The Rock, the Curse, and the Hub


Book Description

The Rock, the Curse, and the Hub is a collection of original essays about the people and places of Boston sports that live in the minds and memories of Bostonians and all Americans. Each chapter focuses on the games and the athletes, but also on which sports have defined Boston and Bostonians.




Pay for Play


Book Description

In an era when college football coaches frequently command higher salaries than university presidents, many call for reform to restore the balance between amateur athletics and the educational mission of schools. This book traces attempts at college athletics reform from 1855 through the early twenty-first century while analyzing the different roles played by students, faculty, conferences, university presidents, the NCAA, legislatures, and the Supreme Court. Pay for Play: A History of Big-Time College Athletic Reform also tackles critically important questions about eligibility, compensation, recruiting, sponsorship, and rules enforcement. Discussing reasons for reform--to combat corruption, to level the playing field, and to make sports more accessible to minorities and women--Ronald A. Smith candidly explains why attempts at change have often failed. Of interest to historians, athletic reformers, college administrators, NCAA officials, and sports journalists, this thoughtful book considers the difficulty in balancing the principles of amateurism with the need to draw income from sporting events.




A Companion to American Sport History


Book Description

A Companion to American Sport History presents a collection of original essays that represent the first comprehensive analysis of scholarship relating to the growing field of American sport history. Presents the first complete analysis of the scholarship relating to the academic history of American sport Features contributions from many of the finest scholars working in the field of American sport history Includes coverage of the chronology of sports from colonial times to the present day, including major sports such as baseball, football, basketball, boxing, golf, motor racing, tennis, and track and field Addresses the relationship of sports to urbanization, technology, gender, race, social class, and genres such as sports biography Awarded 2015 Best Anthology from the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH)




Sports in America from Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century: An Encyclopedia


Book Description

A unique new reference work, this encyclopedia presents a social, cultural, and economic history of American sports from hunting, bowling, and skating in the sixteenth century to televised professional sports and the X Games today. Nearly 400 articles examine historical and cultural aspects of leagues, teams, institutions, major competitions, the media and other related industries, as well as legal and social issues, economic factors, ethnic and racial participation, and the growth of institutions and venues. Also included are biographical entries on notable individuals—not just outstanding athletes, but owners and promoters, journalists and broadcasters, and innovators of other kinds—along with in-depth entries on the history of major and minor sports from air racing and archery to wrestling and yachting. A detailed chronology, master bibliography, and directory of institutions, organizations, and governing bodies—plus more than 100 vintage and contemporary photographs—round out the coverage.




The Cinema of Hockey


Book Description

Ice hockey has featured in North American films since the early days. Hockey's sizable cinematic repertoire explores different views of the sport, including the role of aggression, the business of sports, race and gender, and the role of women in the game. This critical study focuses on hockey themes in more than 50 films and television movies from the U.S. and Canada spanning several decades. Depictions of historical games are discussed, including the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" and the 1972 Summit Series. National myths that inform ideas of the hockey player are examined. Production techniques that enhance hockey as on-screen spectacle are covered.




The Irish and the Making of American Sport, 1835-1920


Book Description

Jerrold Casway coined the phrase "The Emerald Age of Baseball" to describe the 1890s, when so many Irish names dominated teams' rosters. But one can easily agree--and expand--that the period from the mid-1830s well into the first decade of the 20th century and assign the term to American sports in general. This book covers the Irish sportsman from the arrival of James "Deaf" Burke in 1836 through to Jack B. Kelly's rejection by Henley regatta and his subsequent gold medal at the 1920 Olympics. It avoids recounting the various victories and defeats of the Irish sportsman, seeking instead to deal with the complex interaction that he had with alcohol, gambling and Sunday leisure: pleasures that were banned in most of America at some time or other between 1836 and 1920. This book also covers the Irish sportsman's close relations with politicians, his role in labor relations, his violent lifestyle--and by contrast--his participation in bringing respectability to sport. It also deals with native Irish sports in America, the part played by the Irish in "Team USA's" initial international sporting ventures, and in the making and breaking of amateurism within sport.




King of the Court


Book Description

"King of the Court provides a highly nuanced and sophisticated analysis of the great African American basketball player from his earliest days up to the present time. With great skill and much insight, Goudsouzian makes clear that Russell was a very complicated man who was full of contradictions in his own private life and in relationship to his business associates, teammates, opponents, the media, and the larger sporting public."--David K.Wiggins, George Mason University "Not only is King of the Court one of the most impressive and important sports biographies to come along in many a season, easily in the same class as David Maraniss's When Pride Still Mattered (on Vince Lombardi) and Wil Haygood's Sweet Thunder (on Sugar Ray Robinson), it is also one of the truly incisive books on the intersection of race, civil rights, and popular culture that have appeared in some time. Having grown up in Philadelphia, I was always a Wilt Chamberlain man and always will be, but King of the Court convinced me that Bill Russell defined his age in ways that Chamberlain never did. Russell was a man for all seasons. This is a biography befitting Russell's stature."--Gerald Early, author of One Nation Under a Groove: Motown and American Culture "Before there were crossover dribbles or slam dunk competitions, before they even kept statistics for blocked shots, Bill Russell dominated the game we call basketball. The respect he demanded as a black man during America's turbulent Civil Rights era made him the personification of a winner in life. King of the Court, like Russell's defense, locks it down, and puts it all in its proper context. Long live the King!"--Dr. Todd Boyd, author of Young, Black, Rich, and Famous: The Rise of the NBA, the Hip Hop Invasion, and the Transformation of American Culture "Bill Russell's life story is only incidentally about basketball. For him the sport was not a life; it was his vehicle for social change, a platform that showcased his vision for America as much as his athletic talent. In his magnificent biography, Aram Goudsouzian captures the nuance and meaning of Russell's career. After reading the book, one will never look at Russell or sports in quite the same way."--Randy Roberts, Purdue University "Brings back the excitement of the great days of the NBA and its legendary players, led by the king of them all, Bill Russell. Best book I've read on basketball in 40 years."--Bill McSweeny, co-author, with Bill Russell, of Go Up for Glory




The Pats


Book Description

An account that tackles “the Pats’ wilderness years to the current dynasty . . . with fresh insight, bite, and humor from an All-Pro roster of writers” (John U. Bacon, New York Times bestselling author of Overtime). The New England Patriots have become a dynasty, though it didn’t begin that way. Love ’em, hate ’em, the Pats have captured this country’s attention like no other franchise. From two award-winning authors this is the first complete story of a legendary team and its five championship trophies. In the tradition of their celebrated illustrated histories of some of sports’ most iconic franchises, Stout and Johnson tell the history in full and in colorful detail. This is a lavishly illustrated tale full of larger-than-life characters—from founding owner Billy Sullivan, early stars like Syracuse running back Jim Nance and beloved wide receiver turned broadcaster Gino Cappeletti, to Hall of Famers and stars like John Hannah, Russ Francis, and Steve Grogan through to present-day stars like Tom Brady and Bill Belichick and owner Bob Kraft. Featuring essays by Richard Johnson, Upton Bell, Leigh Montville, Howard Bryant, Ron Borges, Lesley Visser and more, The Pats is a must-have gift for fans, old and new, and an indelible portrait of the most talked about team in NFL history. “Glenn Stout and Richard Johnson . . . whisk us back in time to old ballparks, long-ago games and the personalities who made Boston a dynamic sports town. What Stout and Johnson did for baseball with Red Sox Century they now do for football with The Pats.”—Steve Buckley, Boston Herald “The book every Patriots fan has been waiting for.”—Bob Ryan, Boston Globe columnist emeritus and ESPN commentator




The B.A.A. at 125


Book Description

Founded in 1887 and celebrating its 125th anniversary in 2012, the Boston Athletic Association is one of the oldest sports organizations in America. It’s best known today for its signature annual event, the Boston Marathon, which is the third-largest marathon and attracts tens of thousands of participants and worldwide media coverage. But the B.A.A. has also been amazingly prescient in anticipating what would become one of the major social trends of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: the modern fitness movement. Consider some of the B.A.A.’s firsts: Nine out of the fourteen members of the US team participating in the modern Olympic Games in Athens (1896) were B.A.A. athletes. The B.A.A. launched the first US marathon, the Boston Marathon, in 1897. The B.A.A. pioneered and actively promoted many of today’s popular sports, including football and water polo. The original B.A.A. club house, in the historic Back Bay section of Boston, is the precursor of today’s health club. Still, the B.A.A. story is not simply one of athletic achievements and firsts. It’s also the dramatic story of people and the times in which they lived—a social history that unfolds in nineteenth-century Boston but takes readers around the world, up to the present, and includes a large and international cast of characters. A wonderfully illustrated history,The B.A.A. at 125 highlights the Boston Athletic Association’s important role in American sports history.




Joining the Clubs


Book Description

How did a small Canadian regional league come to dominate a North American continental sport? Joining the Clubs: The Business of the National Hockey League to 1945 tells the fascinating story of the game off the ice, offering a play-by-play of cooperation and competition among owners, players, arenas, and spectators that produced a major league business enterprise. Ross explores the ways in which the NHL organized itself to maintain long-term stability, deal with its labor force, and adapt its product and structure to the demands of local, regional, and international markets. He argues that sports leagues like the NHL pursued a strategy that responded both to standard commercial incentives and also to consumer demands that the product provide cultural meaning. Leagues successfully used the cartel form—an ostensibly illegal association of businesses that cooperated to monopolize the market for professional hockey—along with a focus on locally branded clubs, to manage competition and attract spectators to the sport. In addition, the NHL had another special challenge: unlike other major leagues, it was a binational league that had to sell and manage its sport in two different countries. Joining the Clubs pays close attention to these national differences, as well as to the context of a historical period characterized by war and peace, by rapid economic growth and dire recession, and by the momentous technological and social changes of the modern age.