By Patrick Salkeld Soccer started in the United States during the 1860s before the formal establishment of England’s Football Association. As professional clubs and leagues developed, they turned into businesses that relied on spectators to purchase tickets and attend the matches in order to make a profit. Without this commitment and support, teams collapsed—for instance,…
Swanson, Krister. Baseball’s Power Shift: How the Players Union, the Fans, and the Media Changed American Sports Culture. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. Pp. xvii + 287. Notes, Bibliography, and Index. $29.95 Hardback. Reviewed by Nick Sacco As an enthusiastic fan of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, I was saddened and disappointed to…
Soderholm-Difatte. The Golden Era of Major League Baseball: A Time of Transition and Integration. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Pp. 217. Notes and index. $38 hardcover. Reviewed by Sylvio Lynch III Much of the baseball lore within American popular consciousness views mid-20th century baseball through the mostly black-and-white, grainy, smiling superstars of the era.…
Nathan, Daniel A., ed. Rooting for the Home Team, Sport, Community and Identity, Champaign, University of Illinois Press, 2013. 237 pages, $25 paperback. Reviewed by Peter Marquis This review originally appeared in “Aesthetics of Theory in the Modern Era and Beyond /Photographie documentaire,” Transatlantica: revue d’études américaines 2 (2014). Reproduced with permission from Transatlantica and…
Trimbur, Lucia. Come Out Swinging: The Changing World of Boxing in Gleason’s Gym. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. Pp. xxi+200. Notes, bibliography, index, and methodological appendix. $27.95 hardback. Reviewed by Daryl Leeworthy Feel the Bern. An unlikely campaign slogan that has echoed around the world in the last few months, just as Yes We Can…
By: Leslie Heaphy Women playing baseball is not new but our knowledge level is limited. But within the history of women’s baseball our knowledge of African American women and their participation in baseball is almost non-existent beyond a name such as Effa Manley. During the 2014 LLWS many became aware of Mone` Davis as she…
Editor’s note: This is the first of two posts this week exploring the connections and intersections between sport history, sport heritage, and public history. These three fields do not always work together when studying and presenting the sporting past. We hope sharing different perspectives and overviews of the fields will help us forge conversations that…
By Jorge E. Moraga *Author’s Note: For the spring 2016 semester, I was fortunate to be assigned ‘The Cultural Politics of Sport’, an upper division course housed in the Department of CCGRS at Wazzu. As a new teaching prep, I chose to pivot our class around American football: a sport that sells campus identity, ensures…
Grundman, Dolph. Dolph Schayes and the Rise of Professional Basketball. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014. Pp. xix+163. Illustrations, notes, works cited, and index. $24.95 clothback. Reviewed by Paul Putz When Dolph Schayes passed away last December, the New York Times devoted two stories to the legacy of the basketball Hall-of-Famer. One described Schayes, who…
By Jon Hart, Guest Contributor In its first season, the well-known Serial podcast tackled the tragic loss of a promising, charismatic, high school senior. The Season, another excellent podcast produced by WNYC, investigates a far less grim and tragic subject: The Columbia University football team, one of the oldest collegiate programs in the country. While the Columbia…
Sport in American History 