Showing titles in Sports History

The story of Jackie Robinson valiantly breaking baseball’s color barrier in 1947 is one that most Americans know. But less recognized is the fact that some seventy years earlier, following the Civil War, baseball was tenuously biracial and had the potential for a truly open game. How, then, did the game become so firmly segregated that it required a trailblazer like Robinson? The answer, Ryan A. Swanson suggests, has everything to do with the politics of “reconciliation” and a wish to avoid the issues of race that an integrated game necessarily raised.

One of America's most beloved sportscasters turns the spotlight on his own life, chronicling his incredible life covering Southeastern Conference football and some of the most iconic moments in sports history over the last five decades. Verne Lundquist's remarkable broadcasting career has placed...

From its beginnings in the northeastern United States in the 1880s, golf has seen its popularity, and its fortunes, wax and wane, affected by politics and economics, reflecting tensions between aristocratic and democratic impulses. The Kingdom of Golf in America traces these ups and downs, ins and outs, in the growth of golf as a community. Moss describes the development of the private club and public course and the impact of wealth and the consumer culture on those who play golf and those who watch.

More than any other sport, boxing has a history of being easy to rig. There are only two athletes and one or both may be induced to accept a bribe; if not the fighters, then the judges or referee might be swayed. In such inviting circumstances, the mob moved into boxing in the 1930s and profited by corrupting a sport ripe for exploitation. In Boxing and the Mob: The Notorious History of the Sweet Science, Jeffrey Sussman tells the story of the coercive and criminal underside of boxing, covering nearly the entire 20th century. 

Prove you are the smartest person in the room with 500 true trivia facts about sports. These facts are so absurd some might even say that they sound like bull$#*t! Explore the slam dunks and the Olympic Golds in this fun addition to the True Facts series that shares all things sports. Give the...

African Americans were making moves in basketball generations before the rise of the NBA. Their pioneering efforts helped popularize the sport in big cities and small towns alike and shaped the game we know and love today. From the invention of the game in 1891 to the racial integration of all-White professional leagues in the 1950s, dozens of teams—then often called “fives”—of African American players were founded and flourished.

The Boston Red Sox's loss to the New York Yankees in the final game of last year's playoffs has been called "the game of the century," evidence that the rivalry between the Red Sox and the Yankees is hotter than ever. In the wake of that defeat, author and Boston Globe sports columnist Dan...

A Brief History of the New York Yankees tells the story of the greatest baseball dynasty in a unique style. It is a fast and enjoyable listen. It will appeal to all baseball fans as well as the avid Yankee followers. This short history of the Yankee dynasty begins with the Highlanders before the team became the historic New York club. It fits perfectly with our continued fast paced sports fan and country. No longer do you have to read a 400 page history to learn about the greatest dynasty in sports history.

Let Stephen Curry, Charles Barkley, Grant Hill, Reggie Miller, and more tell you what it was like to take the floor against one of the greatest of all time. With a foreword by Jerry West and a new tribute from the author about Kobe’s tragic death.

Was there ever a year in golf like 1960? It was the year that the sport and its vivid personalities exploded on the consciousness of the nation, when the past, present, and future of the game collided. Television, still a new medium, provided a fresh window to this fascinating show and enabled this "rich man's sport" to win over millions of new fans.

As a leading political and intellectual historian and a certified fitness instructor, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is uniquely qualified to confront the complex and far-reaching implications of how our contemporary exercise culture took shape. She explores the work of working out not just as consumers have experienced it, but as it was created by performers, physical educators, trainers, instructors, and many others. For Petrzela, fitness is a social justice issue. She argues that the fight for a more equitable exercise culture will be won only by revolutionizing fitness culture at its core.

Set against the backdrop of the turbulent late 1960s and early 1970s, this compelling audiobook provides the first comprehensive history of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, notorious for the abduction of Israeli Olympians by Palestinian terrorists and the hostages' tragic deaths after a botched rescue mission by the German police. Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources from the time, eminent historian David Clay Large explores the 1972 festival in all its ramifications.

Elliott J. Gorn's The Manly Art tells the story of boxing's origins and the sport's place in American culture. When first published in 1986, the book helped shape the ways historians write about American sport and culture, expanding scholarly boundaries by exploring masculinity as an historical subject and by suggesting that social categories like gender, class, and ethnicity can be understood only in relation to each other.

The 1975 Masters Tournament always seemed destined for the record books. A veritable Hall of Fame list of competitors had gathered that spring in Augusta, Georgia, for the game's most famous event, including Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Hale Irwin, Billy Casper, and Sam Snead. The lead-up had been dominated by Lee Elder, the first black golfer ever invited to the exclusive club's tourney. But by the weekend, the tournament turned into a showdown between the three heavyweights of the time: Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, and Tom Weiskopf.

How Dabo Swinney used his energy, faith, and determination to turn the Clemson Tigers into a football powerhouse...

When Kevin Garnett shocked the world by announcing that he would not be attending college - as young basketball prodigies were expected to do - but instead would enter the 1995 NBA draft directly from high school, he blazed a trail for a generation of teenage basketball players to head straight for the pros. That trend would continue until the NBA instituted an age limit in 2005, requiring all players to attend college or another developmental program for at least one year.

Dreamers and Schemers chronicles how Los Angeles's pursuit and staging of the 1932 Olympic Games during the depths of the Great Depression helped fuel the city's transformation from a seedy frontier village to a world-famous metropolis.

Soccer is the most popular game in the world, but does it truly belong in the heart of American sports culture? The answer is a resounding yes—and the 150-year journey of elite men’s soccer in the US is filled with drama, surprises, reversals, and triumphs that rival any world-class match.

Val James became the first African-American player in the NHL when he took to the ice with the Buffalo Sabres in 1982, and in 1987 he became the first Black player of any nationality to skate for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Born in central Florida, James grew up on Long Island and received his first pair of skates for his 13th birthday. At 16 James left home to play in Canada, where he was the only Black person in junior and, often, in the whole town.

Throughout the NCAA Tournament’s history, underdogs, Cinderella stories, and upsets have captured the attention and imagination of fans. Making March Madness is the story of this premiere tournament, from its early days in Kansas City, to its move to Madison Square Garden, to its surviving a point-shaving scandal in New York and taking its games to different sites across the country.