Results by title
870 books match the query 'Sports & Recreation' and 174 start with t
The Psychology of Team Sports
Keith Page Henschen
FiT Publishing, 2003
Every fan knows that individual talent is vital to a team. But sport psychologists understand that the key to success is to incorporate talent into a supportive team unit. The editors of Psychology of Team Sports have assembled a variety of articles to address the psychological issues related to team sport activities, on and off the court or field.
Chapter 1 introduces a three-phase model to cut through the complexities associated with team sports, and chapters 2 through 12 offer theoretical and practical advice. The Psychology of Team Sports explores the discusses the major theoretical concepts related to team sport activities, as well as experiences of sport psychologists who have worked with professionals and national teams.
The Quality of Home Runs
The Passion, Politics, and Language of Cuban BaseballThomas F. Carter
Duke University Press, 2008
As an avid baseball fan, Carter draws on his experiences listening to and participating in discussions of baseball in Cuba (particularly in Havana) and among Cubans living abroad to describe how baseball provides the ground for negotiations of national, masculine, and class identities wherever Cubans gather. He considers the elaborate spectacle of Cuban baseball as well as the relationship between the socialist state and the enormously popular sport. Carter provides a detailed history of baseball in Cuba, analyzing players, policies, rivalries, and fans, and he describes how the sport has forged connections (or reinforced divisions) between Cuba and other nations. Drawing on insights from cultural studies, political theory, and anthropology, he maintains that sport and other forms of play should be taken seriously as crucibles of social and cultural experience.
The Quest for the Golden Trout
Environmental Loss and America’s Iconic FishDouglas M. Thompson
University Press of New England, 2013
The Redskins Encyclopedia
Michael Richman
Temple University Press, 2007
"Hail to the Redskins" and Redskin-mania have consumed the nation's capital since 1937, the Redskins' fist year in Washington. And the fervor remains as strong, if not stronger, today.
Amply illustrated with 200 photos of players, coaches, and fans, The Redskins Encyclopedia recounts the franchise's first 75 seasons, reliving the great -- and not so great -- moments in the team's storied history, and the men who helped make Sundays memorable.
Fans will read about:
--Coaches like George Allen, the eccentric, passionate man who left a legacy as an NFL pioneer, and Joe Gibbs, who formed a D-Y-N-A-S-T-Y
--Players like star running back and all-time Redskins ground-gainer John Riggins, who once told Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to "loosen up, Sandy baby," and Doug Williams, the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl and Super Bowl MVP honors
--The franchise's golden run of four Super Bowl appearances -- and three wins -- in the 1980s and early 1990s
--The legendary Redskins-Cowboys rivalry
--A year-by-year history of the team from 1932 to the present, with stats from each season
--Individual profiles of more than 100 Redskins players -- from Sammy Baugh to Darrell Green to Art Monk to Sonny Jurgensen to Charley Taylor to Joe Theismann
With an unparalleled collection of anecdotes, quotes, trivia, and hard-to-find information, The Redskins Encyclopedia is a must-have book for any fan who has ever bled burgundy and gold.
The Religion of SEC Football
Gameday Rituals of the Football FaithfulTerry Barr and Michael Nelson
University of Alabama Press, 2026
A testament to the rituals, rivalries, loyalties, and generational faith of SEC football
For most of the United States, September marks the arrival of autumn. In the South, it signals something else entirely: the return of college football season. “It Just Means More” is not merely a conference slogan—it’s a reflection of SEC football’s divine influence on Southern culture.
For generations, fans across the South have organized life around kickoff times and these “sacred Saturdays.” Weddings, family gatherings, and travel plans are often arranged around the football calendar. They make pilgrimages to beloved stadiums, gather with family and friends to observe longstanding game-day traditions, and invest their hopes, memories, and identities in the teams they love. For many, college football is more than entertainment—it’s a shared culture, a lifelong inheritance, and an enduring act of faith.
In The Religion of SEC Football, Terry Barr and Michael Nelson explore how SEC football has become one of the South’s most distinctive cultural traditions and the parallels it shares with religious devotion. Using history, humor, archival research, personal testimony, and decades of fandom, they examine the rituals, rivalries, communities, and legacies that transform ordinary Saturdays into something more sacred.
From tailgate lore to stadium pilgrimages, Barr and Nelson reveal a world where coaches become saints, miracle plays become scripture, and fandom becomes a family inheritance. Along the way, they celebrate the stories, passions, and personalities that have made SEC football a defining part of Southern life and an enduring act of faith. Regardless of your team’s colors, mascot, or fight song, The Religion of SEC Football celebrates the traditions, stories, and experiences that unite generations of fans across the South and remind us why, year after year, it truly just “means more.”
The Republic of Football
Legends of the Texas High School GameChad S. Conine
University of Texas Press, 2016
Anywhere football is played, Texas is the force to reckon with. Its powerhouse programs produce the best football players in America. In The Republic of Football, Chad S. Conine vividly captures Texas’s impact on the game with action-filled stories about legendary high school players, coaches, and teams from around the state and across seven decades.
Drawing on dozens of interviews, Conine offers rare glimpses of the early days of some of football’s biggest stars. He reveals that some players took time to achieve greatness—LaDainian Tomlinson wasn’t even the featured running back on his high school team until a breakthrough game in his senior season vaulted him to the highest level of the sport—while others, like Colt McCoy, showed their first flashes of brilliance in middle school. In telling these and many other stories of players and coaches, including Hayden Fry, Spike Dykes, Bob McQueen, Lovie Smith, Art Briles, Lawrence Elkins, Warren McVea, Ray Rhodes, Dat Nguyen, Zach Thomas, Drew Brees, and Adrian Peterson, Conine spotlights the decisive moments when players caught fire and teams such as Celina, Southlake Carroll, and Converse Judson turned into Texas dynasties. Packed with never-before-told anecdotes, as well as fresh takes on the games everyone remembers, The Republic of Football is a must-read for all fans of Friday night lights.
The Revolt of the Black Athlete
50th Anniversary EditionHarry Edwards
University of Illinois Press, 2017
The Right Blood
America's Aristocrats in Thoroughbred RacingCase, Carole
Rutgers University Press, 2000
The spectacle of thoroughbred horses dashing powerfully and gracefully down the track is one of the most stimulating and beautiful of all athletic events. Yet despite its mass appeal, an elite group of men and a few women have traditionally controlled the sport. What are the origins and personalities behind the sport in America?
In The Right Blood, Carole Case examines the history of American thoroughbred racing, in particular the story behind the Jockey Club. Formed in 1894 by the nation’s richest, most powerful, and often most notorious men, the Jockey Club continues to this day to exert a formidable influence on this “sport of kings.”
Using Jockey Club documents and personal interviews, Case traces the history of how club members created and enforced the rules governing racing, from the first decades of the twentieth century to the present day. She tells of how club members once assigned racing dates, issued licenses, appointed judges, and dictated who could train, ride, and own thoroughbred horses. Case also describes how many of them exploited the poor to work their horses, defeated those who posed a threat to their interests, and excluded people of different backgrounds from horse racing ¾ all in the name of improving the breed and promoting the sport. The Jockey Club maintained this stranglehold on the sport until 1950, when an appellate court took away its licensing power. Perhaps most interestingly, the men of the Jockey Club became and continue as keepers of the registry of North American thoroughbred horses, The American Stud Book, determining which horses can ¾ and cannot ¾ be considered thoroughbreds.
Written for the general reader interested in the sport and its culture, The Right Blood is an engaging look behind the scenes of American horse racing.
The Rise and Fall of Olympic Amateurism
Matthew P. Llewellyn and John Gleaves
University of Illinois Press, 2016
Matthew P. Llewellyn and John Gleaves analyze how this astonishing transformation took place. Drawing on Olympic archives and a wealth of research across media, the authors examine how an elite--white, wealthy, often Anglo-Saxon--controlled and shaped an enormously powerful myth of amateurism. The myth assumed an air of naturalness that made it seem unassailable and, not incidentally, served those in power. Llewellyn and Gleaves trace professionalism's inroads into the Olympics from tragic figures like Jim Thorpe through the shamateur era of under-the-table cash and state-supported athletes. As they show, the increasing acceptability of professionals went hand-in-hand with the Games becoming a for-profit international spectacle. Yet the myth of amateurism's purity remained a potent force, influencing how people around the globe imagined and understood sport.
Timely and vivid with details, The Rise and Fall of Olympic Amateurism is the first book-length examination of the movement's foundational ideal.
The Rise of the National Basketball Association
david G. Surdam
University of Illinois Press, 2012
The River Wild
A Celebrated Journey Down the Whitewater Rapids of the Grand CanyonCecil Kuhne
University of Utah Press, 2026
Embark on an unforgettable adventure down the mighty Colorado River in The River Wild: A Celebrated Journey down the Whitewater Rapids of the Grand Canyon. Former professional river guide Cecil Kuhne takes readers through 225 miles of towering canyon walls, surging currents, and legendary rapids that have challenged explorers for over 150 years. From the historic first descent of John Wesley Powell’s expedition to the modern thrill-seekers navigating Lava Falls, Crystal, and Hance, this book captures the heart-pounding excitement of whitewater rafting.
With vivid descriptions of the canyon’s breathtaking geology, lush flora, and abundant wildlife, Kuhne blends history, adventure, and natural beauty into an immersive journey. Whether you’re a seasoned river runner or an armchair explorer, The River Wild offers a front-row seat to one of the world’s most exhilarating river expeditions.
The Rules of Association Football, 1863
The Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2006
In 1863 a group of Victorian Oxbridge graduates, frustrated by the confusing riot of competing rules that characterized the game of British football, began meeting at the Freemason’s Tavern in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, to codify the rules of the game. They quickly drew up the standard set of rules, creating the First Rule Book of the Football Association, reprinted here in its entirety alongside illustrations and drawings of the game.
The Rules of Golf in Plain English
Jeffrey S. Kuhn and Bryan A. Garner
University of Chicago Press, 2004
The hopes of renowned writer and golfer Henry Longhurst—and millions of golfers before and after him—have finally been realized. In The Rules of Golf in Plain English, Bryan A. Garner, American English language and usage expert, and Jeffrey S. Kuhn, volunteer USGA rules official, have translated the knotty Rules with the encouragement and permission of the United States Golf Association. The result is a modern, readable version that offers, for the first time, clear guidance to both amateurs and professionals.
Based on a 338-word set of thirteen rules written in 1744, the official Rules have grown, over two and a half centuries, to 40,000 words. Numerous contributors and a complex revision process have rendered these Rules so opaque and stylistically inconsistent that a companion volume—the 600-page Decisions on the Rules of Golf—has been published to help golfers navigate them.
Both lawyers and avid golfers, Kuhn and Garner recognized the difficulties that the language of the Rules of Golf created, especially in a sport that expects players to call penalties on themselves. By reworking the Rules line by line, word by word, they have produced an accessible resource that no golfer—from the duffer to the pro—should be without.
The Rules of Golf in Plain English, Fourth Edition
Jeffrey S. Kuhn and Bryan A. Garner
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Two hundred years of revisions have rendered these Rules opaque and stylistically inconsistent. Those intricacies can be intimidating for anyone hoping to pick up the game and frustrating for longtime players who just want to settle a dispute. Both lawyers and avid golfers, Jeffrey S. Kuhn and Bryan A. Garner recognized the difficulties that the language of the Rules of Golf has created, especially in a sport that expects players to call penalties on themselves. By reworking the Rules line by line, word by word, they have produced an accessible resource that no golfer—from the duffer to the pro—should be without.
This new edition of The Rules of Golf in Plain English is fully aligned with the latest United States Golf Association updates and continues to be published with their permission and encouragement. Clear and concise, this reference will allow players to spend more time playing through and less time scratching their heads.
The Rules of Golf in Plain English, Second Edition
Jeffrey S. Kuhn and Bryan A. Garner
University of Chicago Press, 2008
The hopes of renowned writer and golfer Henry Longhurst—and millions of golfers before and after him—have finally been realized. In The Rules of Golf in Plain English, Bryan A. Garner, American English language and usage expert, and Jeffrey S. Kuhn, volunteer USGA rules official, have translated the knotty Rules with the encouragement and permission of the United States Golf Association. The result is a modern, readable version that offers, for the first time, clear guidance to both amateurs and professionals.
Based on a 338-word set of thirteen rules written in 1744, the official Rules have grown, over two and a half centuries, to 40,000 words. Numerous contributors and a complex revision process have rendered these Rules so opaque and stylistically inconsistent that a companion volume—the 600-page Decisions on the Rules of Golf—has been published to help golfers navigate them.
Both lawyers and avid golfers, Kuhn and Garner recognized the difficulties that the language of the Rules of Golf created, especially in a sport that expects players to call penalties on themselves. By reworking the Rules line by line, word by word, they have produced an accessible resource that no golfer—from the duffer to the pro—should be without.
The Rules of Golf in Plain English, Third Edition
Jeffrey S. Kuhn and Bryan A. Garner
University of Chicago Press, 2012
The hopes of renowned writer and golfer Henry Longhurst—and millions of golfers before and after him—have finally been realized. In The Rules of Golf in Plain English, Bryan A. Garner, American English language and usage expert, and Jeffrey S. Kuhn, volunteer USGA rules official, have translated the knotty Rules with the encouragement and permission of the United States Golf Association. The result is a modern, readable version that offers, for the first time, clear guidance to both amateurs and professionals.
Based on a 338-word set of thirteen rules written in 1744, the official Rules have grown, over two and a half centuries, to 40,000 words. Numerous contributors and a complex revision process have rendered these Rules so opaque and stylistically inconsistent that a companion volume—the 600-page Decisions on the Rules of Golf—has been published to help golfers navigate them.
Both lawyers and avid golfers, Kuhn and Garner recognized the difficulties that the language of the Rules of Golf created, especially in a sport that expects players to call penalties on themselves. By reworking the Rules line by line, word by word, they have produced an accessible resource that no golfer—from the duffer to the pro—should be without.
The Rumble in the Jungle
Muhammad Ali and George Foreman on the Global StageLewis A. Erenberg
University of Chicago Press, 2019
TheRumble in the Jungle orbits around Ali and Foreman, placing them at the convergence of the American Civil Rights movement and the Great Society, the rise of Islamic and African liberation efforts, and the ongoing quest to cast off the shackles of colonialism. With his far-reaching take on sports, music, marketing, and mass communications, Erenberg shows how one boxing match became nothing less than a turning point in 1970s culture.
The SPHAS
The Life and Times of Basketball's Greatest Jewish TeamAuthored by Doug Stark
Temple University Press, 2011
Founded in 1918, the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association's basketball team, known as the SPHAS, was a top squad in the American Basketball League-capturing seven championships in thirteen seasons-until it disbanded in 1959. In The SPHAS, the first book to chronicle the history of this team and its numerous achievements, Douglas Stark uses rare and noteworthy images of players and memorabilia as well as interviews and anecdotes to recall how players like Inky Lautman, Cy Kaselman, and Shikey Gotthoffer fought racial stereotypes of weakness and inferiority while spreading the game's popularity. Team owner Eddie Gottlieb and Temple University coach Harry Litwack, among others profiled here, began their remarkable careers with the SPHAS.
Stark explores the significance of basketball to the Jewish community during the game's early years, when Jewish players dominated the sport and a distinct American Jewish identity was on the rise. At a time when basketball teams were split along ethnic lines, the SPHAS represented the Philadelphia Jewish community. The SPHAS is an inspiring and heartfelt tale of the team on and off the court.
The Sanchez Family
Mexican American High School and Collegiate Wrestlers from Cheyenne, WyominJorge Iber
University of Wyoming Press, 2025
The first members of this particular Sanchez clan arrived in Wyoming during the early decades of the twentieth century. The first-generation American grandchildren of these families—Gilbert, David, Arthur, and Ray—used wrestling to radically alter their social and economic status by attending college with athletic scholarships, graduating, and moving on to professional, middle-class careers. Subsequent generations of the family followed their fathers and uncles to the mats at various institutions, also going on to earn degrees and enter professional occupations. Indeed, Iber contends that wrestling became the family’s “business,” the mechanism by which the Sanchezes extricated themselves from Cheyenne’s working class.
Revealing a previously unstudied aspect of Mexican American life in the state, The Sanchez Family sheds light on another vehicle for the educational, social, and economic advancement of Latinos in other parts of the United States. The first book to examine the role of wrestling in the lives of Mexican Americans, it serves as a foundational text for Latino studies of sports and constructing racial counterscripts.
The Sarajevo Olympics
A History of the 1984 Winter GamesJason Vuic
University of Massachusetts Press, 2015
To most observers, the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, were an unmitigated success. That year, the unlikeliest of candidate cities in the unlikeliest of candidate countries did what many had thought impossible: it hosted an international sports competition at the highest level, housing and feeding hundreds of athletes and thousands of tourists while broadcasting a positive image of socialist Yugoslavia to the world.
The first Winter Games held in a communist country, Sarajevo also marked the first Olympic confrontation of Soviet and American athletes since the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Games. And the competitions themselves were spectacular and memorable. This was the Olympics of British ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, American skiers “Wild Bill” Johnson and Debbie Armstrong, and East German skaters Katarina Witt and Karin Enke, not to mention a Soviet hockey team that rebounded from its stunning loss to the Americans at Lake Placid four years earlier to win all seven of its matches.
Yet The Sarajevo Olympics is more than just a history of sport. Jason Vuic also retraces the history of the Olympic movement, analyzes the inner workings of the International Olympic Committee during the troubled 1970s and 1980s, and places the 1984 Winter Games in the context of Cold War geopolitics. The book begins and ends by reminding readers that less than a decade after it hosted the Olympics, the Bosnian city of Sarajevo found itself at the vortex of a bloody and brutal civil war that would end with the dissolution of the multiethnic Yugoslavian state.
The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected
A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of EverythingMarcelo Gleiser
Dartmouth College Press, 2016
The Sizzler
George Sisler, Baseball's Forgotten GreatRick Huhn
University of Missouri Press, 2013
During his illustrious career he was a .340 hitter, twice achieving the rare feat of hitting more than .400. His 257 hits in 1920 is still the record for the “modern” era. Considered by many to be one of the game’s most skillful first basemen, he was the first at his position to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Yet unlike many of his peers who became household names, Sisler has faded from baseball’s collective consciousness.
Now in The Sizzler, this “legendary player without a legend” gets the treatment he deserves. Rick Huhn presents the story of one of baseball’s least appreciated players and studies why his status became so diminished. Huhn argues that the answer lies somewhere amid the tenor of Sisler’s times, his own character and demeanor, the kinds of individuals who are chosen as our sports heroes, and the complex definition of fame itself.
In a society obsessed with exposing the underbellies of its heroes, Sisler’s lack of a dark side may explain why less has been written about him than others. Although Sisler was a shy, serious sort who often shunned publicity, his story is filled with its own share of controversy and drama, from a lengthy struggle among major-league moguls for his contractual rights—a battle that helped change the structure of organized baseball forever—to a job-threatening eye disorder he developed during the peak of his career and popularity.
By including excerpts from Sisler’s unpublished memoir, as well as references to the national and international events that took place during his heyday, Huhn reveals the full picture of this family man who overcame great obstacles, stood on high principles, and left his mark on a game he affected in a positive way for fifty-eight years.
The Small Book of Hip Checks
On Queer Gender, Race, and WritingErica Rand
Duke University Press, 2021
The Sons of Westwood
John Wooden, UCLA, and the Dynasty That Changed College BasketballJohn Matthew Smith
University of Illinois Press, 2013
The Sons of Westwood tells the story of the most significant college basketball program at a pivotal period in American cultural history. It weaves together a story of sports and politics in an era of social and cultural upheaval, a time when college students and college athletes joined the civil rights movement, demonstrated against the Vietnam War, and rejected the dominant Cold War culture. This is the story of America's culture wars played out on the basketball court by some of college basketball's most famous players and its most memorable coach.
The Sport Management Educator
Strategies for TeachingEmily Dane-Staples
FiT Publishing, 2023
The value and placement of sport in society is significant and has created an extensive need for qualified practitioners. With over 800 academic programs of sport management in North America alone, there is a great demand for qualified educators in the field. As such, resources to support educational excellence are essential.
The Sport Management Educator: Strategies for Teaching provides a resource for those new to teaching and those seeking to improve instructional skills. Beginning with the fundamentals of brain-based learning, this text builds a strong foundation for teaching in sport management and enhances existing teaching practices and strategies to improve instructional elements such as planning, classroom management, course design, and student engagement.
Author Emily Dane-Staples draws on years of experience, skills, a solid foundation in the science of teaching and learning, and expertise to create this invaluable resource to help current and future sport management educators improve their instructional skills. This definitive source assists new and experienced instructors alike enhance foundational knowledge and improve teaching effectiveness.
The Sport Management Educator chapters focus on course planning, student success and engagement, teaching with technology, classroom management, course reflection and revision, assessment, and more. Practical tools help readers choose instructional options that align with their teaching philosophy, address their students’ needs, and enhance their ability to become more effective, successful educators.
The Sport Marriage
Women Who Make It WorkSteven M. Ortiz
University of Illinois Press, 2020
Ortiz defines the traditional sport marriage as a career-dominated marriage, illustrating how it encourages women to contribute to their own subordination through adherence to an unwritten rulebook and a repertoire of self-management strategies. He explains how they make invaluable contributions to their husbands’ careers while adjusting to public life and trying to maintain family privacy, managing power and control issues, and coping with pervasive groupies, overinvolved mothers, a culture of infidelity, and husbands who prioritize team loyalty. He gives these historically silent women a voice, offering readers perceptive and sensitive insight into what it means to be a woman in the male-dominated world of professional sports.
The Sporting World of the Modern South
Edited by Patrick B. Miller
University of Illinois Press, 2002
Engaging a medley of perspectives and methodologies, these collected essays explore the sport-related symbols and events that have shaped southern regional identities since the Civil War. The authors range from the "backcountry" fighter stereotypes portrayed in modern professional wrestling to the significance of Crimson Tide coaching legend Paul "Bear" Bryant for white Alabamians while other essays tackle gender and race relations in intercollegiate athletics, the roles athletic competitions played in desegregating the South, and NASCAR's popularity in southern states.
Pairing the action and anecdotes of good sportswriting with rock-solid scholarship, The Sporting World of the Modern South adds historical and anthropological perspectives to legends and lore from the gridiron to the racetrack.
The Sports Revolution
How Texas Changed the Culture of American AthleticsBy Frank Andre Guridy
University of Texas Press, 2021
The story of Texas’s impact on American sports culture during the civil rights and second-wave feminist movements, this book offers a new understanding of sports and society in the state and the nation as a whole.
In the 1960s and 1970s, America experienced a sports revolution. New professional sports franchises and leagues were established, new stadiums were built, football and basketball grew in popularity, and the proliferation of television enabled people across the country to support their favorite teams and athletes from the comfort of their homes. At the same time, the civil rights and feminist movements were reshaping the nation, broadening the boundaries of social and political participation. The Sports Revolution tells how these forces came together in the Lone Star State.
Tracing events from the end of Jim Crow to the 1980s, Frank Guridy chronicles the unlikely alliances that integrated professional and collegiate sports and launched women’s tennis. He explores the new forms of inclusion and exclusion that emerged during the era, including the role the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders played in defining womanhood in the age of second-wave feminism. Guridy explains how the sexual revolution, desegregation, and changing demographics played out both on and off the field as he recounts how the Washington Senators became the Texas Rangers and how Mexican American fans and their support for the Spurs fostered a revival of professional basketball in San Antonio. Guridy argues that the catalysts for these changes were undone by the same forces of commercialization that set them in motion and reveals that, for better and for worse, Texas was at the center of America’s expanding political, economic, and emotional investments in sport.
The St. Louis Baseball Reader
Richard Peterson
University of Missouri Press, 2022
The Stars Are Back
The St. Louis Cardinals, the Boston Red Sox, and Player Unrest in 1946Jerome M. Mileur
Southern Illinois University Press, 2013
But while the nation was riveted by the return of its beloved baseball heroes, the game behind the scenes was just as dramatic. As the threat of unionization loomed and the Mexican League continued to lure players away from the United States with lucrative contracts, tensions between players and team owners mounted. The result was a standoff for control of the game that would culminate in the Magna Carta of baseball and the creation of standard contracts for players, ushering in the modern era of baseball.
Set against the backdrop of a country recovering from war, facing the new adversary of Communism, and absorbing the emotional impact of the atomic bomb, The Stars Are Back tells the story of a nation hungry for a return to normalcy and a game poised on the brink of new horizons.
The Steelers Encyclopedia
Chuck Finder
Temple University Press, 2012
The pitiful Pittsburgh Pirates, established in 1933 by the inimitable “Chief,” Art Rooney Sr defied both belief and the odds by becoming the six-time Super Bowl champions that the Pittsburgh Steelers are today. They began as lovable losers, the Pirates, degenerating into the Same Old Steelers, the Steagles, and the Car-Pitts, but wound up one of professional sports’ most iconic franchises.
In The Steelers Encyclopedia, veteran sportswriter Chuck Finder nimbly chronicles this remarkable team from conception to Immaculate Reception to today. From turnovers to the Terrible Towel, Finder interviews nearly 100 ex-Steelers, coaches, front-office personnel, and fans, and includes more than 150 photographs—many of them never published before.
In The Steelers Encyclopedia, fans will—
Read about wild behind-the-scenes tales such as:
• Jack Lambert, the gap-toothed linebacker considered the game’s scariest player, screaming down a hallway clad in his undies, boots, and cowboy hat because he was afraid of a teammate’s prank snake
• One Super Bowl team making an unscheduled pit stop because they, um, imbibed too many celebratory refreshments after leaving the stadium
• Driving with the club’s legendary founding father, Art Rooney Sr., to his day job—the horse track
Get a look at the stars, the games, and the franchise:
• New details about the Rooneys, the sale of their team, the difficult times and decisions they faced in surviving, then thriving
• Characters ranging from bonus-baby Byron “Whizzer” White, a future U.S. Supreme Court Justice, to league MVPs Bill Dudley, Terry Bradshaw, and Johnny Unitas
• The parade of Hall of Fame ex-Steelers that continues in 2012 with Dermontti Dawson and Jack Butler . . . and includes one Canton honoree who was almost moved to a different position and another whose career took off upon ditching his glasses for contacts
• The nasal voice that provided the team’s historic soundtrack and belonged to the inventor of the Terrible Towel, Myron Cope
Learn the Steelers by the numbers:
• A year-by-year history of the team from 1933 to the present, with stats from each season and each Super Bowl
• Chapters about each Super Bowl and the scouting staff responsible for building champions
• Individual profiles of every Steelers head coach and more than100 Steelers players—from Jerome Bettis to Rod Woodson
• Revealing the man who wrote the Steelers polka, the kid who named the Steel Curtain, and the first weightlifting coach of the Super Steelers
• The cheerleaders—both female and male
For everyone who lives in Steeler Nation, this is the most comprehensive history of football’s most beloved franchise, the Black and Gold.
The Story of Modern Skiing
John Fry
University Press of New England, 2010
The Swimming Holes of Texas
By Julie Wernersbach and Carolyn Tracy; photography by Carolyn Tracy
University of Texas Press, 2017
The Syntax of Sports, Class 1
The Words Under the WordsPatrick Barry
Michigan Publishing Services, 2019
The beginning of a multi-volume series, this initial book recreates the first day of class as it was taught to undergraduates at the University of Michigan. The examples are compelling. The dialogue is fast moving. The stories are ones you’ll want to return to and retell over and over again. There is a reason the actual students who took The Syntax of Sports said the following things about it:
“Every class I learned something new that I know I’ll actually use in my writing for years to come. Couldn’t be happier that I took a chance on Syntax of Sports.”
“Prof. Barry has structured the course so that it’s almost impossible not to learn something valuable to take with you to future classes and future career possibilities.”
“I have learned a ton of techniques for being a better writer in this class. I have also learned many life lessons that will undoubtedly guide how I act in the future.”
“I absolutely loved this course because the teacher was so awesome. I enjoyed sitting through class listening to Professor Barry and falling in love with his brain.”
The Syntax of Sports, Class 2
The Power of the ParticularPatrick Barry
Michigan Publishing Services, 2020
What can we learn from baseball great Ted Williams about how to improve our writing? What can we learn we from the iconic ESPN show SportsCenter about how to manage information? And are you sure you really know what the word “peruse” means?
Explore these and other questions in the second volume of The Syntax of Sports, a series designed to recreate a popular course at the University of Michigan. Here are a few things students have said about the experience of taking it.
-
“Patrick Barry is the best teacher I have ever had. I have never learned so much in a class. I hated English my whole life until I took this course.”
-
“I feel like this is and always will be the most valuable class I've ever taken here.”
-
“I genuinely wanted to show up to this class due to the amount I knew I would learn.”
-
“I'm going to severely SEVERELY miss this course.”
-
“Every student should try to take one of Prof. Barry’s classes if he or she wants to become a better writer.”
-
“My writing is now 113x better.”
The Syntax of Sports, Class 3
The Rule of ThreePatrick Barry
Michigan Publishing Services, 2021
It’s not an accident that hall of fame coaches, Pulitzer Prize-winning writers, and the marketing teams at the most innovative companies in the world often rely on a certain three-part structure when trying to communicate their ideas. This third volume of The Syntax of Sports series explores the mechanics of that structure and shows how it can add a compelling mix of clarity and sophistication to your writing.
Like in the previous volumes, the materials come from a popular course at the University of Michigan. Here are comments from students who have taken it:
“The quality of this course was fantastic!”
“Professor Barry really knows how to keep students engaged.”
“Professor Barry is very passionate about teaching, and his enthusiasm made me want to write and learn.”
“This course not only helps you become a better writer but also sheds light on how you might become a better person.”
The Syntax of Sports, Class 4
Parallel StructurePatrick Barry
Michigan Publishing Services, 2022
“Once you find the right structure, perhaps it will be easier to find the right content.” That’s one of the key insights from this fourth book in the series The Syntax of Sports. Others include:
- The importance of being “radically inclusive”
- The power of defining something by what it is not
- The creative elegance of the word “as”
So join Professor Patrick Barry as he continues to share lessons from the popular writing course at the University of Michigan on which The Syntax of Sports is based. You’ll learn about language. You’ll learn about advocacy. And you’ll get to explore some illuminating connections between everything from the speeches of Winston Churchill, to the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci, to—perhaps most surprisingly—the face of NFL legend (and former University of Michigan quarterback) Tom Brady.
The Syntax of Sports, Class 5
Rhetorical RepetitionPatrick Barry
Michigan Publishing Services, 2024
- "Fantastic"
- "Phenomenal"
- "Very engaging and informative:
- "Incredibly useful
- "Full of practical lessons for both my career and life generally"
The Syntax of Sports, Class 6
Drafting and EditingPatrick Barry
Michigan Publishing Services, 2024
How do you start a piece of writing? How do you edit one? And what can be done to combat those pesky—and paralyzing—feelings of perfectionism that often derail our most important sentences and paragraphs?
This sixth volume of the Syntax of Sports series creatively uses the language of baseball, football, tennis, and many other sports to explore these questions. Based on a popular course at the University of Michigan, it captures the energy, originality, and discipline - crossing insights that make its author, Professor Patrick Barry, such a sought-after teacher and presenter.
The Syntax of Sports, Class 7
Information FlowPatrick Barry
Michigan Publishing Services, 2025
The Team That Changed Baseball
Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh PiratesBruce Markusen
Westholme Publishing, 2006
The Inspiring Story of Roberto Clemente's Greatest Season and One of the Most Important Teams in Sport History
In 1947, major league baseball experienced its first measure of integration when the Brooklyn Dodgers brought Jackie Robinson to the National League. While Robinson's breakthrough opened the gates of opportunity for African Americans and other minority players, the process of integration proved slow and uneven. It was not until the 1960s that a handful of major league teams began to boast more than a few Black and Latino players. But the 1971 World Championship team enjoyed a full and complete level of integration, with half of its twenty-five-man roster comprised of players of African American and Latino descent. That team was the Pittsburgh Pirates, managed by an old-time Irishman.
In The Team That Changed Baseball: Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates, veteran baseball writer Bruce Markusen tells the story of one of the most likable and significant teams in the history of professional sports. In addition to the fact that they fielded the first all-minority lineup in major league history, the 1971 Pirates are noteworthy for the team's inspiring individual performances, including those of future Hall of Famers Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, and Bill Mazeroski, and their remarkable World Series victory over the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles. But perhaps their greatest legacy is the team's influence on the future of baseball, inspiring later championship teams such as the New York Yankees and Oakland Athletics to open their doors fully to all talented players, regardless of race, particularly in the new era of free agency.
The Universal Sport
Two Years inside BoxingThomas Hauser
University of Arkansas Press, 2023
Hauser’s newest collection meets this high standard. The Universal Sport features Hauser’s coverage of 2021 and 2022 in boxing. As always, Hauser chronicles the big fights and gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at boxing’s biggest stars. He offers a cogent look the rise of women’s boxing and shines a penetrating light on the murky world of illegal performance enhancing drugs and financial corruption at the sport’s highest levels. He explores how boxing has become a tool in the high-stakes world of “sportswashing” by Saudi Arabia and a flash point for discussions about Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. The book culminates in a memorable four-part essay on the craft of writing coupled with reflections on Hauser’s own induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
The Unlevel Playing Field
A Documentary History of the African American Experience in SportDavid K. Wiggins and Patrick B. Miller
University of Illinois Press, 2003
The Unlevel Playing Field offers a rich compendium of more than 100 primary sources that chart the intertwining history of African Americans and sport. Introductions and head-notes provided by David K. Wiggins and Patrick B. Miller place each document in context, shaping an unrivaled narrative.
Readers will find dozens of accounts by Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, James Weldon Johnson, Richard Wright, A. S. “Doc” Young, Eldredge Cleaver, Nikki Giovanni, John Edgar Wideman, bell hooks, James Baldwin, Roy Wilkins, Henry Louis Gates, Gerald Early, and many others.
The documents range from discussions of the color line in organized baseball during the Jim Crow era and portraits of turn-of-the-century figures like the champion sprint cyclist Marshall “Major” Taylor and boxer Jack Johnson. Writers also look at modern-day issues like the participation of black athletes in the 1968 Olympics, the place of African American women in sport, and examine pioneering figures like Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Althea Gibson, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Venus and Serena Williams.
The View from the Dugout
The Journals of Red RolfeEdited by William M. Anderson
University of Michigan Press, 2006
-Bill James, in The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, on the journals of Red Rolfe
"Red Rolfe's journal for his years as manager of the Detroit Tigers is the kind of precious source researchers yearn for. In combination with William M. Anderson's well-done text, The View from the Dugout will be of great interest to general readers and of immense value to students of baseball history."
-Charles C. Alexander, author of Breaking the Slump: Baseball in the Depression Era
"Red Rolfe was one of baseball's most astute observers. This is 'inside' baseball from the inside."
-Donald Honig, author of Baseball America, Baseball When the Grass Was Real, and other books in the Donald Honig Best Players of All Time series
"In his lucid journals Red Rolfe has provided an inside look at how an intelligent baseball manager thinks and prepares."
-Ray Robinson, Yankee historian and author of Iron Horse: Lou Gehrig in His Time
Baseball players as a rule aren't known for documenting their experiences on the diamond. Red Rolfe, however, during his time as manager of the Detroit Tigers from 1949 to 1952, recorded daily accounts of each game, including candid observations about his team's performance. He used these observations to coach his players and to gain an advantage by recording strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies of opposing players and managers. Rolfe's journals carry added value considering his own career as an All-Star Yankee third baseman on numerous world champion teams, where he was a teammate of Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio.
Today, in the era of televised broadcasts, networks often wire a manager so that viewers can listen to his spontaneous comments throughout the game. Red Rolfe's journals offer an opportunity to find out what a manager is thinking when no one is around to hear.
William M. Anderson is Director of the Department of History, Arts and Libraries for the State of Michigan. His books include The Detroit Tigers: A Pictorial Celebration of the Greatest Players and Moments in Tigers' History.
The World of Lucha Libre
Secrets, Revelations, and Mexican National IdentityHeather Levi
Duke University Press, 2008
Levi considers lucha libre in light of scholarship about sport, modernization, and the formation of the Mexican nation-state, and in connection to professional wrestling in the United States. She examines the role of secrecy in wrestling, the relationship between wrestlers and the characters they embody, and the meanings of the masks worn by luchadors. She discusses male wrestlers who perform masculine roles, those who cross-dress and perform feminine roles, and female wrestlers who wrestle each other. Investigating the relationship between lucha libre and the mass media, she highlights the history of the sport’s engagement with television: it was televised briefly in the early 1950s, but not again until 1991. Finally, Levi traces the circulation of lucha libre symbols in avant-garde artistic movements and its appropriation in left-wing political discourse. The World of Lucha Libre shows how a sport imported from the United States in the 1930s came to be an iconic symbol of Mexican cultural authenticity.
The World's Game
A HISTORY OF SOCCERBill Murray
University of Illinois Press, 1996
There Will Always Be Boxing
Another Year Inside the Sweet ScienceThomas Hauser
University of Arkansas Press, 2017
There Will Always Be Boxing continues this tradition of excellence. A poignant look at Muhammad Ali—whose life was celebrated throughout the world following his death on June 3, 2016—highlights this collection of Hauser’s work. The year’s biggest fights are, as always, put in perspective. And once again, Hauser takes readers behind the scenes, giving them a seat at the table with boxing’s biggest power brokers as he reveals the inner workings of the sport and business of boxing.
There Will Always Be Boxing is sure not to disappoint the readers, writers, and critics who look forward to Hauser’s annual collection of articles about the contemporary boxing scene. This collection shows, once again, why Hauser is one of the last real champions of boxing and one of the very best who has ever written about the sport.
There You Have It
The Life, Legacy, and Legend of Howard CosellJohn Bloom
University of Massachusetts Press, 2010
Raised in Brooklyn in a middle-class Jewish family, Cosell carried with him a deeply ingrained sense of social justice. Yet early on he abandoned plans for a legal career to become a pioneer in sports broadcasting, first in radio and then in television. The first white TV reporter to address the former Cassius Clay by his chosen Muslim name, Cosell was also the first sportscaster to conduct locker room interviews with professional athletes, using a tape recorder purchased with his own money. At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, he not only defended the fisted "Black Power" salutes of American track medalists John Carlos and Tommie Smith, but he publicly excoriated Olympic Committee chairman Avery Brundage for "hypocritical," racist policies. He was also instrumental in launching ABC's Monday Night Football, a prime-time sports program that evolved into an American cultural institution.
Yet while Cosell took courageous stands on behalf of civil rights and other causes, he could be remarkably blind to the inconsistencies in his own life. In this way, John Bloom argues, he embodied contradictions that still resonate widely in American society today.
They Came to Bowl
How Milwaukee Became America’s Tenpin CapitalDoug Schmidt
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2007
A frozen rope. A urethane split on the drives. Chicken tracks on the telescore.* Do you know your bowling lingo? You will along with much more when you read They Came to Bowl: How Milwaukee Became America's Tenpin Capital. From the thrill of the perfect strike to the agony of a ball gone astray, anyone who has rolled a ball down the lanes will find themselves or someone they know in the people, places and stories covered in this book.
In this authoritative and lively book, Doug Schmidt traces bowling's roots from a German religious rite centuries ago to the sport that made Milwaukee famous. From the taverns and saloons that housed recreational games to the sell-out crowds and million-dollar beer sponsorships of televised tournaments, this well-illustrated book covers both sport and city, charting the changing face of bowling over the century. Packed with memorable showdowns and improbable heroes, They Came to Bowl will take you back to the changing lanes of bowling in Milwaukee — and the sport as a whole.
* frozen rope=a ball rolled with excessive speed almost straight to the pocket; urethane split=2-8-10 or 3-7-9 split caused by sharp breaking point of reactive resin balls; drives=alleys; chicken tracks=string of strikes
They Came to Play
A Photographic History of Colorado BaseballDuane A. Smith
University Press of Colorado, 2012
In They Came To Play: A Photographic History of Colorado Baseball, historians and avid baseball fans Duane Smith and Mark Foster have collected the finest historic baseball photographs of teams, players, and games from around the state. They are all here, the town teams, company teams, early professional clubs, and the ethnic teams that made baseball an integral part of the life and times in Colorado's mountain towns, prairie hamlets, and bustling frontier cities. Combined with the wonderful photographs and captions is an essay that brings baseball's rich heritage in Colorado to life for the reader.