225 books about Sports and 7
start with I
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I Wore Babe Ruth's Hat: Field Notes from a Life in Sports
David Zang
University of Illinois Press, 2015
Library of Congress GV706.5.Z33 2015
David W. Zang played junior high school basketball in a drained swimming pool. He wore a rubber suit to bed to make weight for a wrestling meet. He kept a log as an obsessive runner (not a jogger). In short, he soldiered through the life of an ordinary athlete.
Whether pondering his long-unbuilt replica of Connie Mack Stadium or his eye-opening turn as the Baltimore Ravens' mascot, Zang offers tales at turns poignant and hilarious as he engages with the passions that shaped his life. Yet his meditations also probe the tragedy of a modern athletic culture that substitutes hyped spectatorship for participation. As he laments, American society's increasing scorn for taking part in play robs adults of the life-affirming virtues of games that challenge us to accomplish the impossible for the most transcendent of reasons: to see if it can be done.
From teammates named Lop to tracing Joe Paterno's long shadow over Happy Valley, I Wore Babe Ruth's Hat reports from the everyman's Elysium where games and life intersect.
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The Ice Bucket Challenge: Pete Frates and the Fight against ALS
Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge
University Press of New England, 2017
Library of Congress RC406.A24S54 2017 | Dewey Decimal 616.8390092
While everyone knows of the Ice Bucket Challenge, the viral craze that swept the nation in summer 2014, too few know the truly inspirational story behind it. Pete Frates was a man at war with his own body. A man whose love for others was unshakable. A man who refused to fight alone, and in so doing mobilized a global army to combat one of the most devastating diseases on earth: ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. When disease crippled Frates, the former Boston College baseball star turned tragedy into inspiration. Pete’s story is a testament to the power of love, the steadfastness of family, the generosity of strangers, and the compassion of crowds. Half of the authors’ proceeds will go to the Frates family.
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Ice ’n’ Go: Score in Sports and Life
Jenny Moshak with Debby Schriver
University of Tennessee Press, 2013
Library of Congress GV691.U58M67 2013 | Dewey Decimal 796.0430976885
The 1972 passage of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education, was a gamechanger for women and girls in athletics. in the forty years since the law was enacted, participation in sports—especially of girls and women—has grown dramatically. With that growth have come challenges. in Ice-n-Go: A Perspective on Sports and Life, Jenny Moshak, celebrated trainer of the legendary lady Vols basketball team and associate athletic director for sports medicine at the university of tennessee, Knoxville, reflects on the role of sports in society and addresses the high stakes and costs of winning in sports today.
Ice-n-Go is a culmination of the breadth of knowledge and unique insight from Moshak’s more than twenty-five years of work in major college sports. in this highly readable new book, she covers social issues, medical concerns, motiva- tional techniques, gender roles and expectations, the impact of sports on our children, and how the body works, heals, and recovers. though she writes on serious subjects in a serious way, Moshak’s tone is always upbeat and positive with surprisingly simple strategies for improving the athletic experience for all, especially kids.
An outstanding athlete herself, she shares lessons learned on her own demanding coast-to-coast bicycle ride across the united states. in sharing her stories, sound advice and fresh ideas, Moshak seeks to do for us what she has always done for the players in her care: to help protect, nurture, and grow the athlete who is in each one of us.
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If You Were Only White: The Life of Leroy "Satchel" Paige
Donald Spivey
University of Missouri Press, 2012
Library of Congress GV865.P3S65 2012 | Dewey Decimal 796.357092
If You Were Only White explores the legacy of one of the most exceptional athletes ever—an entertainer extraordinaire, a daring showman and crowd-pleaser, a wizard with a baseball whose artistry and antics on the mound brought fans out in the thousands to ballparks across the country. Leroy “Satchel” Paige was arguably one of the world’s greatest pitchers and a premier star of Negro Leagues Baseball. But in this biography Donald Spivey reveals Paige to have been much more than just a blazing fastball pitcher.
Spivey follows Paige from his birth in Alabama in 1906 to his death in Kansas City in 1982, detailing the challenges Paige faced battling the color line in America and recounting his tests and triumphs in baseball. He also opens up Paige’s private life during and after his playing days, introducing readers to the man who extended his social, cultural, and political reach beyond the limitations associated with his humble background and upbringing. This other Paige was a gifted public speaker, a talented musician and singer, an excellent cook, and a passionate outdoorsman, among other things.
Paige’s life intertwined with many of the most important issues of the times in U.S. and African American history, including the continuation of the New Negro Movement and the struggle for civil rights. Spivey incorporates interviews with former teammates conducted over twelve years, as well as exclusive interviews with Paige’s son Robert, daughter Pamela, Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, and John “Buck” O’Neil to tell the story of a pioneer who helped transform America through the nation’s favorite pastime.
Maintaining an image somewhere between Joe Louis’s public humility and the flamboyant aggression of Jack Johnson, Paige pushed the boundaries of segregation and bridged the racial divide with stellar pitching packaged with slapstick humor. He entertained as he played to win and saw no contradiction in doing so. Game after game, his performance refuted the lie that black baseball was inferior to white baseball. His was a contribution to civil rights of a different kind—his speeches and demonstrations expressed through his performance on the mound.
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Imagined Olympians: Body Culture And Colonial Representation In Rwanda
John Bale
University of Minnesota Press, 2002
Library of Congress GV673.R95B35 2002 | Dewey Decimal 306.483
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In Rare Form: A Pictorial History of Baseball Evangelist Billy Sunday
W. A. Firstenberger
University of Iowa Press, 2005
Library of Congress BV3785.S8F57 2005 | Dewey Decimal 269.2092
From 1896 to 1935, the flamboyant and controversial Billy Sunday preached his version of the gospel to millions of people across the nation. In this nontraditional biography of the man regarded by his enthralled fans as God's unconventional messenger to a sinful world, the curator of the Billy Sunday Historic Site Museum recreates Sunday's life through a material culture lens. W. A. Firstenberger views the photographic record and the print record as well as the landscape, structure, and contents of the Sunday home in Winona Lake, Indiana, to give us an intimate view of Sunday and his family. Through an organizational scheme that incorporates memorabilia from childhood (samplers, Civil War badges), baseball (Billy's 1891 Philadelphia contract, scorecards), evangelism (cartoons, books such as Monkeys and Missing Links), social issues (KKK ads endorsing Sunday, his Women's Christian Temperance life membership certificate), life style (Arts and Crafts decorative pieces, extensive photos of the family's Mount Hood bungalow), and family relations (his personal possessions and those of his wife, Nell, and their children), In Rare Form brings together the inconsistencies between Sunday's material world and his spiritual world. Since Sunday might have objected to a materialistic analysis of his life, Firstenberger has allowed him a say: each section of the book begins with an apt quote from Sunday's sermons and writings. Firstenberger also includes appendixes providing detailed information on Sunday's revivals and speaking appearances, his 870,075 documented converts, the members of his evangelistic team, the overall structure of his family, and an extensive bibliography. Acknowledging Sunday's faults and contradictions alongside his heroic accomplishments, the author presents a wryly insightful and innovative perspective on this larger-than-life figure.
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It Was Always a Choice: Picking Up the Baton of Athlete Activism
David Steele
Temple University Press, 2022
Library of Congress GV706.35 | Dewey Decimal 796.092396073
The recent flashpoint of Colin Kaepernick taking a knee renews a long tradition of athlete-activists speaking out against racism, injustice, and oppression. Like Kaepernick, Jackie Robinson, Paul Robeson, Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, Tommie Smith, and John Carlos—among many others, of all races, male and female, pro and amateur—all made the choice to take a side to command public awareness and attention rather than “shut up and play,” as O. J. Simpson, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods did. Using their celebrity to demand change, these activists inspired fans but faced great personal and professional risks in doing so. It Was Always a Choice traces the history and impact of these decisive moments throughout the history of U.S. sports.
David Steele identifies the resonances and antecedents throughout the twentieth century of the choices faced by athletes in the post-Kaepernick era, including the advance of athletes’ political organizing in the era of activism following the death of George Floyd. He shows which athletes chose silence instead of action—“dropping the baton,” as it were—in the movement to end racial inequities and violence against Black Americans. The examples of courageous athletes multiply as LeBron James, Megan Rapinoe and the activist-athletes of the NBA, WNBA, and NFL remain committed to fighting daily and vibrantly for social change.
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