baseball history; assesses baseball legends, including Ty Cobb, Stan Musial, and Pete Rose; and describes the strategies of baseball managers John McGraw, Miller Huggins, and Connie Mack. He writes at length about the art of pitching and how the game and its players changed—and didn&’t—over his lifetime. After retiring from baseball at thirty-eight and coming to terms with his alcoholism, Hoyt found some happiness as a family man and a beloved, pioneering Cincinnati Reds radio sportscaster with a Websterian vocabulary spiked with a Brooklyn accent. When Hoyt died in 1984 his foremost legacy may have been as a raconteur who punctuated his life story with awe-inspiring and jaw-dropping anecdotes. In Schoolboy he never flinches from an unsparing account of his remarkable and paradoxical eighty-four-year odyssey.
Scoreless: Omaha Central, Creighton Prep, and Nebraska's Greatest High School Football Game
by John Dechant Gale SayersIn October 1960, Omaha Central and Creighton Prep met for what many Nebraskans consider the greatest high school football game ever played. Future NFL Hall of Famer Gale Sayers scored seventy points while leading Central’s powerful offense through its first four games. Prep’s strong defense, on the other hand, allowed only twenty points all season. Legendary coaches patrolled both sidelines, and Prep was aiming for its third straight state championship. The stage was set for a Friday-night showdown. Fifteen thousand fans packed into Omaha’s Municipal Stadium to watch the early season championship clash. Stubborn defenses ensured parity. Back and forth the teams battled, mired around the 50-yard line, punt after punt soaring into the sky. With no overtime to settle things and the defenses holding fast, the game ended in a scoreless tie. When both teams won their remaining games, they shared the state title that year.Scoreless retells the details of this legendary game, the buildup to it, and the story behind the teams and their renowned coaches and players. It is the tale of one of the most remarkable football games in Nebraska high school sports history.
Shake and Bake: The Life and Times of NBA Great Archie Clark
by Bob Kuska Archie ClarkShake and Bake is the story of Archie Clark, one of the top playmaking guards in the 1970s pre-merger NBA. While not one of the game&’s most recognized superstars, Clark was a seminal player in NBA history who staggered defenders with the game&’s greatest crossover dribble (&“shake and bake&”) and is credited by his peers as the originator of today&’s popular step-back move. Signed as the Lakers third-round draft pick in 1966, Clark worked his way into the starting lineup in his rookie year. But Clark was more than a guaranteed double-double whenever he stepped on the floor. He was a deep-thinking trailblazer for players&’ rights. Clark often challenged coaches and owners on principle, much to the detriment of his career and NBA legacy, signing on as a named litigant in the seminal Robertson v. NBA antitrust case that smashed the player reserve system and jump-started the modern NBA. So lace up your high-top Chuck Taylors, squeeze into a pair of short shorts, and shake and bake back in time to the days of Wilt, Russell, Oscar, Jerry, Elgin, Hondo—and Archie.
The Sisterhood: The 99ers and the Rise of U.S. Women's Soccer
by Rob GoldmanFor legions of soccer fans, the players on the U.S. Women&’s National Soccer Team are the game&’s standard-bearers. Together their accomplishments include four World Cup titles and four Olympic gold medals. Within five years of their inaugural match in 1985, the team was the best women&’s soccer team on the planet. But its rise was neither easy nor harmonious. The national team came onto the scene when team sports for women were in their infancy. The players were paid little and played to sparse crowds on marginal pitches and carried their own equipment and luggage. They faced discrimination and unequal treatment, most notably from their governing bodies, FIFA and U.S. Soccer.The Sisterhood is the story of the first and second generations of national team players, known as the 99ers, who were the driving force behind the rise of U.S. women&’s soccer and who built the foundation for the team&’s enduring success. Rob Goldman takes the reader onto the pitch and into the minds of the players and coaches for the team&’s greatest victories and most heartbreaking defeats. Among those featured are players Michelle Akers, Julie Foudy, Mia Hamm, and Brandi Chastain, as well as coaches Anson Dorrance and Tony DiCicco. When the team won the &’99 World Cup in front of more than ninety thousand fans at the Rose Bowl, it was the largest crowd to ever attend a women&’s sporting event. After Brandi Chastain&’s winning penalty kick beat China, everything changed. These women&’s soccer players were no longer outcasts; they were hard-nosed players and leaders who not only transformed women&’s sports but led a cultural revolution. They were trailblazers, role models, and selfless best friends. Their story, told here largely in the voices of the players and coaches who were there, is epic and inspiring.
Smoky Joe Wood: The Biography of a Baseball Legend
by Gerald C. WoodWINNER OF THE 2014 SEYMOUR MEDAL sponsored by the Society for American Baseball Research and finalist for 2014 SABR Larry Ritter AwardThough his pitching career lasted only a few seasons, Howard Ellsworth &“Smoky Joe&” Wood was one of the most dominating figures in baseball history—a man many consider the best baseball player who is not in the Hall of Fame. About his fastball, Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson once said: &“Listen, mister, no man alive can throw harder than Smoky Joe Wood.&” Smoky Joe Wood chronicles the singular life befitting such a baseball legend. Wood got his start impersonating a female on the National Bloomer Girls team. A natural athlete, he pitched for the Boston Red Sox at eighteen, won twenty-one games and threw a no-hitter at twenty-one, and had a 34-5 record plus three wins in the 1912 World Series, for a 1.91 ERA, when he was just twenty-two. Then in 1913 Wood suffered devastating injuries to his right hand and shoulder that forced him to pitch in pain for two more years. After sitting out the 1916 season, he came back as a converted outfielder and played another five years for the Cleveland Indians before retiring to coach the Yale University baseball team.With details culled from interviews and family archives, this biography, the first of this rugged player of the Deadball Era, brings to life one of the genuine characters of baseball history.
The Soccer Diaries: An American's Thirty-Year Pursuit of the International Game
by Michael J. AgovinoAlthough soccer had long been the world’s game when Michael J. Agovino first encountered it in 1982, here it was just a poor cousin to American football, to be found on obscure UHF channels and in foreign magazines. But as Agovino himself passionately pursued soccer, Americans got wise and turned it into one of the most popular sports in the country. Agovino’s love affair with soccer is a portrait of the game’s culture and an intimate history of the sport’s coming of age in the United States.Agovino’s quest takes him from the unkempt field in the Bronx where he taught himself to play to some of the sport’s most storied venues and historic matches. With Agovino we travel from school fields to Giants Stadium, then from England to Germany, Italy, and Spain, along the way taking in the final days of the North American Soccer League, the 1994 World Cup, and the birth of Major League Soccer. Offering the perspective of fan, player, and journalist, Agovino chronicles his obsession with the sport and its phenomenal evolution.
The Sovereign Colony: Olympic Sport, National Identity, and International Politics in Puerto Rico
by Antonio SotomayorCeded to the United States under the terms of the Treaty of Paris after the Spanish-American War of 1898, Puerto Rico has since remained a colonial territory. Despite this subordinated colonial experience, however, Puerto Ricans managed to secure national Olympic representation in the 1930s and in so doing nurtured powerful ideas of nationalism. By examining how the Olympic movement developed in Puerto Rico, Antonio Sotomayor illuminates the profound role sports play in the political and cultural processes of an identity that evolved within a political tradition of autonomy rather than traditional political independence. Significantly, it was precisely in the Olympic arena that Puerto Ricans found ways to participate and show their national pride, often by using familiar colonial strictures—and the United States’ claim to democratic values—to their advantage. Drawing on extensive archival research, both on the island and in the United States, Sotomayor uncovers a story of a people struggling to escape the colonial periphery through sport and nationhood yet balancing the benefits and restraints of that same colonial status.The Sovereign Colony describes the surprising negotiations that gave rise to Olympic sovereignty in a colonial nation, a unique case in Latin America, and uses Olympic sports as a window to view the broader issues of nation building and identity, hegemony, postcolonialism, international diplomacy, and Latin American–U.S. relations.
The Speed Game: My Fast Times in Basketball
by Paul WestheadPaul Westhead was teaching high school in his native Philadelphia when he was named La Salle University&’s men&’s basketball coach in 1970. By 1980 he was a Los Angeles Lakers assistant, soon to be hired as head coach, winning an NBA title with Hall of Fame center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and rookie guard Magic Johnson. After compiling a 112-50 record, he was fired in November 1981. After a short stay as coach of the Chicago Bulls, Westhead reemerged in the mideighties as a coach at Loyola Marymount in California, where he designed his highly unusual signature run-and-gun offense that came to be known as &“The system.&”The Speed Game offers a vibrant account of how Westhead helped develop a style of basketball that not only won at the highest levels but went on to influence basketball as it&’s played today. Known for implementing an up-tempo, quick-possession, high-octane offense, Westhead is the only coach to have won championships in both the NBA and WNBA. But his long career can be defined by one simple question he&’s heard from journalists, fellow coaches, his wife, and, well, himself: Why? Why did he insist on playing such a controversial style of basketball that could vary from brilliant to busted? Westhead speaks candidly here about the feathers he ruffled and about his own shortcomings as he takes readers from Philadelphia&’s West Catholic High, where he couldn&’t make varsity, to the birth of the Showtime Lakers and to the powerhouse he built nearly ten years later at Loyola, where his team set records likely never to be approached. Westhead says he always found himself telling prospective bosses, &“My speed game is gonna knock your socks off!&” So will his story and what it could do to bring back a popular style of play.
Spirals: A Family's Education in Football
by Timothy B. SpearsIvy League football is a preoccupation in Timothy Spears’s family history. His grandfather Clarence “Doc” Spears was an All-American guard at Dartmouth in the early twentieth century, played on the Canton Bulldogs with Jim Thorpe, became a College Hall of Fame coach, and, as the legend goes, discovered Bronko Nagurski while driving through the backcountry of Minnesota. His father, Robert Spears, captained Yale’s 1951 team and was drafted by the Chicago Bears in 1952. By the time Timothy went to Yale in the mid‑1970s, it was more than talent or enthusiasm that prompted him to play football there.Spirals tracks the relationship between college football and higher education through the lens of one family’s involvement in the sport. Ranging over almost a century of football history, Spears describes the different ways in which his grandfather, father, and he played the game and engaged with its educational dimensions as the sport was passed from father to son. This intergenerational history attempts to uncover what the males in Spears’s family learned from playing football and how the game’s educational importance shifted over time within higher education. While Spears chose an academic life after college, he understood later, with the decline of his parents, how much football stayed with him and shaped his family’s history. With a voice that is part memoirist, part scholar, part athlete, as well as father and son, Spears discerns how football is embedded in our culture and came to be the fabric and common language of his family.
Sport, Philosophy, and Good Lives
by Randolph FeezellThere&’s more to sports than the ethos of competition, entertainment, and commercialism expressed in popular media and discourse. Sport, Philosophy, and Good Lives discusses sport in the context of several traditional philosophical questions, including: What is a good human life and how does sport factor into it? To whom do we look for ethical guidance? What makes human activities or projects meaningful? Randolph Feezell examines these questions along with other relevant topics in the philosophy of sport such as the contribution of play to a meaningful life, the various reasons for pessimistic views of sport, the various claims that celebrated athletes are role models, and the seldom-questioned view that coaches are in a position to offer advice to athletes on how to live or on leadership skills. He also discusses the way that non-Western attitudes found in Buddhism, Taoism, and the Bhagavad Gita might be used to address the vulnerabilities of sports participants.Feezell draws from current sports issues, popular literature, and contemporary sports figures to shed light on the attraction and value of sports and examine the accompanying ethical issues.
Sporting Realities: Critical Readings of the Sports Documentary (Sports, Media, and Society)
by Samantha N. Sheppard Travis VoganDespite the increasing number of popular and celebrated sports documentaries in contemporary culture, such as ESPN&’s 30 for 30 series, there has been little scholarly engagement with this genre. Sports documentaries, like all films, do not merely showcase objective reality but rather construct specific versions of sporting culture that serve distinct economic, industrial, institutional, historical, and sociopolitical ends ripe for criticism, contextualization, and exploration.Sporting Realities brings together a diverse group of scholars to probe the sports documentary&’s cultural meanings, aesthetic practices, industrial and commercial dimensions, and political contours across historical, social, medium-specific, and geographic contexts. It considers and critiques the sports documentary&’s visible and powerful position in contemporary culture and forges novel connections between the study of nonfiction media and sport.
Sports and Aging: A Prescription for Longevity
by Gerald R. GemsIn Sports and Aging a wide-ranging group of physically active people, including many scholar-athletes, fifty years and older, discuss sports in the context of aging and their own athletic experiences. This collection of personal accounts includes a spectrum of contributors across genders, social classes, and racial, ethnic, national, religious, and educational backgrounds to determine whether there are any common characteristics that can promote long, happy, healthy, and meaningful lifespans. In this fresh look at the role of sports in the process of aging, contributors range from a ninety-six-year-old great-grandmother to a former Olympian. Many contributors have used education to better their lot in life or to find solace and meaning in the service of others. For all, sports or physical activity has enhanced their health and temperament and provided a sense of community.
Sports Journalism: A History of Glory, Fame, and Technology
by Patrick S. Washburn Chris LambPatrick S. Washburn and Chris Lamb tell the full story of the past, the present, and to a degree, the future of American sports journalism. Sports Journalism chronicles how and why technology, religion, social movements, immigration, racism, sexism, social media, athletes, and sportswriters and broadcasters changed sports as well as how sports are covered and how news about sports are presented and disseminated. One of the influential factors in sports coverage is the upswing in the number of women sports reporters in the last forty years. Sports Journalism also examines the ethics of sports journalism, how sports coverage frequently has differed from that of non-sports news, and how the internet has spawned a set of new ethical issues.
Stolen Dreams: The 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars and Little League Baseball's Civil War
by Chris LambWhen the eleven- and twelve-year-olds on the Cannon Street YMCA All-Star team registered for a baseball tournament in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 1955, it put the team and the forces of integration on a collision course with segregation, bigotry, and the southern way of life. White teams refused to take the field with the Cannon Street All-Stars, the first Black Little League team in South Carolina. The Cannon Street team won the tournament by forfeit and advanced to the state tournament. When all the white teams withdrew in protest, the Cannon Street team won the state tournament. If the team had won the regional tournament in Rome, Georgia, it would have advanced to the Little League World Series. But Little League officials ruled the team ineligible to play in the tournament because it had advanced by winning on forfeit and not on the field, denying the boys their dream of playing in the Little League World Series. Little League Baseball invited the Cannon Street All-Stars to be the organization&’s guests at the World Series, where they heard spectators yell, &“Let them play! Let them play!&” when the ballplayers were introduced. This became a national story for a few weeks but then faded and disappeared as Americans read of other civil rights stories, including the torture and murder of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till.Stolen Dreams is the story of the Cannon Street YMCA All-Stars and of the early civil rights movement. It&’s also the story of centuries of bigotry in Charleston, South Carolina—where millions of enslaved people were brought to this country and where the Civil War began, where segregation remained for a century after the war ended and anyone who challenged it did so at their own risk.
Streak: Joe DiMaggio and the Summer of '41
by Michael SeidelStreak vividly and poignantly tells the story of "Joltin' Joe" DiMaggio's legendary fifty-six-game hitting streak and the last golden summer of baseball before America was engulfed by the maelstrom of the Second World War. That long-lost summer also witnessed other unforgettable events: Ted Williams's quest to bat 400 and Lefty Grove's pursuit of his three-hundredth victory; a sizzling, epic race between the Dodgers and the Cardinals for the National League pennant; and Mickey Owen's infamous passed ball in the fourth game of the World Series. Featuring complete box scores for each game, Streak showcases DiMaggio's crowning achievement, commemorates a baseball season like no other, and invites us to an America in the last moments of its innocence.
Striking Distance: Bruce Lee and the Dawn of Martial Arts in America
by Charles RussoIn the spring of 1959, eighteen-year-old Bruce Lee returned to San Francisco, the city of his birth, and quickly inserted himself into the West Coast’s fledgling martial arts culture. Even though Asian fighting styles were widely unknown to mainstream America, Bruce encountered a robust fight culture in a San Francisco Bay area that was populated with talented and trailblazing practitioners such as Lau Bun, Chinatown’s aging kung fu patriarch; Wally Jay, the innovative Hawaiian jujitsu master; and James Lee, the no-nonsense Oakland street fighter. Regarded by some as a brash loudmouth and by others as a dynamic visionary, Bruce spent his first few years back in America advocating a more modern approach to the martial arts and showing little regard for the damaged egos left in his wake. In the Chinese calendar, 1964 was the Year of the Green Dragon. It would be a challenging and eventful year for Bruce. He would broadcast his dissenting view before the first great international martial arts gathering and then defend it by facing down Chinatown’s young ace kung fu practitioner in a legendary behind-closed-doors high noon–style showdown. The Year of the Green Dragon saw the dawn of martial arts in America and the rise of an icon. Drawing on more than one hundred original interviews and an eclectic array of sources, Striking Distance is an engrossing narrative chronicling San Francisco Bay’s pioneering martial arts scene as it thrived in the early 1960s and offers an in-depth look at a widely unknown chapter of Bruce Lee’s iconic life.
Stumbling around the Bases: The American League's Mismanagement in the Expansion Eras
by Andy McCueFrom the late 1950s to the 1980s, baseball&’s American League mismanaged integration and expansion, allowing the National League to forge ahead in attendance and prestige. While both leagues had executive structures that presented few barriers to individual team owners acting purely in their own interests, it was the American League that succumbed to infighting—which ultimately led to its disappearance into what we now call Major League Baseball. Stumbling around the Bases is the story of how the American League fell into such a disastrous state, struggling for decades to escape its nadir and, when it finally righted itself, losing its independence. The American League&’s trip to the bottom involved bad decisions by both individual teams and their owners. The key elements were a glacial approach to integration, the choice of underfinanced or disruptive new owners, and a consistent inability to choose the better markets among cities that were available for expansion. The American League wound up with less-attractive teams in the smaller markets compared to the National League—and thus fewer consumers of tickets, parking, beer, hot dogs, scorecards, and replica jerseys. The errors of the American League owners were rooted in missed cultural and demographic shifts and exacerbated by reactive decisions that hurt as much as helped their interests. Though the owners were men who were notably successful in their non-baseball business ventures, success in insurance, pizza, food processing, and real estate development, didn&’t necessarily translate into running a flourishing baseball league. In the end the National League was simply better at recognizing its collective interests, screening its owners, and recognizing the markets that had long-term potential.