Table Of ContentA Companion to American Sport History
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A COMPANION TO
AMERICAN SPORT
HISTORY
Edited by
Steven A. Riess
This edition first published 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A companion to American sport history / edited by Steven A. Riess.
pages cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-65612-9 (cloth)
1. Sports–United States–History. I. Riess, Steven A.
GV853.C65 2014
796.0973–dc23
2013045088
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: Baseball game at Elysian Fields, Hoboken, New Jersey, 1866. Lithograph by
Currier & Ives. © The Granger Collection / Topfoto.
Cover design by Richard Boxall Design Associates
Set in 10/12pt Galliard by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
1 2014
Contents
Notes on Contributors viii
Introduction 1
Steven A. Riess
Part I Major Chronological Eras of Sport History 11
1 The Emergence of Sport: A Historiographical Appraisal of Sport
in America through 1865 13
James C. Schneider
2 The Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, 1865–1920 32
Gerald R. Gems
3 The Interwar and Post-World War II Eras, 1920–1960 60
Ryan Swanson
4 Sport Since the 1960s 84
Russ Crawford
Part II Historical Processes and Sport 107
5 Scientific Habits of Mind, Technological Revolutions, and
American Sport 109
Mark Dyreson
6 Urbanization and American Sport 130
Joseph C. Bigott
Part III Major Team Sports 153
7 Baseball Before 1920 155
Leslie Heaphy
vi contents
8 Baseball Since 1920 177
Rebecca T. Alpert
9 Reconciling the Consequences of Modernity: College Football
as Cultural History 202
Kurt Edward Kemper
10 Professional Football 221
Anthony Santoro
11 Basketball 246
Aram Goudsouzian
Part IV Major Individual Sports 269
12 Boxing: The Manly Art 271
Randy Roberts and Andrew R. M. Smith
13 Golf and Tennis 292
Robert Pruter
14 American Motor Sport: The Checkered Literature on the Checkered Flag 313
David N. Lucsko
15 Historians, Track Stars, and Amateurism: Retrospect and Prospects 334
Alan S. Katchen
Part V Sport, Government, and the Global Society 357
16 The United States and International Sport: A Historiography 359
Nicholas Evan Sarantakes
17 The United States in the Modern Olympic Movement: A Historiography 379
Robert K. Barney
Part VI Sport and Social History 403
18 Historians Take on Ethnicity, Race, and Sport 405
Gerald R. Gems
19 The African American Athlete 434
Louis Moore
20 Class and Sport 454
Steven A. Riess
21 Manhood or Masculinity: The Historiography of Manliness in
American Sport 479
Brian M. Ingrassia
22 Women in American Sport History 500
Linda J. Borish
contents vii
Part VII Sport and Capitalism 521
23 Explaining Exceptionalism: Approaches to the Study of American
Sports Business History 523
J. Andrew Ross
24 Sport and the Media 552
James R. Walker and Robert V. Bellamy, Jr
25 Stadiums, Arenas, and Audiences 577
Robert C. Trumpbour
Part VIII Sport and Culture 599
26 Sport and American Religion 601
Richard Kimball
27 Not Always “Natural”: A Historiography of Sport in American Culture 615
Kevin B. Witherspoon
28 Sports Biographies 634
Maureen Smith
Index 656
Notes on Contributors
Rebecca T. Alpert is associate professor Historical Scholarship on the Modern
of religion at Temple University. One of Olympic Movement (2010). He is the
the first women to be ordained as a rabbi author and editor of several books includ-
in the 1970s, she authored several books ing Selling the Five Rings: The International
on twentieth-century American Jewish Olympic Committee and the Rise of Olympic
history and culture, gender and sexuality, Commercialism (2004) with Stephen Ween
and Jewish ethics. Co-chair of the Religion and Scott G. Martyn.
and Sport Section of the American
Academy of Religion, she created and Robert V. Bellamy, Jr is a professor in the
taught an undergraduate course on “Jews, Department of Journalism and Multimedia
America, and Sport” at Temple University. Arts at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.
Author of Out of Left Field: Jews and Black He has authored numerous articles and
Baseball (2011), she was an expert com- chapters on such topics as media and sports,
mentator in Peter Miller’s documentary media technology, and television program-
film Jews and Baseball: An American Love ming, and is the co-author, with Jim Walker,
Story (2010). of Centerfield Shot: A History of Baseball on
Television (2008), Television and the Remote
Robert K. Barney, reared in Massachusetts, Control: Grazing on a Vast Wasteland
received his PhD from the University of (1996), and The Remote Control in the New
New Mexico in 1968. He taught at Age of Television (1993). He serves on the
Western University, London, Ontario for editorial boards of Communication & Sport
41 years. He is recipient of the International and Nine: A Journal of Baseball History &
Olympic Committee’s Olympic Order Culture.
(1998), the North American Society for
Sport History’s Recognition Award for Joseph C. Bigott is associate professor of
Exceptional Lifetime Contributions to history at Purdue University, Calumet.
the Study of Sport History (2003), and He authored From Cottage to Bungalow:
the Pierre de Coubertin Award given by Houses and the Working Class in
the International Society of Olympic Metropolitan Chicago, 1869–1929 (2001).
Historians for Lifetime Contributions to Currently, he is writing an architectural
