San Francisco Bay Area Sports brings together fifteen essays covering the issues, controversies, and personalities that have emerged as northern Californians recreated and competed over the last 150 years. The area’s diversity, anti-establishment leanings, and unique and beautiful natural surroundings are explored in the context of a dynamic sporting past that includes events broadcast to millions or activities engaged in by just a few.

Professional and college events are covered along with lesser-known entities such as Oakland’s public parks, tennis player and Bay Area native Rosie Casals, environmentalism and hiking in Marin County, and the origins of the Gay Games. Taken as a whole, this book clarifies how sport is connected to identities based on sexuality, gender, race, and ethnicity. Just as crucial, the stories here illuminate how sport and recreation can potentially create transgressive spaces, particularity in a place known for its nonconformity.

Rita Liberti is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology and director of the Center for Sport and Social Justice on the California State University, East Bay campus in Hayward. Her primary area of expertise is women’s twentieth-century sport history.

Maureen M. Smith is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Science at California State University, Sacramento. She teaches courses in sport history and sport sociology. Her research areas include twentieth-century African American sport history, the Olympic Games, and sport statues.