Love, Brian J., and Michael L. Burns. Corked: Tales of Advantage in Competitive Sports. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Fifth Avenue Press. 2019. Pp. 253. Endnotes, preface, and index. $14.99 paperback. Reviewed by Bob D’Angelo. Gaining an edge in competitive sports could be as old as the games, although probably not. It was difficult during the first…
Mitchell, Lincoln A. Baseball Goes West: The Dodgers, the Giants, and the Shaping of the Major Leagues. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2018. 8 b/w photographs, 10 tables, acknowledgements, chapter notes, index. Pp. 264. $39.95 softcover. Reviewed by Michael T. Wood Lincoln A. Mitchell, a political science faculty member and research scholar at Columbia…
Burgess, Granville Wyche. The Last At-Bat of Shoeless Joe: A Novel. New York, NY: Chickadee Prince Books, 2019. Pp. 252. $12.99 trade paperback. Reviewed by Gavin J. Woltjer This fall will mark the 100-year anniversary of the notorious Black Sox scandal, arguably the worst scandal in the history of US professional sports. Fallout from the…
Stark, Douglas. Breaking Barriers: A History of Integration in Professional Basketball. Lanham, MD. Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. Notes, bibliography, index. Reviewed by Murry Nelson This is a book that sounds better than it really is and that was a disappointment since Stark is a good writer with a background of curation at the Naismith Basketball…
Krell, David. Forward by Branch Rickey III. Our Bums: The Brooklyn Dodgers in History, Memory, and Popular Culture. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015. Pp. 240. Notes, References, Index. $29.95 softcover. Reviewed by Rich Loosbrock Baseball and nostalgia go hand in hand. Mentions of baseball in popular culture, be it movies, documentaries, biographies, or memoirs, are bathed…
Verrier, Steven. Gene Kiniski: Canadian Wrestling Legend. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2018. Pp. 246. Bibliography and index. $35 paperback. Reviewed by Bob D’Angelo Professional wrestling has always been about business. It has evolved from matches in dimly lit carnival tents before a few hundred curious onlookers to WrestleMania 35, which reportedly drew 82,265 fans to…
Oriard, Michael. The Art of Football: The Early Game in the Golden Age of Illustration. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. Pp. 243. Notes, References, Index. $39.95 cloth. Reviewed by Rich Loosbrock Michael Oriard continues his exploration of the intersection between American football and the popular imagination with this sumptuously illustrated examination of early football…
Schultz, Jaime. Women’s Sports: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 243. Notes, bibliography, and index. $16.95 paperback. Reviewed by Cat Ariail As scholars of women’s sport well know, studying women’s sports tells one about much more than women’s sports. With Women’s Sports: What Everyone Needs to Know, Jaime Schultz…
By Cat Ariail When advertising its inaugural 1997 season, the WNBA announced, “We Got Next.” The slogan represented a clever adaptation of the playground basketball expression. Unintentionally but appropriately, it also captured the perpetual liminality of the league. For much of its twenty-two year history, insecurity has characterized the league, with professional women basketball forever…
Keurajian,Ron. Baseball Hall of Fame Autographs,Second Edition. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc.,2018. Pp 303. Appendix, bibliography, glossary, illustrations and notes. $49.95 paperback. Reviewed by Bob D’Angelo. It’s a sign of the times: Collecting sports autographs is a big business, with potentially lucrative paydays. In August, a baseball signed by 11of the original National…
Sport in American History 